News

Jennie Merriman will be running a series of Collagraph and Linocut workshops in November and December 2024.

For more information, please email Jennie at jennie@the strawfords.plus.com

2024 marks the tenth anniversary of Sheffield Printmakers. Our inaugural meeting took place on the first of April 2014 at the Rutland Arms on Brown Street in Sheffield.

In the previous year, one of the major inspirations for the creation of the group was an exhibition entitled ‘The Power of Print’ by Sheffield artist Leonard Beaumont, which ran at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield from December 2012 to September 2013.

Two other sources of inspiration came about through the effort of Sheffield Printmakers joining together to put on an exhibition and a fair.

In November 2012, several printmakers came together at the Workstation in Sheffield to exhibit their work, donate prints and raise funds for Water Aid. This exhibition was called ‘Waterprint’. The printmakers organising this very successful event were Peter York, Janet Beautyman, Sally Brooks, Josephine Pye and Anthea Stephenson. They all remain active members of Sheffield Printmakers in 2024.

In November 2013, a print fair was organised primarily by Janet Beautyman and Peter York. It was, again, a great success. The fair also raised funds for Water Aid and for St Mary’s Church in Sheffield, which was the venue.

After the success of the ‘Waterprint’ exhibition in 2012, the idea took hold to have a permanent organised group of like-minded printmakers, working together to promote printmaking in Sheffield. 2013 became a very busy year, as small groups of printmakers gathered together to discuss and plan the necessary actions and documentation needed for what became Sheffield Printmakers. An initial meeting designated ‘Future of Print’ took place on 20 March 2013 to discuss ideas and possibilities. Running print fairs and linked events, such as demonstrations and workshops was discussed, as were possible event venues and publicity matters. At a meeting in October, critical questions were asked: What do we want Sheffield Printmakers to be? What are our aims? Eventually, a constitution was written, a bank account opened and members were ready to commence operations in 2014. Peter York became Chair of the organisation and remained in this role until 2022. He still serves on the steering group today in the role of Artistic Advisor.

To celebrate our tenth anniversary in 2024, we are holding an exhibition at the Sock Gallery in Loughborough, once again on the theme of ‘Water’. The exhibition will run from 5 September to 13 October 2024.

Hello everyone, especially our new members John Rollin and Mark Dixey,I hope you are enjoying what is passing for Summer this year.

We started with the exhibition at Dronfield Hall Barn in March, where 12 members took part and £641.00 was taken. Dronfield has been a very good venue for us over several years as it is a busy place and the footfall is quite high. Also, the café is brilliant!

This was followed at Mayday Bank Holiday by the 3day event at the Walled Garden. Around 20 members of the Sheffield Printmakers took part, although not everyone had a stall for the whole weekend, and some people just did the exhibition. Nonetheless £4,200 was taken and the Friends of the Walled Garden raised £1,800 to help them with their work of maintaining and developing the garden. In the years since we started doing this event we have seen what used to be a disused Parks Department Greenhouse area turned into an attractive and peaceful garden.

The Art House at St Mathew’s, in Sheffield City Centre, invited Sheffield Print makers to exhibit there at no cost to us and they did all the hanging etc. Since closing during Lockdown they no longer have a café and now use the area as a gallery. When we’ve used the space before we had a gallery space on the ground floor but we also used the café area. This meant we had a very large area which we could use. Now we only had the gallery on the ground floor. This meant there were some limitations on the number of pieces they could take and on their size.

They had recently painted the wall a rather pleasant petrol blue, which many people thought showed the work to greater advantage than plain white.
The event took place from July 4th – July29th .Everyone was pleased with the appearance and those of us who attended the Opening Evening were happy with the free wine. Three members of the group sold work, which is always satisfying and Matt used the opportunity to exhibit examples of a new multi-plate lino process he has been working on, However, there some drawbacks to this venue. It is very easy to muddle the entrance up with that of St Mathew’s Church next door. The church owns the gallery and the two buildings are connected. They did the publicity, but apart from their website and a few leaflets in the premises there didn’t seem to be anything anywhere else. But, hey, it was free and any exposure is worth having.
Just a month later, August 5th -11th, we had the Pop-Up Shop in the Winter Gardens. This was the first time we have done this in the Summer, normally we have done this in the Spring, but as the hiring fee was much lower for this time of year we thought we would give it a go. We had 6 people taking part, Sally, who organised it, Cintia, Angela, Anthea, Louise, Jo and Zena, for whom it was the first time at this venue as she only joined us last year. Footfall was not great, particularly at the beginning of the week and possibly not helped by the rumours of trouble about to happen in the City Centre. Actually it was dead quiet. However, things picked up by the end of the week so that took around £716.00.This is actually the highest we have taken at the PopUp Shop so far. So in spite of the slow start, which, looking back over the records for former years , seems to have par for the course, we didn’t do too badly.

