SNAP at 40 (2023)
oral history of the Society of Northern Alberta Print-artists (SNAP), compiled from artist statements, reviews, articles from SNAP's newsletter, and interviews with members of the Edmonton printmaking community
ISSN 2562-9867 (Print); ISSN 2562-9875 (Online)
copies of the publication are available here; the text on these pages contains additional photos and text cut from the print publication due to space and budget constraints
Introduction • Part I • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8
oral history of the Society of Northern Alberta Print-artists (SNAP), compiled from artist statements, reviews, articles from SNAP's newsletter, and interviews with members of the Edmonton printmaking community
ISSN 2562-9867 (Print); ISSN 2562-9875 (Online)
copies of the publication are available here; the text on these pages contains additional photos and text cut from the print publication due to space and budget constraints
Introduction • Part I • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8
SNAP at 40: Introduction
Luke Johnson:
At some point in the past few years, my attention was drawn back to the following line in Naked Lunch:
William S. Burroughs:
You were not there for The Beginning. You will not be there for The End… Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. [1]
Luke Johnson:
How do you share and retell knowledge of a place, any version of which is superficial and relative? The first step, I suppose, is acknowledgement that we know this to be true. Continuing with this in mind, we might accept that no matter how many voices are joined in chorus to tell this story, we can’t explain everything as it happened, or as it actually was, without forgetting, withholding, re-drawing and re-emphasizing. This foreshortening is what we must take as a given of our history. Luckily there are notes… photos… hearsay… gossip and praise, slander and libel.
Witnesses.
It’s been an exciting task over the past several months to talk with so many of the artists who have been involved in the Edmonton print community through the years—in rendezvous at SNAP, video calls from multiple timezones, ambling tangential excursions to visit with the Elk Island buffalo, late night text messages with one more remembered incident. There has been slide-scanning, catalogue thumbing, and sifting through newsletters and press clippings. There are many stories, and I extend my thanks to all of the artists who have shared their time with me in telling them.
My thanks also goes to those who have helped connect me with the many archives that have informed this project: Amanda McKenzie for the initial tour of SNAP’s holdings; Michelle Schultz and Kathryn Ivany for access to the archives of Latitude 53 now held by the City of Edmonton; Gail Lint for introducing me to the AFA’s resource library; and Adam Whitford at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery for finding and scanning slides from their collection. As you might gather from this list, SNAP’s history branches and intersects with many other groups in the wider Alberta art community. Edmonton’s original artist-run centre Latitude 53 plays a major part in the story, as does the University of Alberta, MacEwan University, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Harcourt House Artist Run Centre, the Art Gallery of Alberta, commercial and pointedly non-commercial galleries both active and long-defunct, artists in their home and shared studios across the city and region, and who have come from around the country and around the world.
There are a lot of voices.
To tell this story, we have to start a bit further back than SNAP’s birth in 1982. There were print artists in Edmonton before then, and should SNAP ever go away, there will be printmakers around after it’s gone. Prior to SNAP’s existence, there had been multiple attempts to create a communal printshop for use by local artists, in particular the alumni of the University of Alberta’s printmaking program, founded in 1966 by Jonathan Knowlton. While print as a medium had been taught prior to this at the university, it was Knowlton who was responsible for setting up the first devoted printshop at the school. In the same year, Harry Savage, later a co-founder of Latitude 53 Artist Run Centre, was hired by the Faculty of Extension to set up a printshop and teach classes there. Knowlton and Savage, who each moved away from printmaking as a primary medium soon after, were joined by other teaching artists, and a growing group of alumni who often had to leave Edmonton following their graduations in order to continue working in print.
For the story of Alberta’s printmaking scene in the decades preceding SNAP, the primary resource available is Bente Roed’s Printmaking in Alberta 1945-1985. I reached out to Roed early in my research for this story, interested to hear how she came to write her book. She explained its genesis, in a series of pamphlets meant to educate the gallery-going public on the specific nature of prints:
Bente Roed:
It basically talked about the various print techniques and had quite a few photographs of work by Edmonton printmakers. It got quite a lot of circulation, so much so that they printed a second edition, and then they ran out of that, and then they printed just a single sheet with the information. Alberta Culture sent me on a tour around the province talking about print techniques and printmakers. And so that was at the very beginning. I was also commissioned by Art Magazine to write a series of articles from the east coast to the west coast about printmakers. And that research gave rise to the book. […] I think printmakers among their own circles were very well known, but with respect to the general public and exhibitions in commercial galleries they did not have a lot of exposure. [2]
Above: three of Bente Roed's pamphlets from the "Looking at Prints" series, published by Alberta Culture
Luke Johnson:
This notion of exposure, or lack thereof, was a recurring concern in my interviews with members of the SNAP community. Questions of which works get recognized, how, and by whom, are perennial, and go a long way in explaining why Edmonton’s printmakers have banded together for decades to create opportunities to make their art, share it with the public, and form connections with the wider art communities in Canada and around the world.
