Located a
little past Cloverfield on the Santa Monica Boulevard, Josephine Press is
unassumingly wedged between a BMW dealership and an acupuncture office. A
transplant from the East, who got his MFA at Kent State University, John Greco established the press in 1984 out of a desire
to help other artists and himself, as according to John, the Santa Monica area
in the early 1980’s did not have an adequate facility for artists to create
prints. Today the shop is a resource for many and with his busy schedule John
finds almost no time to make his own work.
Josephine
Press is a modest but comfortable shop, with two presses, a large format Epson
printer and everything an artist could need stored within its shelves. John
keeps the shop versatile, working with artists in almost all print media. This
versatility has been the key to the press’ survival over the past twenty-five
years. As in his words John cannot find the balance between the processes of
making and marketing art. Without
a steady income for the sell of prints, John, like many other artists and
entrepreneurs, has developed multiple strategies for generating income and
staying afloat even in volatile times.
John has
taught printmaking at Santa Monica College for years and his teaching also
extends to Josephine Press where he teaches a variety of workshops. The most
interesting on the agenda is a weekly Thursday night workshop that allows any
interested artists to use the shop and John’s knowledge for three and a half
hours needing only to bring paper, their plates, and the minimal fee of
$25. This open door workshop is
unique and perhaps the only of its kind outside of a community college setting
in the LA area. On any given Thursday night the diversity of this group is
amazing and can range from graduate students from Claremont programs, to an
education specialist from the Getty to a local special education teacher all in
queue to use the press. After
working with John in his formal workshops, artists can also rent the shop for a
day, or evening and in the past months John has been able to rent out the shop
for 3 or more days a week meaning that someone is there working at almost all
times.
The concept of
community is important to John and it can be easily be seen in both his desire
for artists to use his shop and in how he is always drumming up new members for
the Los Angeles Printmaking Society. Thus said it is easy to understand why
John has developed strong relationships with many artists as a master printer
over the past twenty years. And those who keep returning include Michael C.
McMillan whose work you see here, Nancy Regelman, Joe Piasentin and Ruth Leaf, herself the author of a text on
intaglio processes.
The print you
see now, “One More Line” was Raymond
Pettibon’s contribution to an exhibition of intaglio prints by a selected group
of the artists John has worked with over the years. Perhaps David Pagel summed
the press up best in his essay for the exhibition “artsy hotbeds are the stuff
of Hollywood movies, and what I found when I went through the Dutch door at the
entrance to Josephine Press was even better: a lively beehive of art-lovers
driven to do it themselves.”
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