On a more individual note, apart from taking part in various of our own exhibition some people have also had work in other places
Maude had work at the Cooper Gallery, Barnsley as well as doing the Walled Garden.
Anthea, has had work accepted by the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull as well as being at Dronfield Barn, The Art House and the PopUp Shop.
Zena , who also took part in the Walled Garden and the PopUp Shop was also busy at The Big Arts Festival, Stockton in July, Darlington’s Creative Art Day ,and will be at The Devonshire Green Festival on August 24th. She has been busy as she says that she has been involved in other events “dotted around the country” throughout the year.
Uura has also been in Both the Dronfield and The Art House as well as Taking part in this year’s Open Up Winter Exhibition, The Woodseats Free Festival and Walkley Festival. She will be running a workshop at Anomaly Arts, Abbey Lane this coming Bank Holiday, August 24th.

The major up and coming event we have is the Printmakers on Water exhibition at the Sock Gallery, Loughborough which will run from September 5th to October 12th with a Meet the Artists session on September 14th . Members have been preparing for this for almost 2 years and the selection day took place on June 15th.The selectors were Sarah Burgess and Pete York, who managed to hobble round on his crutches, having had a knee replacement operation on the previous Monday. The third and independent member of the panel was Louise Jannetta a print maker and mixed media artist from Buxton. ( You can find out more about her work at https:/www.louisejanetta.co.uk.)
After the session she was kind enough to send some suggestions for obtaining frames and mount etc, with the suggestion that we could look at ordering stuff in bulk as a group, which might be helpful.
The contacts are :-
wholesale framing supplies http://www.tradepictureframes.co.uk
mount, back and bag supplies http://www.frithandcompany.co.uk
19 members of the group are taking part in this event. They are
Alex McArthur, Maude Tricker, Pat Hodson, Jennie Merriman, Louise Vickers, Sarah Burgess, Linda Green, Peter York, Kath Holland, Uura Niemi-Junkola, Tracy Litterick , Anthea Stephenson, Sally Brooks, Jo Pye, Eva Juusola, Frances Lewis, Jean Brookes, Sue Unwin, Val Vernon.
Most of the publicity for this being organised by the Sock Gallery, on line and in their own area, but we are also trying to publicise it here as well.

Val and Uura are also taking part in this year’s 20:20 event, along with Annetta, S.J and Sarah Calcutt. This is an annual print exchange, which takes place in the autumn, run by Hot Bed Press in Salford and which usually results in an exhibition somewhere. Just before lockdown, we were exploring the possibility of holding it here, but Covid got in the way. Perhaps w should consider the idea further.

Sally has written a piece for The Edge, the magazine published by the Nether Edge Neighbourhood Group. This piece celebrates the 10th Anniversary of Sheffield Printmakers by explaining how we came in to being; three of our founding members, Jan, Jo and Sally herself all live in Nether Edge. She also highlights the Sock exhibition.

Finally, dates for your diary.
We have Dronfield Hall Barn booked for December 1st-8th. Christine is organising this and will be sending out for expressions of interest soon.
Jean has booked Sharrow Community Forum (the old Sharrow Junior School) for October 30th and February 18th, both for group meetings.
Also.
West Yorkshire Zine & Print Fair October 19th The Piazza, Huddersfield. Deadline 25.9.2024( For those who don’t know, like me, Zine is short for “magazine” and, in this case, refers small hand produced versions — I think!)
Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield. Small works exhibition. 23.10.2024 -2.11.2024 Theme Darkness. Deadline 18.9.2024
The Cooper Prize, Barnsley calls for submission November/December.
Further details for all of these can be found on Curator Space or can (presumably) be obtained from the organisers.