episode three | crow's shadow institute for the arts

Published 5 dec 2018

Miranda Metcalf  Hello, everyone, and welcome to the third episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. In this episode, I chat with Karl Davis, the executive director of the Crow's Shadow Institute for the Arts. Karl was very generous with both his time and his transparency as we chatted about the residencies, the history of the program, and the ways that Crow's Shadow seeks to serve its community and look to the future. If you're enjoying these episodes of Pine Copper Lime, it would mean a lot to me if you can leave a review, or share it with a fellow printmaker who you think might find it interesting. It really does make a difference, especially when we're just trying to get this podcast off the ground. The podcast is released every two weeks, and in between those two weeks, I release an article on the Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) website dedicated to the subject of the upcoming podcast. It's a good place to see things like photographs of the prints that I'm chatting about with my guests. Pine Copper Lime can also be found on Facebook and Instagram as well, which is a great way to keep up with what I've been up to. So without further ado, here's Karl Davis. 

Karl Davis  Hello! 

Miranda Metcalf  Hi, Karl. How are you doing? 

Karl Davis  Doing well. Thank you. 

Miranda Metcalf  Thanks for joining me on the podcast here.

Karl Davis  Thanks for having me. I look forward to our conversation.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, me too. So I have to tell you, I actually talked to Wuon Gean Ho last week. And she told me that I need to make sure that I get a pun from you at some point in our conversation.

Karl Davis  Well, I - usually when they're - puns on demand are hard to come by, so.

Miranda Metcalf  I know, I certainly understand. I know it's it's an art form. 

Karl Davis  Yeah, Wuon Gean was, she was here last year. She comes to Crow's Shadow quite a bit, I think every other year she tries to make a trip out here. And so last year was the first year she was here for the full time that I was here. I think she had just completed a residency right before I started in 2014. And she's an amazing person in general. She is so diverse in her background, in terms of her education and arts background. And so the way she works is pretty unique even for our setting, which, Crow's Shadow is fairly unique in general too.

Miranda Metcalf  Definitely, yeah. And she's such a lovely person. We had a really good chat, so I'll make sure to send it to you as well, when we're done with editing and all that. Because she's great. She spoke fondly of her experiences at Crow's Shadow for sure. Yeah, so this seems like a good segue into asking, how did you end up coming to Crow's Shadow? Can you just kind of introduce yourself a little bit and and let people know how you ended up where you are and what your role there entails? 

Karl Davis  Sure. Well, I came to Crow's Shadow in 2014. I'm a native Oregonian. I was born and raised in Portland. I have an art history undergrad degree, and I worked in galleries throughout Portland. Shortly I finished my degree in 2003. And then my wife and I moved to Alberta, to go to school to get our master's degrees at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. And in 2014, finished that and found out about this job opening and applied and got to come back home to Oregon. So as the executive director here, I'm pretty much in charge of all the operational aspects of the organization, day to day things, but also a lot of fundraising, grant writing, programs scheduling, a bit of - since we're a very small organization, I do a bit of facility maintenance, and all those fun things that you don't think about as things that have to get done, but we all kind of pitch in. And Crow's Shadow, you know, as I mentioned, is a fairly small organization. But you know, we've been here for over 25 years now, this is actually our 26th year. We were founded in 1992 by the painter James Lavadour, who is a Walla Walla, and he is part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation where we're located. So when he started Crow's Shadow, it was the idea of bringing creative people from the reservation into kind of a structure of planned learning and opportunities for creative outlets. But it's kind of grown in certain ways and we've focused down in certain ways. In 2001 we hired our master printer, Frank Janzen, and since then have been doing print residencies with contemporary indigenous and native artists from all over the country and parts of the world too. When Frank retired, actually just last year, we hired a new master printer, Judith Baumann, and she's been in charge of the studio since then, and we're continuing that program kind of full force.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, that's great. So that's basically how the institute ended up being in Pendleton, is it sounds like the founder has a connection to that particular area? Is that where the tribe is from, is that area?

