Episode 172 | Emmett Merrill

Published January 10, 2023

Transcript

Miranda Metcalf  00:21

Hello, print friends, and welcome. I'm your host, Miranda Metcalf. This is a bilingual podcast, so if you subscribe to us, you'll be getting episodes in English with me as well as in Spanish with Reinaldo Gil Zambrano. Together, we speak to people around the globe about their practice and passions in the field of print media and multiples. Hello, Print Friend is brought to you by Speedball Art Products, who have been a leading innovator and manufacturer of printmaking products for over 50 years. Speedball Speed Screens answered the call to have an easy to use way to screenprint no matter what your experience level. Whether printing at home, studio, or classroom, these ready-to-use mesh screens allow you to create permanent photographic stencils without the need to mix emulsions or coat a screen. All you need is your design and you're ready to print. Pick up the Speed Screens kit for the most affordable way to get all the materials you need to print your next masterpiece. There's a link in the show notes. My guest this week is Emmett Merrill, artist in the upcoming Print Santa Fe Five By Five exhibition. For more information on Print Santa Fe, check out the link in the show notes. Emmett and I talk about how he grew up just down the street from the Lawrence Lithography Workshop, working as an intern at Tom Huck's Evil Prints and learning about the art world proper before heading off to graduate school, building a print shop in the middle of the pandemic, and the beauty and the terror of the American landscape. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and prepare to read the signs with Emmet Merrill. Hi, Emmett. How's it going?

Emmett Merrill  01:57

Good. How are you doing?

Miranda Metcalf  01:58

I'm really good. I'm really excited to talk to you, because I've actually known your work and had you on my list of people I wanted to reach out to for quite some time. And then you got selected in the Five by Five for Print Santa Fe. And so this worked out perfectly. I get to fulfill my wish of chatting with you, and you get your work in a cool exhibition. It's a good day!

Emmett Merrill  02:23

Yeah, I'm so excited to be part of it. And I'm stoked to be in the first round of Print Santa Fe. It's awesome.

Miranda Metcalf  02:30

Yeah. Totally, totally. So before we get into the questions, would you please introduce yourself and say who you are, where you are, what you do?

Emmett Merrill  02:42

My name is Emmett Merrill. I'm an artist printmaker, currently based in St. Louis, Missouri, and I run the litho portion of Grafik House in downtown St. Louis.

Miranda Metcalf  02:54

Wonderful. And so where did you grow up, and what role did art play in that part of your life?

Emmett Merrill  03:01

Oh, my God, I was so spoiled. I'm from Kansas City on the Missouri side. And both of my parents were artists when I was a kid. My dad was actually a printmaker, and so I've always been around it. And when I was in high school, we actually moved into his studio, which was in the basement of this warehouse on a dead end street. And it was sandwiched by an abandoned Bible college on the right, and then the Lawrence Lithography Workshop on the left in the Belger Crane Yard building. So I was diagnosed from birth, I think.

Miranda Metcalf  03:39

Oh my gosh! So was your dad a lithographer, then?

Emmett Merrill  03:46

No, he did intaglio and community work and drawings and everything. But Lawrence Litho was next door, and it was really cool, because they would have openings every so often. And Michael Sims - who still runs it - he was putting out work by artists like Elizabeth Layton, Luis Jimenez, Tom Huck, and Roger Shimomura. So they were all of these super narrative artists that were making artwork that had really dark themes, but had all these bright colors. And I was seeing that from an early age, and we have all of the postcards that they produced for those shows hanging up in my little bedroom that was behind this sheet in my dad's studio. It was cool. Those artists all had their own... the work was all narrative and interesting, but the artists themselves had these mythological stories about them. Like Luis Jimenez, famously a sculpture artist and painter, illustrator, lithographer, and was famously crushed by his sculpture he made for the Denver Airport, tragically. And then Elizabeth Layton, who only got into artwork at the age of like 70, and then made her way into the MoMA within three years of doing blind contour drawings. And then, of course, Tom Huck, and his whole life is a weird story. So I mean, the artists and narratives were just as interesting - their biographies were just as cool as their narratives. So I think that was what got me really interested in litho from a young age, I guess.

Miranda Metcalf  05:17

Yeah. That's an incredible story to have that introduction, as you say, written in the stars or in your blood from the beginning. Because so many artists that I talk to, they don't even know what printmaking is, even, until college usually. And they are falling into some printmaking course because it had an opening or something like that. But it's really... yeah, it was there for you all along. I got to see some of Jimenez's lithographs at the Anderson Museum in Roswell, New Mexico recently. He did the Roswell residency several times, I think, and they're incredible. And they had some of his sculpture as well. But that's a really special thing to be exposed to early on, for sure.

Emmett Merrill  06:02

And it's crazy that he did so much stuff, too, you know? I don't know, with some artists, it's like, where do you get the time to get that good at all of these things? It takes long enough to get good at one method of printmaking, let alone sculpture and painting, you know?

