Gamaliel Rodriguez explains his design to the Advanced Printmaking class.
Printmaking students in the WVU School of Art and Design had the opportunity to work alongside Ruth Lingen and Nina Dine from Pace Prints in New York and visiting artist Gamaliel Rodriguez, whose work is currently on display in the Art Museum of WVU in the exhibit “Topographies of Memory.”
Lingen is trained in printmaking, papermaking, letterpress and book art (the latter two she does with her own studio, Line Press Limited). She joined Pace Prints and helped found Pace Paper, the printshop arm of Pace Prints that opened in 2009, where she helped pioneer the use of handmade paper in printmaking.
Dine is a printer and papermaker who started working with her grandfather, Jim Dine, at an early age. She first met Lingen at age five in Jim Dine’s studio. Years later, she interned with Lingen’s personal studio, then joined Pace Paper as Lingen’s colleague.
“I have worked with many different printers and artists all over the world, but I’ve been doing this and only this for the last 15 years or so,” Dine said. “I feel lucky to be able to come to a place like WVU, with a great studio, to work with a new artist and to work alongside Ruth, because our field is all about collaboration and being able to do everything that you love with other people who also love to do it.”
Having Lingen, Dine and Rodriguez all there at once was a unique experience for the students. While the printshop usually has about four visiting artist-printmakers per year, this is the first time they’ve had both an artist and a set of professional printers working in the shop and with the students.
Nina Dine works with a printmaking student to press a lithograph-on-monoprint.
“It's really special to be able to have that amount of expertise in the shop and interacting with students,” said Joeseph Lupo, an Associate Director and Professor of Printmaking in the School of Art and Design.
“The thing about printmaking is that even though we're all doing the same thing, whether it's litho or relief or intaglio, we all have our unique way of doing it,” Lupo said. “I teach printmaking a certain way. Bringing in Nina and Ruth to do the same processes, we'll see different things. Maybe one of my students sees that and it opens up new ways of working for them.”
“It's fun to hear different perspectives,” said Kaya Collings, a senior Art Education major with an emphasis in printmaking. “Printmaking is super community-based, and that's what I really enjoy about it. It's nice to hear how different people work and how people work together, especially with this project—everyone's working together to make these prints, and that's really lovely.”
Darby Harris, a junior Art and Design major with an emphasis in printmaking, agrees.
“I love having guest artists and guest printmakers in the space. I think it's really cool to get to hear about people's experiences working professionally in the field, too.”
Collings and Harris both enjoyed hearing Lingen and Dine talk about the challenges of professional printmaking. Lingen shared how there are some problems that plague printmakers of all ages and experience, especially when working with multiple color layers.
Nina Dine and Ruth Lingen explain how they layer colors to create CYMK prints.
“I thought it was really interesting to hear about the troubleshooting they have to go through when they're printing really big additions, as well as large-sized prints,” said Collings.
“I don't like running into trouble with my prints, obviously, but I love troubleshooting them with everyone,” said Harris. “I love the process of ‘OK, where do we think this went wrong?’ It was really cool to hear about how that happens in a professional shop and how they also say, ‘OK, there's a hiccup in the process. How do we think this happens? How do we deal with this? How do we make notes on this to avoid it?’ I thought that was really interesting to hear about.”
Lingen and Dine were in the WVU printshop to work with Rodriguez on a special edition run of a lithograph on a monoprint. For the monoprint design, Rodriguez applied a range of blue inks to a plexiglass sheet, used rags and brushes to push the ink into place, then used a little solvent to give it textural effects. The lithograph, or “key image,” then filled the negative spaces of the monoprint.
Lithography is based on the principle that oil and water don’t mix. It is often done with a large, flat, porous stone, though there are modern plastic alternatives. As Dine explains, the stone will absorb any grease applied to it, such as with a crayon. This grease image is the “key image.”
Water is then sponged over the stone to keep the non-image areas open. When printing ink is applied to the stone with a roller brush, the ink sticks to the areas that had been etched with the greasy drawing material.
“When you run it through the press, the paper only pulls off the greasy image that you have drawn onto the stone,” Dine said.
For this project, the lithograph, which Rodriguez drew on the stone right there in the printshop, was stamped onto each monoprint by Lingen, Dine and students from the printmaking class.
This wasn’t Rodriquez’s first time doing lithography, but it’s not his usual medium, so he was grateful to have Lingen and Dine running the prints.
“I try to do my best in the drawing on the stone,” Rodriguez said. “Then I let them do their magic in the print. And that's the beauty of it: It's a mutual collaboration, because they know things that I don't know.”
Nina Dine shows off a finished lithograph-on-monoprint.
Lingen and Dine’s trip to Morgantown was sponsored by Pace Prints President and WVU alum Jacob Lewis.
Lewis had also, at one time, been Lingen’s intern. “My motto is ‘Be nice to your interns, they may be your boss someday,’” Lingen said. “Which has now happened to me.”
Originally from Huntington, West Virginia, Lewis graduated from the WVU Division of Art (now the School of Art and Design) in 2001 with his BFA in Printmaking. That summer, he interned at Pace Prints printshop in New York, working on Jim Dine monoprints. In 2007, Lewis was named the company’s director, and in 2014, he opened the Jacob Lewis Gallery. In 2019, Lewis was named the new president of Pace Prints. Then, in May 2025, Pace Prints founder and former president Richard Solomon transferred ownership of the company to Lewis and his partners.
Lewis has been a generous patron of the arts at WVU, donating artwork to the Art Museum of WVU and helping to arrange exhibitions. He has also been a mentor for WVU students interested in working in commercial art galleries.
The limited edition run of Rodiguez’s lithograph-on-monoprint, created with the help
of Lingen, Dine and Lupo’s Advanced Printmaking class, will be sold at Pace Prints
in New York. Proceeds will be split among the artist, Pace Prints and the Art Museum
of WVU.
Take a look at the finished prints on the Pace Prints website.