Karl Davis  Yeah, yeah. So the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, it's three tribes: the Cayuse, the Umatilla, and the Walla Walla. And James Lavadour is Walla Walla. So it was really focused, and we are still located on the reservation and it's very focused, on the native and indigenous community. We also facilitate things like traditional arts workshops, bead work, you know, basket weaving, those kind of activities, and kind of serving the community, a very local, immediate need, but also trying to bring in people from outside the area to teach some of those classes and also bring in people to learn from those classes. So it is very community driven. It's very community oriented, and it has a lot of very localized constituents, but we do serve a much broader community through the contemporary printmaking facility and our residency program.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, how did it come to be a printmaking facility? Did James have a connection to printmaking?

Karl Davis  Kind of tenuously, but yeah, so when he was, you know, starting his arts career and getting a bit more recognition, he was invited to a number of different residences around the country, to places like Rutgers and Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, and through those residences, he really was kind of shown the - what printmaking can do for not just the artists, but a community. And how, you know, it's a kind of a democratic technique, or process, I guess, printmaking in general, but especially lithography, which is what we focus on, through his time at Tamarind, and meeting people like Marge Devon, and at Rutgers, meeting Eileen Foti, and having that kind of... that exposure to those different types of printmaking and what a master printer can do, and what printmaking can do for an artist to expand their kind of artistic vocabulary, but also give them, give an artist a chance to kind of disseminate their work to a broader audience. You know, it's kind of, you make one painting that gets put in one place and seen by, you know, a small number of people. If you make a print, an edition of 20, that's - it can be disseminated to 20 different places, and you know, exponentially, a number of people can see that work. And so it gives that artist a bit more exposure, and can broaden their career as well. So that the kind of things that he was thinking of or seeing happen in those residences elsewhere. And when he started Crow's Shadow, it was with a group of people as well, on the reservation, it wasn't just him alone. There was another artist that was sharing a studio space here, in the same building that we're still located. And any number of supporters of his on the reservation, and then the community, the larger Pendleton community, started Crow's Shadow as, kind of a, on a whim a little bit, but with idea that printmaking would be a focus down the line as an integral part of what we're doing. And it's kind of come to fruition, having a master printer, having a full professional print making studio, on Native American reservation. That's, that's a really unique aspect to what we do and to the printmaking community, I think, in general.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things, of course, that printmaking has is that aspect of the community building, and the fact that it's, by nature, this collaborative medium. And if you're looking at sort of serving a community and creating space for collaboration, it seems like printmaking fits into that as well.

Karl Davis  Oh, absolutely. Yeah, the collaborative aspect, I think, is really key to what we do for artists, especially, you know, we like to invite artists that don't have printmaking backgrounds themselves, and to give them the freedom of the studio and have the master printer, be the technical brains of the operation essentially and, and give the artists the freedom to create an image or, or build an image through the printmaking, but also kind of guide them in that, in a way. And the decisions are always, you know, the artists is always making the creative decision but with input from the master printer or their apprentice, and but also being informed by the community at large or the environment. Those are all, I think, exciting aspects of the collaborative print process too.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, certainly. So you mentioned inviting artists, is it mostly an invitational basis? Is that how they end up coming to you?