Miranda Metcalf  06:23

Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. So what about your mother? Was she a printmaker at all?

Emmett Merrill  06:30

No, she's actually a photographer, and went to the Kansas City Art Institute, and then worked for years for KU Med and ran the magazine there. And so [she] was photographing and traveling around the world to photograph surgeries in different countries and different parts of the United States. And then she and her partner, years ago, started their own business where they're teaching photojournalism to retired hobbyists. She'll go and... well, she'll travel to Bhutan, she has two different trips in India, she goes through Morocco, and she's going to Japan, I think, in the next few months. And she brings this full group of people, and they bring their cameras. And she basically shows them how to interact with people and photograph people and landscapes. And they travel to all these places that are off the beaten path for tourism. And so she has all these amazing experiences and pictures when she gets back, and she helps them make them all into these books and catalogs and prints, and puts on shows for them. And the money will go back into, a lot of times, the communities that they'll visit there. Like in Bhutan. They had a show in Kansas City, and everything that sold there went to build, I think, a dam or a well in Bhutan. In the village they would go and visit.

Miranda Metcalf  07:56

That's so cool. I want to go travel with your mom and take photos. That sounds really great.

Emmett Merrill  08:03

It's awesome. I've done it a few times. And it's crazy. And it's cool to watch her work. Because you're not just talking and photographing people, you're also managing this entire group of people. And it's awesome to watch her do it. It's masterful almost.

Miranda Metcalf  08:18

Yeah, yeah. And that element in there, of course, of putting the money back into that community really adds that layer of morality to the experience, right? Because I think one of the criticisms, rightly so, that photojournalism can get is profiting off of the life and the experience of others with only taking involved. I've seen your life, and I've documented it, and now I won $10,000, or something like that. So that's wonderful that she's adding that element of understanding how to do this in an upright way.

Emmett Merrill  08:59

Absolutely. I think that's what it should be for, you know, giving back. I remember we used to photograph people, or go around and do these sort of street studios in Kansas City. And like, one person would hold a piece of foam core, and somebody else would talk to people and be like, 'Hey, can I take your picture?' And you'd have these sort of street studio portraits of people. And then months would pass, and you'd get on the bus or something, and you'd see somebody that you photographed who has no idea who you are anymore now. And it's like seeing a celebrity almost, or you feel like you took something from them, but not in a bad way. Because you talked to them, and they were like, 'Yeah, you can take my picture. It's for an art show or something?'

Miranda Metcalf  09:37

Yeah. Oh, interesting. And then for your journey with printmaking, you had it in your life growing up... at what point did you know that lithography was going to be your path? You talked about this experience with the Lawrence Lithography Studio, but was there a moment where you were like, 'This really will be it.' This isn't just something I admire, this isn't just something that inspires me. I'm going to dedicate myself to this craft for my life or the foreseeable future.

Emmett Merrill  10:12

I think it took a while, because I was so insecure with my drawings. And I was doing woodcut for the longest time, because you can hide drawing mistakes through the contrast and shadows that are inside of woodcuts. And I wish that there was this cool moment where it was like, 'Yes, that's it!' But it was really just, I was in grad school at Knoxville, and it was our grad seminar, and Beauvais Lyons practically forced me to do a litho. And I did one and it was like, 'There, I did it. Could I not do them anymore?' I hated it, I felt the drawing was bad. And then he had me do a bigger stone. And he gave me a deco color paint pen. And it was like, essentially, I think he was implying that I could make a graphic image using litho. And so I did a quick line drawing that night in my studio, and then brought it back the next day, drew the thing in 30 minutes, etched it, printed the first layer by the afternoon. And then I had been visiting Richard Peterson with my partner, Sam Mendoza, in California. And he had introduced Sharpie litho, and Sharpie flats, so you can print really quick color layers. And so I just went crazy on this quick pen and ink drawing I did on a stone. And then that hooked me. Because at the time, there was a lot of, like, ideas in print where it was like, 'I want to make this drawing, but I don't want it to be like a coloring book.' And it was confusing, because I was like, 'Well, that's how I draw!' So I wanted it to be like a coloring book. So I think that was a really long, convoluted like way to say, Beauvais Lyons forced me to do it, and then I got hooked.

Miranda Metcalf  11:57

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, he is a proselytizer for the medium. So I'm not surprised that if you ended up in a grad seminar with him, that he'd make you put crayon to stone at some point. Yeah, absolutely.

Emmett Merrill  12:12

My friends make fun of me for it. They had a photographer come into the studio one day to advertise the program. And the sun was coming down through the windows in Knoxville, and there's this picture he took - because Beauvais was modeling for it or something - and he was like, 'Emmett, you need to stand in.' And so there's this photo that's been publicized all over the place of Beauvais drawing on a stone and me standing over it. And the sun is setting in the background. And he looks like, 'Yes, this is how you make a lithograph!' And I have this face, like, 'Oh, really?' It's so dramatic.

