Many of the prints you will find at Otsdawa are the result of decades-long relationships forged in the studio, at the press and around common geography. Tim Sheeley’s friendship and camaraderie with fellow printmaker Evan Summer began in the mid 1980’s in Philadelphia where Corridor Press began. Evan is a committed printmaker invested in the art of intaglio and relief printmaking while Tim is dedicated to the art and craft of hand lithography.
Both Tim and Evan ended up moving into the same affordable neighborhood in the Olney area of Philadelphia with their families. There they found a workable studio space to share in an industrial building along the train tracks of the Northeast commuter rail line where we ended up working together for several years, and keeping an eye on Tim’s young daughter, Sarah, when the carpool dropped her off after school.
Evan maintained his personal studio making his own artwork and teaching printmaking. Tim’s endeavor was to establish a business model for contract printing with artists wishing to collaborate in creating original lithographs, teaching and doing his own artwork as time permitted.
Studio on N. 8th St. in Philadelphia, PA, 1988
Eventually, Evan took a teaching position in Kutztown Pennsylvania, where he still maintains a studio, and in the early 1990s, Tim moved Corridor Press to the familiar childhood landscape of upstate New York, settling in the town of Otego (also know as The Otsdawa, referring the name of the small tributary that flows through the area into the Susquehanna River). Tim and Evan maintained their connection over time, and on various occasions collaborated on some wonderful lithography projects.
Beyond his career inspiring students as the Professor of Printmaking at Kutztown University, Evan’s work has been shown in over 300 exhibitions worldwide and is in many museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Over the course of his career he has participated in residencies around world. This past summer marked his seventh residency at the Guanlan Printmaking Village in Shenzhen China, an enclave that celebrates the deep tradition of woodcut printing in the region and welcomes artists from a round the world to work in fully equipped print studios of all kinds. Evan’s work from his recent residency includes etching, collograph, silkscreen and offset lithography techniques. Evan maintains an active presence on Instagram with wide reaching connections across the vibrant global printmaking community. Follow along at @evansummer.
Above: Details from Evan Summer’s prints made at the Guanlan Printmaking Village, Reverse Gravity, Sentinel I, Shenzhen Landscape, Theodorus In China, The Other Side, Sentinel II