Karl Davis  Right now, yes, because we are still a really fairly small physical location - we have two presses, one master printer, one residence room - we do have to maintain a fairly small program. And so all of our residencies are through invitation only. And it has been successful in that we're still keeping large interest in those residences. And we do have a number of people that, you know, express interest in coming to us. And we try to work with as many different people as we can, while still giving them that individual opportunity, individual attention while they're here. To have, you know, an invitation program, it can seem, I guess, a bit elitist, in a way. And I do try to shy away from that attitude. I mean, we try to accommodate as many people as we can. But because it's just as such a small program, we, you know, when I started in 2014 here, I wanted to be as open about it as possible. So I surveyed a number of arts professionals in, within Oregon, especially because a majority of our funding for the residency has come through the Ford Family Foundation, which is an Oregon-centric funding organization. And their requirements for our grant are that we bring in Oregon based artists. So I surveyed a number of Oregon based arts professionals within academic institutions, galleries, other arts practices, places like that. And we compiled a list of probably about 45 names of artists that would fulfill the grant requirements, but also be artists that we would want to work with. And from that list we've had, we have a selection committee within the organization, myself, two board members, and a consulting artist. And we then pick, each year, which artists we're going to work with. From the Ford Family Foundation, it's called the Golden Spot Award, we invite three artists a year, and then try to expand a little bit through other funding. We try to bring in at least one other artist from outside the region, so a nationally recognized artist. And that was granted, or those those residences have been funded through places like the Meyer Memorial Trust. And next year, we actually received our first National Endowment for the Arts grant, and that will be funding three artists, three nationally recognized artists from outside the region.

Miranda Metcalf  That's really great. And so it sounds like, you know, sort of looking from your website, you work primarily with indigenous artists, but not exclusively indigenous artists. Is that correct?

Karl Davis  Yeah, that's correct. One of the visions of our organization, this idea is bringing creative people together, as James Lavadour mentioned once, and I kind of reiterate this a lot, is that we bring the reservation to the world and the world to the reservation. And so by bringing in creative people to Crow's Shadow, whether they're indigenous or not, it's kind of bridging a lot of different communities and building those kind of connections that then strengthen both communities themselves. And artists without, you know, non-indigenous or non-native artists coming to the reservation for the first time might experience something different than a native person would. But we try to give as many opportunities to, you know, people of color and other backgrounds at the same time that we're inviting native and indigenous artists to our studio.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about what it's like to run a center in Pendleton specifically, and having that kind of rural aspect of it, but also having the indigenous community so close and in that location, I think. And how you think that affects the experience that people have there.

Karl Davis  Yeah, I think it is an interesting aspect, it can be sometimes a challenge to be so far removed from larger metropolitan centers, but in a way I think our location lends itself to a bit of magic, in a way. We struggle a little bit with even the local population and recognizing you know, the kind of things that we do here and and the value added aspect of what we bring to the community. But it is always really special to have, you know, someone from the community, a local person, walk in the door and exclaim, like, 'Wow, I can't believe you guys are here! You know, this is amazing!' But it gives us a bit of, I mean, it is a unique aspect to have a printmaking studio on a reservation. And so it gives us a bit of cachet in certain areas. And then when you know, the print is done, the prints are done, the editions are complete, the artists have signed them. And we can carry that work to print fairs in Portland and New York and places like that. And people from those areas can see the high quality work that we're doing, the prints that we're producing, the artists that we're working with. They get to see, like, this kind of bit of magic and how, you know, it doesn't have to be in the middle of the city to be good art. We can produce good art everywhere, anywhere in the world. And yeah, we're kind of a testament to that. And the reservation is just east of Pendleton proper. And it's about a, I think, I don't know exact numbers, but it's 130,000 acres of the reservation itself encompasses, you know, farmland, forest lands, range land, a lot of different areas. But Pendleton itself is about a 15 minute drive from where we're located, just west of the reservation. And to kind of go back a little bit to maybe the first part of your question too, what's it like to be running this reservation based creative center, in a rural location. Pendleton itself is very creative. I think there's a ton of creativity both in Pendleton and on the reservation, there's creative people, making music and making arts and crafts and making art itself. And, and there is, I think, a very open culture of creativity throughout the region, not just in Pendleton and the reservation, but other towns nearby. La Grande has a University, Eastern Oregon University, there we go, and they have a really thriving comprehensive arts program. Walla Walla has Whitman College, and they have an amazing printmaking facility there as well. So those things being in close proximity - and I should mention, also, Walla Walla's foundry, they bring in national and international artists to work in their foundry, on projects. So those kind of things are happening in the region. At the same time, Pendleton is a very music oriented town, there's tons of music all the time, there's musicians traveling between Portland and Boise, and we're smack dab in the middle of that, you know, three hours from both cities, and we get people from all over the northwest to come through and play music in town for, you know, one night gig and they're gone. But you know, they they leave very lasting impressions on the town. And so we have that, kind of creative juices flowing throughout the region. And so we do have a number of opportunities for collaboration with local community organizations. And one, actually, one project that's coming up, we will be working in collaboration with Oregon East Symphony, which is a nonprofit symphony based in Pendleton. And together we're bringing the artist Raven Chacon to Crow's Shadow and to the symphony to, one, compose a new chamber orchestral piece that will be performed, and at the same time that he's here to do that, rehearsals and those compositional parts, he will be in the studio producing prints with us. And then they'll be presented at the same time that they're performing his new composition. So it's a really exciting project coming up, and it's a really exciting collaboration with a local community organization, creative organization. And that's the first week of - first two weeks of February of next year. So that's the kind of things that are happening. It's not really on a regular basis, but there's a lot of that kind of undercurrent, creative ideas and things happening throughout the region, that we really tried to kind of latch on to and help promote and feed too.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, that's great. And I love that cross-medium collaboration as well. Because of course, we can artificially create the boundaries between music and visual arts and dance and performance and all of that. So I love breaking down those walls when it happens, because really great things can come out of that. 