Miranda Metcalf  12:48

So you are in the literature and the canon of lithography at Knoxville, is what it sounds like, from the photo.

Emmett Merrill  12:57

Yes, I feel like I'll be humiliated - somebody's gonna put it in a calendar or something someday, for UTK alum.

Miranda Metcalf  13:04

I associate that program as one of the top litho programs in the country, for sure. And then you're moving forward with this lithography career. And what did your dad think about you following in his footsteps and becoming a printmaker?

Emmett Merrill  13:20

No, he loved it. And he always had this joke about it being - especially with being the parent of artists, not being overly supportive - because he was like, everyone gets the parent that's like, 'Everything they make is great! This is so good! You're a little genius!' And so he would always be like, 'You're average. It's pretty good.' With a smile on his face, you know? And so I think like, once a year, I'd come back and I'd show him my prints, and he'd get really excited about it. And we'd catch up on the phone and sort of go back and forth about what we were doing and where we were showing. So I think he was pretty proud and pretty excited about the whole thing. And he got to see Grafik House about a year ago. And he enjoys talking a lot, and so I think seeing him get floored, in a lot of ways, was how I took it, looking around. And he had an Instagram that was rough for him to keep up with in a lot of ways. But I think the only posts he did were of the bathroom, because there's all this Evil Prints stuff. And he loves Tom Huck. And was posting pictures of like, Huck's artwork, and Bill Fick, that was all papier-mached across our bathroom. And I thought that was really cute and cool, that he went to Grafik House, saw some of his favorite artists, and posted pictures of their work that was hanging in the bathroom. So I don't know, I think he was really excited about everything. That's lovely. Yeah. Well, I feel like that's a perfect segue to ask you to talk a little bit more about Grafik House. I've got questions about your practice specifically, but now that we're kind of talking about this business in St. Louis that you're a part of, tell me the story of Grafik House. Because I know it's a bit of a winding road, I think. Totally. Well, so when I finished undergrad, I moved to St. Louis to be a press assistant intern for Tom Huck at Evil Prints. And I came along at the same time as my friend and partner, JT Felix. And I was there for about two or three years, and JT stayed longer. I went to graduate school, and JT stayed in St. Louis. And he got a print shop that he opened up right next door to Evil Prints. And he called it Grafik House. And it was all screenprint, and he built this great retail section where he was selling prints in the front. And I would come down and visit and help for a weekend, but it was really just like the equivalent of like holding a flashlight while he's doing the actual work. But it opened up for a month after the grand opening, before the pandemic hit.

Miranda Metcalf  16:01

Oof.

Emmett Merrill  16:02

Yeah. And at the same time, I hung up my thesis show the day before everything shut down, and then it shut down. And nobody saw it, I took everything down, and I put it in my car and drove right back to St. Louis. And we self isolated for a month, or however long that time was, it's so hard to remember. But at some point, Huck called JT and I into Evil Prints, and I don't remember the nature of the exact conversation. But it really went down where he was essentially saying, 'I want to move Evil Prints out to my house,' build up the Spiderhole Studio behind his home, and sort of get rid of the storefront public space. And he was like, 'If you combine Grafik House and take over the lease, they'll give it to you for the same deal,' essentially. So we spent the next year - 2020 was a great time to make a pod with like three other people and build a print shop. And so we moved all of Huck's stuff out, which was absurd and insane, the stuff that we would just find. And moved all this Grafik House stuff in, and built all these shelves and tables and flat files, and moved of Griffin press from Kansas City all the way up. And - God, that was insane. Man, we had to tip it on its side. It was horrifying! It was like, we moved this Griffin press, we got it to St. Louis, we couldn't get it out of the Uhaul. Because - but the Uhaul had to be returned in an hour! And Grafik House, we used to be right next door to this sports bar barbecue place. And Jackson is walking by, and he sees JT and I scratching our heads, like, what are we going to do? How are we going to get this press out? And he's like, 'I got an idea. I'll be right back.' So he goes to the bar, and he comes out, and he's got like five red-faced, half drunk [guys], none of them wearing a closed-toed shoe between them. And they crawl up - oh, god, it's horrible. I've got a video of it. - And they all pick up this Griffin press from a different angle. And they're like, 'Lift!' And we all lift it up, and we bring it out, and you can see us all falter for a second. And they get it onto essentially what were two skateboards, these little cheap furniture dollies. And we wheeled it into the building - somebody should have lost a digit, that was horrible! - We wheel it into the building, and we get it there, and it won't fit through our door! So we had to take the doorframe off. JT has the circular saw, and he cuts out a portion of the wall. And we barely twist it in. It was, man... So yeah, that's how we got the press in. And so we get the press in, we have a litho press already in there, but not much of a stone library, and JT built this entire screenprint setup. And we've just been keeping the water under our noses ever since. We've been doing workshops. And we have Grafik Mondays, it's the last Monday of the month, where we produce a work by a local artist and have a little opening for them. JT does some commercial work and design work. And, yeah, it just naturally came together.

