Sam Miller/SamDakota
Printmaking Alumni Interview – Neiman Center 25th Anniversary Catalogue
Fellow from 2009 - 2011, Graduate student from 2011-2013, Printmaking DRA 2012-2013, Faculty for Printmaking Intensive summers of 2013 and 2014
LNCPS: Printmaking at the Neiman Center is community driven. What was your experience of community at the Neiman Center and did it have an impact on your experience as a student in the MFA program at Columbia?
SamDakota: Tomas invited me to work as an intern at the Neiman Center right as I was finishing undergrad in Vermont, so it was my very first impression of having a purpose and creative space and community in NYC. I still have vivid memories of learning how to succeed at tasks I had never even seen done before (replacing glass in an exposure unit, mixing colors to match a Robert Lazzarini test print, shaping Tomas’ surfboards) and that rush of feeling useful and important around master printers and famous artists was a real confidence boost for being such a fresh New Yorker. Looking back it’s easy to see how every generative art experience I’ve had in NYC since then has in some way related to the community of printers and artists that I met while working and studying in those print studios: I’ve worked in artist studios that made prints with the LNC, I travelled to Europe with master printmakers that worked at the LNC, and I’ve shown work with other printers that I worked alongside at the LNC. All together, the community of printers and artists that I met through the Neiman Center are the context for everything I know about Printmaking now, which in turn has impacted how I make my own prints, how I work in other print studios, and how I teach Printmaking in other programs.
LNCPS: Do you have a favorite project that you worked on as a Fellow? What made it memorable?
SamDakota: I think the most special edition that I got to work on was with Corey Ridell printing a set of photogravures made from drawings of NYC made by LeRoy. The photogravure plates that Corey etched were really beautiful and the contrast of papers created by the chine collé was inspiring for my own work, but what made it so memorable was having to bang out the entire edition in a few days as LeRoy started falling ill during the project and wanted us to hurry up so he could sign them all (I believe it was his last print project before he passed away). The most FUN project I got to be a part of though was definitely constructing, etching, and testing Tomas’ surfboards. At one point we took a few of the boards out to Montauk to see how well they worked in the ocean and everyone on the LIRR wanted to talk to us about the imagery on the boards. Once we got to the beach, none of us soft NYC artists were fast enough to catch a wave on them, but a guy at the beach recognized the style of board from growing up in the Philippines and showed us how to get the most out of the slower Long Island surf.
LNCPS: Did working at the Neiman Center influence your artistic practice?
SamDakota: Undeniably, working at the Neiman Center became a cornerstone for my own practice. The social model for the shop created the perfect environment to talk to and listen to artists that worked there, and rituals like Friday Lunch were the perfect spaces to absorb thoughts and ideas from the artists (Cecily Brown was memorably really fun to have lunch with). Similarly, having the opportunity to help problem-solve at different stages of the project felt like more realistic and genuine windows into their practices because we were talking about intentions and inspirations rather than the final product -- kind of like getting to see how a dish gets made in a fancy restaurant’s kitchen rather than just seeing the final meal. Mark Dion projects were really fun and interesting in this way as he would always bring lots of images and photographs to show us exactly what he was thinking about and the experiences he wanted to recreate with the prints. Ultimately though, the most important practice-building experiences I had while working at the Neiman Center were from the master printers that I got to work with: the methods for thinking and organizing that I picked up from Doug, Megan, and Craig while they were teaching or running projects really embedded themselves in my approach to making work in graduate school and definitely still exist in my practice now. For instance, during my second year, Doug graciously created an advanced edition-making class for us grad students and that project in itself managed to teach me more about working with copper plates in three months than any other experience prior or since.
LNCPS: What was your experience working collaboratively with a master printer, invited artists and your peers to edition artists’ projects?
SamDakota: My general experience working on a team with a master printer, an artist, and my peers was the sensation of being valuable and closely familiar with the work we made together. The master printers I was lucky enough to work with were always quick to point out the contributions of us individual students or interns in front of the artists or other shop visitors which, in my experience, allowed us to feel like actual makers or artists in our own right rather than “cogs in a machine” (which is how I would define my experiences working in artists’ actual studios). Similarly, being part of a project from start to finish required a lot of labor and learning from all of us individually, and completion always came with the satisfaction of having conquered something together as a team. I only got to be a part of the very beginning of David Altmejd’s edition (and was very jealous of everyone that got to spend more time with him and the work) but I think his project really efficiently summarized and translated the experience of working with an art-making team with a much more diffuse hierarchy for input than say a studio or gallery.
LNCPS: Was there something that you learned at the Neiman Center that has stayed with you even after graduation?
SamDakota: The lesson that I associate most with the Neiman Center, in part due to the intense heartbreak that became the context for the lesson, was as a TA for Gandalf Gavin’s silkscreen class before he passed away. Gandalf’s class was my first experience of being a legit TA and the way he taught and interacted with students and utilized the shop to facilitate life lessons was formative for my own understanding of making prints and teaching any printmaking class. Over the course of the semester, Gandalf brought the entire class to my studio for a studio visit, took us all out to drinks, and invited us over to his own studio/home for brunch to celebrate working together, making it clear that being part of a print community doesn’t end at the boundaries of the printmaking studio. At the end of the semester he summarized his suggestions for me (and my work?) by saying bluntly, “Be more enigmatic”. I’ve had that written on a slip of paper above my desk ever since.
LNCPS: Please feel free to share any additional comments or anecdotes.
SamDakota: I hope I get a chance to work or make work with Craig, Tomas, Nathan, and the rest of the Neiman Center crew again one day. I also wish I had been more proactive about getting my printer’s proofs … somewhere there’s a chunk of a Rirkrit scroll with my name on it that I never actually took home with me ...