Karl Davis  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

Miranda Metcalf  So the next question I have, I realize it's not a - it wasn't a pre prepared one, it was something that just sort of occurred to me while you were talking. So it may not be as clear, so let me know, but, you know, when you're talking about bringing in artists from other places who aren't indigenous, and I'm thinking about, you know, people who are maybe coming from Europe or Asia who have a colonial history that is not nearly as recent. And so understanding that complex and fraught and sometimes painful relationship between the colonizers and the indigenous communities, and that really hard history that's there, and a history that's often, of course, not taught or explored nearly enough, do people coming from places like that have kind of a steep learning curve to understand that dynamic? Or are they... do you find that it's something that informs their practice in any way?

Karl Davis  Um, a little bit, and I kind of, I guess I'm going to skirt the question a little bit as well, though, in that, you know, we don't, one, we're not a political organization. So we're a creative organization that, you know, that builds opportunities for for social, educational, economic development. But we're not, kind of, you know, we're not building those opportunities with, I guess, with a with an aim for a statement in any way. When the artists are here, and they're working in the studio, they might be addressing certain issues that are personal to them, or that are pertinent to maybe political or, you know, current situations. You know, we had an artist here last year, who had just been at Standing Rock, and his work was, in general, very political, but, you know, his work while here in the studio was very personal, which was an interesting thing to happen. So yeah, I don't know if it really has come through in the, the attitude or the the approach that artists have while in studio. We certainly are aware and try to, you know, maintain a certain level of respect for those issues, as you know, especially myself as a white male, you know, running a native and indigenous arts organization, I have to definitely be aware and cognizant of those kind of issues and be respectful to them. But at the same time, we don't dictate that kind of approach for any of the artists that are here, or try to suss that out while they're here. You know, if an artist is responding to that, in a way, then that will come through in the art. But honestly, you know, we try to maintain as much openness as we can, through the studio practice and studio program and the other programs that we run. So it really hasn't been, I mean, I personally haven't seen it as an issue of access or recognition, I guess, but it's honestly, I don't think we would ever try to squash that either. If an artist wants to express themselves in that way, then that would be absolutely their right to do while they're here in studio.

Miranda Metcalf  That makes a lot of sense. And it seems like it'd be important that the facilitator who's offering these opportunities would maintain a kind of neutrality, maybe for lack of a better word, because you wouldn't want to feel like you were dictating what's expected of what's being produced. That you would want to leave that open to the artist. So yeah. 