Miranda Metcalf  19:16

Yeah. And it's a very cool space now. I got to visit it a couple of months ago. And it's wonderful. And I feel like that, to just go across the street and get some day drinkers to help you move your press, is sort of exactly what's needed to make it in the print world. Like, you really just need to figure out how to get it done, hell or high water, budget or no budget. So I think that's just such a wonderful story of how things actually work and how things actually get done in the art world, that usually goes unseen.

Emmett Merrill  20:01

Totally! Because I feel like it gets almost spiritual in a way, where you run into something, and then somehow, you get out of it. Or somehow, the rent gets paid. Or maybe it's just the kindness of strangers, like, we were trying to move - Huck had this giant meat locker that was in Evil Prints for forever. And he rented a truck, and we move it out. And it was so heavy. And there's this ramp, and I've got a photo of Huck and our friend Andy who's a part of Grafik House, with their arms on their waists, looking at this meat locker, like, 'How are we going to get this into the truck?' And two guys who were just, I think, working at the place next door and were on their lunch break, walk up. And they're like, 'Do you need some help?' And they're like, 'Oh, yeah, we would love that!' And they're like, 'Get out of the way.' And these two guys just push this thing up.

Miranda Metcalf  20:54

That's amazing! Yeah, I love that. And I know what you mean, the feeling of that spirituality, or almost kismet, and coincidence and connection. Because it all sort of shakes down as it's supposed to, against all odds, a lot of the time. And I'm at a point in my life now where I'm building things and doing things, or trying to manifest things in the world in some way, and I really just try to listen to the rhythm of the universe. Because I'll just take on a project or get a harebrained scheme, and I'll be like, 'Look, if this is supposed to exist, it will.' And then you'll see those doors opening, and you'll see [that] the kindly muscle on their lunch break who are willing just to help you will sort of appear to you. And if it doesn't, then it's not meant to be. And I think that's, in a way, opposed to the deepened toxic hustle culture of the United States. That you just need to white knuckle everything through to the point where, if you don't try hard enough, you failed, because it's your fault, and you're a failure. And it's so much easier to be at a point where you can just [relax into] the flow of what's happening. Yeah.

Emmett Merrill  22:22

Yeah. And I think that printmakers, especially, have a benefit within that. Because I think that when you see a printer in need, or people that want to do a favor or something, I think they want to do it because... people on the outside of it may not always understand what it is or how it's made, but it inherently looks cool. And it's brightly colored, it's graphic. And, at least for us, it seems like we've gotten free electric work, plumbing stuff, people that have helped out because they think what we're doing looks cool. And that kind of thing. And we haven't solicited that, you know, and I don't know, I think people want to help out something, I think, especially artists, because they tend to admire what it is and how it looks. You know?

Miranda Metcalf  23:16

Yeah, absolutely. And I would guess there's an element in there of wanting to see something like Grafik House in their community. And understanding that this is a net positive for the city, for this neighborhood, in a way that building another bank is not gonna strike people the same way. Yeah.

Emmett Merrill  23:40

Yeah. Absolutely. At least I hope so. There should be a print shop on every corner.

Miranda Metcalf  23:46

Absolutely! I've heard that Oaxaca, the city, is like that. That's sort of the reason I want to go. People have said print shops are like Starbucks. And so I'm like, 'I'm in!'

Emmett Merrill  23:56

Oh, that's awesome. I like the idea that you could be wandering around and just happen upon one and go inside.

Miranda Metcalf  24:03

Totally, totally. And so with your story, you were in undergrad, and then you did the internship print assistant with Tom Huck, and then grad school, and then Grafik House? Is that the timeline?

Emmett Merrill  24:18

Oh, yeah, that's season two through five. Yeah.

Miranda Metcalf  24:21

Yeah. I'm curious if you could talk through that experience of having worked in a professional studio with a high profile artist, someone who's doing collaborations with big museums, living in that world, and then going back to graduate school. Where you're kind of a student again, and you've seen one side of the art world, and now you're in this other part of it. What was that like? And would you recommend it? Would you recommend for undergraduates listening to this to go out and cut their teeth somewhere professionally before deciding to move on?

