A weekend full of printmaking, exhibition and clay Puggles during Art Walk Kingston, September 21 & 22

Midtown Kingston Arts District (MKAD) presents the 2024 Steamroller Print Fest on September, Saturday the 21st and Sunday the 22nd, as part of Art Walk Kingston. During the weekend-long fest, various events will take place simultaneously at two MKAD locations.

The namesake of the fest is the steamroller printing, which will take place on Iwo Jima Lane on September 21st from 10am to 2pm, with Sunday as a rain date. Steamroller printing in Kingston was last seen at the 2023 DRAW-A-THON. It’s a large-scale form of printmaking that uses a steamroller as the printing press, providing the pressure needed to create a print from inked blocks. The blocks are about 2 feet long and 2 feet wide. This year’s carvings will be made by 34 local artists, and worked on over the span of five weeks. Come witness elaborate, professional carvings printed on a grand scale!

During the Steamroller Print Fest visitors are welcomed to come by the Neighborhood Print Studio at 49 Greenkill Avenue. We will be selling proofs by the artists of their prints. We will also provide live tours and demonstrations of the professional printing equipment throughout our print shop. It will be a valuable opportunity to be introduced to the space and equipment first hand.

Throughout the weekend we will also be featuring two special events at the D.R.A.W. Gallery, at 22 Iwo Jima Lane. The Annual Teaching Artists Show will be open 12pm to 5pm on both Saturday and Sunday. It features work from our growing roster of teaching artists from the D.R.A.W. and Neighborhood Print Studio. Some of the artists include Lara Giordano, Beth Humphrey, Maxine Leu, Tatana Kellner, Chris O’Neal, Lora Shelley and Pablo Shine. The work will be lit 24/7 and visible through the windows from Cedar Street through October.

At the same location, and during the same times as the Annual Teaching Artists Show, we will be hosting a fundraiser “Adopt-A-Clay-Puggle”. Puggles are little clay creatures and characters created in 2020 as part of our CommUNITY Clay Project. Inspired by Antony Gormley’s “Field for the British Isles”, the project was designed in 2020 to be a COVID-safe community project. Almost 800 Puggles are now ready and waiting for adoption with your donation to support our programs. Each Puggle will come with an adoption certificate and a unique backstory.

 

The Streamroller Print Fest is made possible by the Upstate Theater Coalition and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the governor and the New York State Legislator.