Karl Davis  Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And I'm thinking about, I mean, I'm sure - you've been around for for 25 years, and I'm sure, in that time, a lot of the dialogue and ideas about indigenous art administration has changed in that time. And I'm sure, you know, you all are quite aware of it. Do you know, of like, ways that Crow's Shadow has sort of evolved to that or adapted or things that have changed in that time?

Karl Davis  Um, I wouldn't, I don't know if we've evolved or adapted in any way. I think, as a nonprofit, there's always a level of, of adaptation to community needs and responding to those needs. But I don't think it's ever been an overt goal or, you know, kind of strategy to address those issues. I think, in terms of just how we were founded and how we've, how it's been run, and the kind of goals that we've, that Crow's Shadow has kind of set for itself over the years, it's always been to maintain the integrity of the art that's being produced and the community that it's serving, and be as open to those things as possible. And, you know, I say there's - we're not without controversy, in some ways. I'm sure that we can't please every member of the community, we can't address every single need of of such a unique kind of situation that we're in. But, you know, we tried to be as open as possible and accommodating as possible to do everyone who comes through the door. Whether it's, you know, kids wanting to learn how to make prints through linocuts and things like that to, you know, facilitating those traditional art classes to very well established, you know, contemporary native artists who have very particular, you know, approach to their art making and we try to accommodate them through the master printer program.

Miranda Metcalf  And would you talk maybe a little bit more in depth about the master printer artist collaboration and how that works? Because that's always something that's really interesting to me.

Karl Davis  Yeah, so when I, as I mentioned earlier, when Jim had been to Tamarind and and saw that model of the collaborative printmaking, you know, it's based on a much older model of printmaking done, you know, lithography, invented in the 18th century, and kind of grew from there. When we have a master printer, or, you know, our program started, it was the idea that we could bring in an artist who had no printmaking background, they could work with a master printer for two weeks, the master printer has the technical knowhow, has the expertise, you know, printmaking itself is very technical in some ways, and, you know, brain-heavy in a lot of ways. And so lithography then takes that and makes it even more exponential in terms of tecnique. You know, it's a kind of magical process that I still don't understand, and I've seen it happen hundreds of times now. So the master printer, you know, they guide the artists, give them the materials to produce the plates, give them, you know, background on how certain materials work with certain other materials, guides the process in terms of, you know, what layers work in which manner and which order, possibly, you know, not a creative or the aesthetic idea of what colors go with what colors but how those colors will interact once they're layered on the page. And, you know, the artist comes in, we try to give them some background before they get here. And there's some collaborative conversations happening before they get here in terms of their goals for the the two weeks that they're here, possibly the type of work that they're going to be working on, whether it's going to be the lithography, or possibly monoprints, or monotypes, or even some relief printing. And then when they're here, it's just about, about the process. About, you know, getting the image to the page, either through the photolitho process, or even stone work, and then proofing, going through all layers of color proofing, color of trial proofing. With the goal of those two weeks to be to have completed a proof of the print, so the artist is signing on the back of that print, you know, a proof of the print with necessary drying times, and all those things. So after the artist leaves, then the master printer and their assistant will then publish the work, they'll pull those editions depending on, you know, with the artists, they'll have have agreed on the goal for the edition size. So we generally stay below 20, but sometimes a more technically involved process or print will shoot for 12 and hopefully we'll get 14, that kind of thing. So that work is published after the artist is gone. And then once it's curated, and the edition is culled to an exacting degree, then the artists then either comes back or we take the work to them. And they sign and number them, and then we enter one of those prints into our permanent collection. It's framed here at the studio. And then we have it ready for display. And we loan it to local institutions, regional museums and things like that, for an exhibit. And then one of them also goes to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem. And they are our archive institution. So they hold the archive for us. They have the right to photograph the work and display it, but it's still part of - it's not accessioned into their collection, it's still part of our collection, just for safekeeping and longevity. And then the remainder of the work is, we hold as the publisher, and we sell it on our website, at print fairs, and things like that. After publication costs, the artists then get to share in proceeds, we split the proceeds with the artists 50/50. And that helps to maintain our operating budget, but also benefits the artists in the long term. You know, we've worked with - I don't know the exact number, but it's almost 50 different artists through our residency program since 2001. And we send checks regularly to about half those artists every year through the sale of their prints. So it's a long term benefit to them as well for their time in the studio.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, that's so interesting because, so you're also functioning, really, as a gallery as well then, in that way. Because it's - I've heard of other publishing studios where they then just split the edition with the artist. But the fact that you guys also act as the selling agent and sending the checks, I feel like in a way that can be even more beneficial, because then the artist doesn't have to worry about finding a home for the prints.