Emmett Merrill  25:00

Yes, absolutely. I think mostly for the sake of, like, living in... at least, I think the old school thing that Huck has set up with the internship or printernship or press assistant system that works, is you are forced to go get a menial job with flexible hours so that you can just focus on your work. And while you're in the shop making your work, then all of a sudden, a harebrained scheme or something huge happens. And then you put that down, and then you're doing Evil Prints and - we would call it 'Huck Stuff.' And so I think it teaches a really good level of balance between work you have to do to survive, your own art practice, and work within the art world to sort of succeed. Because it's a really funny experience to go and do things like, for example, we did New York print week, which is probably one of my favorite Evil Prints trips. And Huck had traded some artwork for this big FedEx van that we cleaned the side [of]. And he traded a visiting artist gig in KCAI in Kansas City to use their vinyl cutter to put the logo and everything on the side. We put a press in the back - there's a lot of presses in trucks in this interview. Anyway -

Miranda Metcalf  26:14

Yeah, it's the life! Yeah.

Emmett Merrill  26:16

So we drive it across the country to print week, and we had a chase car, and driving a FedEx truck - I didn't drive it, thank God - but it's the size of a lane. And driving a FedEx truck through New York when you're just a 21 year old ex-art student... It's a weird feeling. And I remember a lot of phrases that would come up from Huck or whatever - I don't know, anyway, you would do that and be at this level of printmaking, with people in Chelsea, and curators, and people that are spending a lot of money on artwork. And then for us, it would be like, okay... we're broke in New York, we spent our rent money to get here, and now we have to find a way back to Newark because we couldn't afford an Airbnb in New York. And so we would take a three hour subway ride and transfer to get back to Newark, walk for 20 minutes, and then go back to the Airbnb where we shoved eight people together. And just, like, sleep in your clothes, and wake up the next day, and do it again. And I think it gave a good side of the art world that made it really exciting to see these shows and then live in the wings behind it. Like when you go to a play, and then you have all the people on the side that are hanging out. And nobody knows that they're running circles around to look normal on the outside. And then to go from that into graduate school was a little bit strange. Because any research, I think especially artistically, was all visual and craft based. And then to be in a system where everything was about - or not everything, but a lot of it was readings and spending time in the library and doing research that wasn't visual. That was the biggest transition, at least for me.

Miranda Metcalf  28:01

Yeah. No, that makes a ton of sense. Because in the... a lot of the day-to-day world of working artists, of exhibitions, of museums, of print week, of art fairs... it's so much this logistics and craft and really hands on, in a way that I think, when people are in graduate school, it can be really heady and theoretical and a bit of the world of the mind. And then you go and work at a gallery, you go and work for an artist, and it's, 'How are we going to get this 300 pound sculpture in the back of this truck when we're in a loading zone, and that guy is yelling at us, and someone stole our dolly... but we can't scratch it!' I mean, that's what it actually turns into. While meanwhile, you're in your head being like, 'Okay, where's my boundary? When am I afraid I'm gonna kill myself doing something?' You know, 'Where do I put my foot down?' But it's part of what makes it interesting and exciting, and just different! Just a job that is not nine-to-five in an office somewhere. It's all in that, and yeah, as you say, graduate school can be just a lot of library research.

Emmett Merrill  29:22

Yeah. Which is weird, because I think that within all that chaos, it directly throws something into the work to work from. Because your sketchbooks start to reflect the things you're doing every day. Especially working for a professional artist, and a successful one at that. A lot of the dialogue isn't... I think in Huck's case, he's making this really smart work that's smart visually, narratively, critiquing the state of our country at the time, and all of that. But it's like, what you talk about in the off time is like, 'We need to shit $2,000 tomorrow or we can't pay rent!' You know? Like, that's what the conversation is about. So to go from that into, like, 'But what does it mean to make a print?' Yeah. It's a weird comparison to that, and like, scratching your head and being like, 'I don't know, make more than one of the drawing?' You know.

Miranda Metcalf  30:18

Yeah. Like, 'Why does this piece have to be a print? Why isn't it a painting?' All those sorts of things. Which, I love that talk, too. I love it for its own merits. Oh, interesting. So in terms of your own work, in terms of what's showing up in your sketchbook during this time and coming out and being produced in graduate school, you have a really developed aesthetic. You have a really strong look in the work that you do. Did that come through your experience in graduate school? That voice that really seems very present? Or did you go into graduate school knowing, more or less, what your artwork looks like?