Another piece I read early on in my research was Robin Smith-Peck’s introduction to the catalogue of The Great West Saddlery Show, which begins:
Robin Smith-Peck:
Five years ago a group of Edmonton print-artists gathered for lunch and, before dessert was over we had formed the Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists. [3]
Luke Johnson:
That was June of 1987.
People and places change. Come and go, like lightning or in cinematic fades, in and out.
It’s been 40 years since this group sat down for lunch, and SNAP is still going. Robin likes to repeat the mantra that SNAP should always be a place that meets the needs of the community:
Robin Smith-Peck:
If it turns out to be some kind of weird film animation kazoo party with puppets, then that’s what they need to become!
Luke Johnson:
Because SNAP hasn’t yet become a kazoo party, or gone away, but adapted and changed with the times, the story of the last 40 years is not straight forward or linear. It is a story about an artist-run organization, and therefore about artists—their relationships, their triumphs and foibles, their branching and overlapping communities, but foremost about their art. It is a remix, a cut up—a story of how SNAP formed, where it’s been, where we are now, and perhaps a forecast of where we might be heading. Check back in another 40 years to see if we were correct.
***
SNAP at 40, part I: Wrapped in Double Obscurity
SNAP at 40, part II: Nobody thought it would last more than a year anyway…
SNAP at 40, part III: Mozart and Pavlov’s Dog
SNAP at 40, part IV: Mis/adventures in Re/production
SNAP at 40, part V: (And then there was) Sightlines
SNAP at 40, part VI: Print as Theatre
SNAP at 40, part VII: Letting Currents Cross and Even Clash
SNAP at 40, part VIII: Even if lasting wasn’t really the point
Luke Johnson:
This notion of exposure, or lack thereof, was a recurring concern in my interviews with members of the SNAP community. Questions of which works get recognized, how, and by whom, are perennial, and go a long way in explaining why Edmonton’s printmakers have banded together for decades to create opportunities to make their art, share it with the public, and form connections with the wider art communities in Canada and around the world.
Another piece I read early on in my research was Robin Smith-Peck’s introduction to the catalogue of The Great West Saddlery Show, which begins:
Robin Smith-Peck:
Five years ago a group of Edmonton print-artists gathered for lunch and, before dessert was over we had formed the Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists. [3]
Luke Johnson:
That was June of 1987.
People and places change. Come and go, like lightning or in cinematic fades, in and out.
It’s been 40 years since this group sat down for lunch, and SNAP is still going. Robin likes to repeat the mantra that SNAP should always be a place that meets the needs of the community:
Robin Smith-Peck:
If it turns out to be some kind of weird film animation kazoo party with puppets, then that’s what they need to become!
Luke Johnson:
Because SNAP hasn’t yet become a kazoo party, or gone away, but adapted and changed with the times, the story of the last 40 years is not straight forward or linear. It is a story about an artist-run organization, and therefore about artists—their relationships, their triumphs and foibles, their branching and overlapping communities, but foremost about their art. It is a remix, a cut up—a story of how SNAP formed, where it’s been, where we are now, and perhaps a forecast of where we might be heading. Check back in another 40 years to see if we were correct.
***
SNAP at 40, part I: Wrapped in Double Obscurity
SNAP at 40, part II: Nobody thought it would last more than a year anyway…
SNAP at 40, part III: Mozart and Pavlov’s Dog
SNAP at 40, part IV: Mis/adventures in Re/production
SNAP at 40, part V: (And then there was) Sightlines
SNAP at 40, part VI: Print as Theatre
SNAP at 40, part VII: Letting Currents Cross and Even Clash
SNAP at 40, part VIII: Even if lasting wasn’t really the point