Karl Davis  Kind of how that started - because we did, I guess, when we first started the residency program, before my time, they did split the edition, they were taking that model that other print publishers were doing and splitting the edition with the artist with the intention that the artists would then go to take that edition , half of the edition to their gallerist, and their gallerist would then sell them. But I think a number of artists that we work with just didn't have that infrastructure, or that that part of their career established yet. And they were finding it hard to, you know, sell their own prints in ways. So I think after just a couple years of that, we just took on the full edition. And, you know, we do consign works to galleries, but you know, we're the initial sales point for those prints. And that, I think, it adds a bit of, you know, a layer of more work for us to do, but I think it's part you know, I really do enjoy that aspect to it, having the opportunity to place artists' work in personal collections and public collections and museums and things like that. That's pretty rewarding. You know, two years ago, we placed 18 prints at the Library of Congress. Just last year, we worked with the Whitney Museum of American Art too, for them to acquire one of our very first prints by Edgar Heap of Birds. And that kind of aspect to the job for me is really personally rewarding. It's being able to promote an artist's career in that way. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. Cuz you have a background in commercial galleries in Portland a little bit, is that right? 

Karl Davis  Yeah, I worked as the - eventually I worked, well I worked for almost seven years for Froelick Gallery in downtown Portland, and eventually was the gallery director for four of those years. So I worked closely with Charles Froelick there and was able to work with contemporary artists, both native and non native, in the Portland art scene, and, well, Northwest region as well. And then some other, you know, as a gallerist, and, you know, early finishing your degree, what do you do? You do interning, proprietary work, that kind of stuff. So, some other little jobs around the city, but primarily I worked at Froelick Gallery for a number of years. Yeah.

Miranda Metcalf  So I love what you're, to go back to what you said earlier, about James's phrase about bringing the world to the reservation and the reservation to the world. And speaking of the sort of the latter half of that, so you mostly do selling online, you said print fairs, is that sort of the primary way people can can see and purchase work that you're producing?

Karl Davis  Um, a lot of times people see the work in exhibits that we send around, like I mentioned, the permanent collection that we have, every single print that we produce, we, you know, we frame at least one of them. And then we loan those exhibit those prints out to exhibits, to regional museums and things like that. So that's one aspect, yeah, the print fairs, we've been doing the Portland Fine Print Fair at the Portland Art Museum every year for the last, now it's almost five, years. For the last two years, and coming up in October, we participate in the Editions and Artists Book Fair in New York, at the end of October. And then it's just a lot of word of mouth kind of things. We also, last year with the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, we produced our 25th anniversary exhibit, which was a major retrospective, essentially, of all the printmaking that's been done at Crow's Shadow since 2001. And with Rebecca Dobkins, at the University there, Willamette University, she curated it and then helped produce our first book publication. She co-authored an essay with Heather Ahtone about the history of indigenous printmaking in North America. And then one of, actually she's a board member, but she's also an art historian, Prudence Roberts wrote a beautiful essay about the history of Crow's Shadow itself. And then the book has been distributed. You know, it's through the University of Washington press online and things like that. So that's actually gotten a lot of recognition for us, too. But yeah, a lot of our sales do come a little through word of mouth, but we also have a gallery at our facility that's open to the public. And we, you know, display our work here, and people come in off the street and see it. It's open to the public Monday through Friday, nine to five. So we love having people visit the studio and gallery just to see what we're doing. As I mentioned, yeah, people come in the door and they're blown away. We like to say we have a world class print facility in the middle of a wheat field, because that's kind of how it feels when you find your way down the gravel road or up the the old State Highway to us. 