Emmett Merrill  31:05

I think I went into grad school thinking I knew what my artwork looked like. And I was very - I was such a shithead about it, because I didn't want to change, and it was like the worst attitude for grad school. And it would have been worse two years before that, so I'm happy that I took time, you know? But I think it changed for me because I always loved the look of sketchbooks. And I mean, that goes back to just being around artists all the time. Because I think that when you see artists' sketchbooks, you can see a lot of personality, and just the way people think. And it's almost scattered. And it was... it's like a tattoo flash sheet that isn't meant to be good, or for anyone to see. It's like, you have these several drawings, and people in their sketchbooks always write what that drawing is, even though it's really apparent. And I just love that sort of aesthetic, especially where some things look finished, some things are crossed out. And all of a sudden, this weird poetry happens, where somebody draws - using JT's sketchbook - a bear wearing a cap, peeking its head through a tent, right next to a gas can, or doodling a tooth that's shiny. Two separate ideas that are forced to be one on this page. So I was really into all of that, but I wasn't confident with my drawing. And my friend Mary Climes, we were hanging out, and she showed me this comic by Nick Drnaso. It's called Beverly - and he's a Chicago artist and illustrator, and he's won all these awards now - but his drawings are really mathematical and simple. And in a way, they seem like they wouldn't be good, except they really are. And I took it home, I read it, like, that night. And just seeing these really sad stories told through the lens of really bright colors and really simple lines, I think it gave me the permission. And when I went and did that stone that I spent 30 minutes on, I went in and drew it, and was like, 'Oh my God, this looks cool!' Even though the drawing isn't necessarily great. And that started this thing where it became less scary to go in and start making drawings that didn't feel like they had to be good to get the idea across, or the narrative across. And now I love drawing. And it's, I feel like... yeah, I don't know how to cap that thought.

Miranda Metcalf  33:24

Well, my question would be, as we've talked about the journey a little bit for you, you've referred to a couple times not feeling like it's a great drawing, or worrying about a drawing not being "good." How do you define that? Like, what were you looking for in the drawing that, at least at one point, wasn't coming out?

Emmett Merrill  33:47

I think the big mistake of it... it's in things that looked overdrawn, and then like a project. I wanted something that looked like this thing that I'd seen before that I really liked, but you can't quite pin down what that is until you see and you're like, 'Oh, that looks really awesome.' Which I think happens in a lot of test prints or sketchbook pages. But I don't know... I think just doing something one day, and it's that like... you know that thing when you pull the print off, and you do a first color or something, and it works? And it's that wow factor, and the ink is still fresh, and you're like, 'Oh my god! That's so good.' I guess just one day it started working for me and making sense. And then it's like, everything else I did after that, I was basing on the last thing I made. And then it morphs its way up the ladder until it is the fifteenth print instead of the first one in that style.

Miranda Metcalf  34:37

Yeah, it's interesting to hear you talk about the sketchbooks and how you've got these images that are placed next to each other. In a sketchbook, it's arbitrary, but I feel like in your compositions, they have such a really strong sense of iconography for me. Like, it feels like a lot of what I'm seeing is supposed to be a symbol for something else. Is supposed to be an icon of some kind. And sometimes there are images that are put together in unexpected ways. And I'm wondering if that's the connection there? Is the way you enjoy that feeling of a sketchbook, that your work... while it doesn't feel like a sketchbook, it does have a narrative quality of a collection of images that are telling you something all together.

Emmett Merrill  35:32

Yeah, it's like, I like artwork that you can kind of live with. And the more you look around, or you think you know the narrative based on the big picture, and then you see one little thing inside of it that's this red herring for what the real meaning is. And then it makes you think, well, wait, that can't be true, because there's a gas can here next to a Mondrian painting on an easel that has an arrow through it that's pointing at a ghost. It's like, what do these things mean together? You know? It's like, they all have meaning or something. But they're kind of... like in letterpress - I think they're called dingbats? - Or whatever, where you can plug in these little pre-made images into new compositions that just can throw off what the narrative seems like it's supposed to be. And then through that, it's like beat poetry or free association stuff, where it's like, there is one larger idea, but it's not always just about that thing.

Miranda Metcalf  36:28

Yeah, something I've been curious about with your work, having seen it in person and seeing it in reproduction a fair amount, is finding that balance in your compositions [so] that the viewer feels like there is a story to be unraveled. It rewards the viewer enough that they return to it and feel like it's a puzzle they can solve, without making it so heavy handed that you look at it, and you're like, oh! This is about sex. This is about war. That's it. Like, it doesn't give away everything, at least in my experience of viewing your work, it never gives away anything. But it doesn't feel so disjointed and so random that it doesn't reward you.

Emmett Merrill  37:19

Yeah.

Miranda Metcalf  37:19

The effort of looking. I hope that makes sense.

Emmett Merrill  37:22

No, I think it totally does. Because otherwise, it's just like a bunch of random objects that are unrelated. But when you put them together, I think you sort of force that narrative or force that relationship. And I also think it's something where it's like thinking... or, when people are making a composition, I think there's a lot of the idea of making visually instead of narratively. Or illustrating something where it makes compositional sense to have something right here, but then you have to draw yourself back and be like, does that make narrative sense, though? For the entire thing? And the following question is, well, does that matter? And then as you're gonna go through, I think then you sort of realize what it's about. And I think it's also worth it for the joke, or when people ask what everything is - because there is meaning to everything, at least in my work. And you can point things out, and sometimes it fits, and sometimes it's just absurd. Like, I did this one big litho in grad school. And I was working on the drawing for it in the letterpress shop, and my friend Ashlee Mays came in, and she was working on a project. And she was telling me about how she listened to a podcast about someone who figured out how to communicate with fish somehow. And I interpreted this as like, oh, so the fish can get interviewed on a podcast? That's insane! So I drew a picture of this stupid looking fish with a microphone on a blanket doing a fish podcast. It's super small. And as I found out later, when I was telling her about it, I think, that podcast was not about interviewing fish. So there's little things that can be also day-to-day, that may not make any sense with the larger thing, but it's also the sketchbook where you can be working on this big thing over here that's all dramatic, but it has room for you to treat it like a journal or a sketchbook page or a record of your daily life.

