In this week's episode of Prints and Their Makers Bookclub (s4e1), host Phil Sanders talks with Jillian Ross, collaborative master printer and publisher, about her recent project with William Kentridge based on his new theatrical work The Great Yes, The Great No. 

 

Joining her in studio at the David Kurt Workshop (DKW) in Johannesburg are DKW printers, Sbongiseni Khulu and Kim-Lee Loggenberg-Tim, to give insight into this new series of prints currently being developed at DKW together with Kentridge and Ross.   

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This project, in conjunction with multiple studios in Canada, the United States and South Africa, started at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), found its way to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and then onto Johannesburg, South Africa, all the while working with printmakers with the relevant skill sets to help develop the project into being. Ross will touch on the collaborative nature of working with multiple studios that helped contribute towards the realisation of projects of this nature.

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These small and large-scale prints, based on imagery of a gardenscape from The Great Yes, The Great No are being made from a combination of photogravure and photopolymer plates, combined with chine collé from gampi, dictionary papers, and kitakata papers. The plates will have drypoint and burnishing added in the coming days. 

 

Ross, Loggenberg-Tim, and Khulu will also touch briefly on the 2022 collaboration between DKW and JRP on the making of William Kentridge's Studio Life Gravure series, which started with a series of small photogravures and concluded with the large-scale print The Old Gods Have Retired. This series is still being editioned and is the pre-curser to the current project. 

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Together, they will show us these new prints, and we will get a look at their studio and working process. This is a rare behind the scenes glimpse of prints being made in real time and will provide a preview of what is to come over the forthcoming weeks.