Alternatives at Rochester Re: George Eastman House grant
Hi Christina -- congratulations! and a warning about what you already know -- it can be awfully hard to get out of Rochester, tho maybe the weather will help. I haven't been there for more years than I care to reveal, but there used to be a *wonderful* alternative operation near GEH... The Visual Studies Workshop. I haven't heard mention of them for years, but that was the place brought the "Breaking the Rules" mindset to the east coast. (Unlike most art, which at the time, was originating in New York, "crooked photography", and revival of old processes rolled in from the southwest and west coast.) Betty Hahn, first star of revival of gum printing in the new generation, learned it in the midwest, as Indiana University student of Henry Holmes Smith (interview with Hahn in P-F #8 tells more -- and Jack Brubaker, who knew HH Smith later, might have more current info.) Hahn ultimately taught at RIT, then New Mexico, hired by Van Deren Coke.) VSW had a wonderful collection (I remember especially Alicia Welles' solarizations) and marvelous library... Place was run for years by Joan Lyons, also a book artist & terrific printmaker, and/or her husband Nathan Lyons, critic, photographer (Notations in Passing,et al.). A workshop I took with Lyons probably left its mark more than any other-- what he said was so wonderfully against the conventional "wisdom" of that very long ago time. If VSW is demised, they never sent a death notice, If still there, they haven't sent a life notice... sigh, Judy
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