Miranda Metcalf  39:11

Yeah. Well, and you also have sort of recurring themes and recurring characters - if you want to call it characters, that's probably not the right word - but recurring... let's see if I can make it sound [like] fancy art talk. Recurring visual themes that show up in your work. Of someone with a sheet over their head like a ghost, or a litho stone, or something like that. And I think that's part of what makes your work feel consistent, because I think if you were mixing up, as you spoke to, sort of random icons, it wouldn't necessarily feel like there is an underlying truth that you can get to. So even within a print it has that, but then also, I think with the repeating visual themes, it also then feels like there's a larger story at work throughout the years that you've been doing lithos in this style.

Emmett Merrill  40:11

Absolutely. And I think there's something about that that's always interested me, where... like the idea of studio narrative, because I think it's so intimidating to go in and start making work every day in your studio when you can't use the last thing as reference for something new. And then I also think that just because you draw something once, doesn't mean you got it out of your system or narratively figured that thing out. Like the ghost in a sheet thing. I love using it and different forms of it, because I think it's narratively interesting in a way where the ghost in the sheet's this catch-all metaphor. One, it's campy and silly and can be funny, depending on how you draw the shape, or how it's moving. Two, based on how you draw it, it can be scary. And the idea is you have this person who's concealing themselves and standing somewhere, staring at someone in the composition. And three, it can actually be this thing where it's really sad, because if you consider the idea of a ghost following someone around, obviously it means it's someone who has passed and wants to spend time with the living or someone who they used to know or love or whatever. And then by vice versa, are you looking at the ghost's perspective? Or is this the person who has lost somebody and imagines them following them around? And so I think there's so much - and I think that's what the core of my work is about, is that mix of something that can be funny and scary and sad at the same time, or can be bright and whatever, I use bright colors and compositions to tell a story that's maybe more sad or violent. Kinda like Johnny Cash songs. Some of them sound really upbeat, and then you read the lyrics and you're like, 'Oh, jeez!' You know?

Miranda Metcalf  41:54

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a good transition into this feeling that's in your work of having a real sense of place in the United States. And I know you've written about the emptiness of the American landscape as it relates to your compositions. And it's an interesting feeling for me. Part of it can be, it feels American in the sense that there's maybe a wooden cutout of a guy wearing a cowboy hat and a star. That's very clearly American iconography. But then, emptiness - and this is, as we were talking about earlier - since I came back from living in Bangkok, which is an extremely densely populated city of 10 million people, I've come back to the states and I've done these two cross-country road trips. And that vastness is terrifying. That you find when you're in the middle of Kansas, and you're just driving and driving, and there's this sort of nothingness. And that feels particularly American to me as well. And that scariness-meets-romanticism, I feel like, is present - for me anyway - in your work as well. Yeah.

Emmett Merrill  43:06

Yeah, I feel like everyone's had that feeling of driving across the country - especially like in the Midwest, where you have these wide open areas. I got it the most in Kentucky and Tennessee - like, that little sense of melancholy when you're pumping gas, in the middle of nowhere, where you can feel the breeze, you look around, and you're at this gas station, but surrounding you is nothing but a landscape that looks like an Andrew Wyeth painting. And it's a little overwhelming and cool. And you only get that five minutes it takes while you're pumping gas to experience it. But also, I mean, I've always been so interested - because I spend so much time driving between Knoxville and DeKalb, Illinois, and Knoxville and St. Louis - has been how you go through these long beautiful stretches of road and see these small towns and everything, but the unifying thing is you have these bright primary colors of gas stations that always cut through that landscape. Which is actually really nice, because... I don't know, you see the sunset, and it turns that certain blue when the sun first goes down, and then you have, like, Kwik Trip. And if you can separate yourself from seeing it as this interruption of nature and see it as being a part of nature, it ends up being this campy, cool thing, or at least something that I'm visually really interested in.

Miranda Metcalf  44:37

Yeah. In your work, when you see the different icons appear again, do they always mean the same thing? Like, is the gas can or the Mondrian or the cowboy cutout, if someone was looking at your body of work or writing the exhibition text for your retrospective, could they say that this - for you, and obviously, I think the meaning of art is often created in that relationship between the viewer and the piece, and the artist and the piece - but for you as the creator, does it have the same meaning when it shows up in different works?

