If you were walking by the basement of Meek Hall yesterday, you would be met with many familiar sounds and sights: art students and professors were milling about, laying large sheets of paper on the concrete to dry with freshly printed images (and partaking in a hot-dog bar). But there would also be something that felt out of place: a steamroller.
Pixel Press, the print and photo club that operates within the University of Mississippi Art and Art History Department, hosted “Print BIG! Steamroller Printing” yesterday, Friday, Nov. 16 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Meek room 10.
While to the average onlooker, the event may seem odd and unrelated to the art world, Assistant Professor of Printmaking Kaleena Stasiak says that the events are actually a normal part of the printmaking world.
“A steamroller event is kind of just a part of the printmaking community,” Stasiak said. “It’s a big thing. So I feel like, when printmakers hear that it’s happening … they have their big blocks that they’ll just bring to these different events to print with the steamroller, because the whole thing is that some of these blocks are actually too big to print on a press, so this is the only way that you can do it.”
Breanna Bercegeay, a current sculpture graduate student pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts, explained what exactly a steamroller was doing outside the ground floor of Meek.
“We rented out a steamroller, which most of the time you would find like laying concrete on the street,” Bercegeay said. “Then we’re laying (the carved prints) on the ground, putting paper or fabric over it, and then rolling over it so that we can make the print cool.”
Stasiak also spoke about the community-building aspect of the event and how collaborative printmaking can bring students and faculty together.
“We have been preparing these large blocks for the past two weeks,” Stasiak said. “And there’s some grad students and some staff and, like, just community members who have carved some large blocks. But then we also had these really big collaborative blocks where people could carve a small image on this kind of larger quilt or grid.”
Stasiak explained the process leading up to the main event concerning the steamroller.
“We’ve been having these group carving nights where people could just come into the printmaking studio and carve,” Stasiak said. “We provided instruction and tools, music, snacks, and just trying to get as many people through the doors of the art building as possible to either try something new, or carve something big to be printed by the steamroller.”
As is typical of the artistic community, there was a wide variety of prints that were being made. An example of a collaborative piece that community members were invited to participate in were the doodle book style print. Stasiak also mentioned Lance Yates, visiting professor of art, who had the idea of an arm that people could draw tattoos on.
In addition to the steamroller event being something out of the ordinary that UM students can enjoy watching and participating in, Stasiak mentioned that the artform itself is incredibly accessible for many people.
“Well, I think the thing too, is relief printing is a really, like, accessible form of printmaking,” Stasiak said. “Anyone can do it. And so we just really want to share the creative spirit and some joy in these times.”
The UM community is invited to enjoy and view the prints made by the steamroller in gallery 130 in Meek during finals week.
“It’s just like, it’s a nice collaborative event, so you need a lot of hands doing different things,” Stasiak said. “And it’s also just a really cool spectacle.”