Emmett Merrill  45:15

I think so. And I think there's a few examples. One of them that Tamarind will be put around in the corner, you'll have a litho stone. And I think it's always been a symbol of, whatever has happened in the narrative is the thing that I would so much rather be doing, or the character would so much rather be experiencing, than the current state that they're in. The other one, I think, is... the wooden cowboy has a changing meaning, but always sort of represents the same thing where it's like something that looks real, but isn't. Which I think is a recurring theme, where you have statues of somebody, or statues of a thing in the work, looking at somebody who isn't a statue. Or I guess the better manifestation, I draw a lot of geese looking at whirlygigs that look like geese. Just like, a weird, dumbed down, uncanny valley thing where it's like, you look like me, but you're not me. You're not real. So... yeah... I think so. I think that the context changes meanings of a lot of things, though. And they almost are forced to serve a narrative purpose. Maybe it's just like, the meandering answer of this is, at the end of it, maybe not. I think it depends on the situation. Because in one of the prints, the cowboy figure is supposed to be a piece of a broken billboard that got hit by a tornado, landed in a field next to another piece of broken billboard, and the two billboards in the story I'd written for it were in love with each other, but couldn't be together. But because of this tornado, they're now in the same field and can interact. And then, along the bottom of the composition, there's a really bare bones history of Western art, where you have the Venus of Willendorf there, and the Venus de Milo, and then the Mondrian painting. Which is just... yeah, man, I have no idea. I guess not. I guess they all mean something different no matter where they are.

Miranda Metcalf  47:13

So in the time we have left, can you let me know what you're looking forward to? We're gonna be releasing this pretty soon. So besides being in Five by Five and Print Santa Fe, anything else you want people to know?

Emmett Merrill  47:27

Yeah, well, we're still in the very early stages of figuring this out. But JT and I have been trying to figure out this print event that's going to happen twice a year. And we're going to start it in Kansas City in late May, early June. And it's gonna be a big showcase of printmakers and printing and music. And then we're going to do it again, ideally, in New York for Print Week. And it's going to be called Seeing Double. And I think that's all we really have so far. We're looking at a space and we're going to start inviting artists soon. So that's the Grafik House next thing. For my personal stuff, I'm starting a new body of work. I just set up a plate litho at Grafik House. And I'm finishing the newest print of that today. And so hopefully, that'll be in some shows, and people will see it. So that's what's on the immediate horizon.

Miranda Metcalf  48:20

That's really exciting. I look forward to hearing more about the event, Seeing Double. Perfect title, no notes. I love it. And yeah, definitely let me know if I can help in any way with any of that. I'm always keen to collaborate or help promote or make new print things happen in the world. And I just love it. I think print events are the most fun events, and also so good for the community and the education, just generally, about printmaking. Helping get people excited about it. So that's great.

Emmett Merrill  48:51

Yeah, absolutely. Hell yeah.

Miranda Metcalf  48:54

And then where can people find you and follow you and see your work and all of that?

Emmett Merrill  48:59

Oh, you can follow me at @stagprint. And my website, emmettmerrill.com. That I think needs some updating, but should be working.

Miranda Metcalf  49:09

Yeah, yeah. I feel like if I had a nickel for every time an artist told me their website - any time they were like, 'It needs updating!' - I think everybody gets it. It's maybe one of the least favorite things of artists, about being artists, is updating their website. But you've definitely got some good work up there, if people want to get a sense of it.

Emmett Merrill  49:29

Awesome. Yeah, Instagram's so much easier, because it's just so direct. And you're like, okay, I've made a thing, here. And then the website involves editing, and... yeah.

Miranda Metcalf  49:38

Totally. Well, I will put links to those in the show notes for this episode. And thank you so much. This has been really fun. I'm glad we finally got to talk, and I'm really excited to follow all your projects coming up.

Emmett Merrill  49:52

Awesome. Thank you for having me. This has been great.

Miranda Metcalf  49:54

If you liked today's episode, we have a Patreon where you can help us keep the lights on and get bonus content, like Shoptalk Shorts, where our editor Timothy Pauszek digs deep on materials, processes, and techniques with past guests. Also, if monetary support isn't in the cards right now, you can leave a review for us on your podcast listening app of choice, or buy something from our sponsors and tell them Hello, Print Friend sent you. But as always, the very best way you can support this podcast is by listening and sharing with your fellow print friends around the world. And that's our show for this week. Join me again next week when my guest will be Hayley Takahashi. We talk about her journey as an art history student turned artist, the particulars and complexities of drawing on Ukiyo-e imagery as a Japanese American artist, her long standing self portrait practice, and how this shows up in her current work. You won't want to miss it. This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, with editing by Timothy Pauszek and music by Joshua Webber. I'll see you next week.