Miranda Metcalf  Well, I think that's really wonderful. And I've always thought of Crow's Shadow as a really unique and important model. So I'm certainly glad you guys are there doing what you're doing. 

Karl Davis  Thank you very much. 

Miranda Metcalf  And so I think that's basically all the questions that I have for you, unless there's anything else we didn't touch on that you think people need to know about Crow's Shadow and the work there?

Karl Davis  Well, there's one aspect of our programing I didn't, I might have touched on it a little bit, but I didn't. And I think it is becoming more and more important to our kind of identity and our programming for the community. We work really closely with Nixya'awii Community School, which is the Charter High School here on the reservation. And for the past four years, there was a program prior to my time, but it had ended essentially, when some funding ran out from the school district. But when I started here, I kind of reestablished it. So we invite, it's kind of a self-selected group of students each year from the school. They come up to the studio once a week during the school year and work with the master printer. So they've been learning different types of printmaking, a lot of linocut work, but also starting them on screen print, and they've done a few lithographs as well. And the end of each school year, they get to put on an exhibit of their work in the studio, or in the gallery, I should say, to kind of show off to the community and their family and friends, what they've been doing in the studio. And then we offer, you know, the students get to, they're producing an edition, so they get to price their work accordingly. And they, when they sell their work, they get to keep 100% of the proceeds. You know, the prints are generally under $100 each, but to be able to see the students, you know, the community respond to their work and to purchase their work too, I think it's no greater feeling to write a check to a new artist who's realizing quickly that their art can be kind of a viable career in a way, too. And I think one of the proudest things I can say is that every student now, I think we've had about 16 to 18 students through this program, every single student who's been in the program has sold at least one of their prints to somebody they've never met before. So for the public to kind of embrace their work and to validate their creative spirit, I think is really special. And I think that's kind of something that we don't talk a lot about, but I think it's becoming, you know, like as I said, a bigger aspect to our programming in the coming years.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, that's wonderful. Because yeah, I didn't know that that was part of the programming. But that's really, really great. And especially having that element of people who don't know the students buying the work. I know adult practicing artists who would love if that happened more often to them.

Karl Davis  Yeah, selling artwork. It's always a goal as an artist, even though I mean, well, it's not always a goal. I mean, I think making art is always a personal endeavor, but to have it validated through public recognition like that, I think, is always something that people, you know, you do need a little bit of someone else saying "good job," and buying your artwork is the ultimate "good job."

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that's wonderful. Well, great. Um, so before we sort of sign off, can you just give all the websites and the handles that people need to learn more about Crow's Shadow or see some work and maybe purchase it?

Karl Davis  Sure. Well, our website is just you know, www.crowsshadow.org. And you have to make sure you got the double S in the middle. And then our our Instagram is @crows_shadow and our Instagram is pretty busy. And a lot of artists that come through have their own handles that they promote our Instagram with. We don't really use Twitter a lot. And our Facebook page is just Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts and all those places will kind of direct back to the same place. And yeah, you can see all the work that's available for sale on the website itself. And there's actually, you know, an option to buy if you want to put things in a shopping cart. And we ship worldwide, so. 

Miranda Metcalf  Great! Well, thank you so much for spending a Friday afternoon chatting with me. This is really, really great stuff. And I'm excited to share it with people!

Karl Davis  No, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to talk about Crow's Shadow and to get to kind of spread the word, prosthelytize a little bit about printmaking and our programming. So thank you. 

Miranda Metcalf  Cool. So as the saying goes, that's our show for this week. You can learn more about the Crow's Shadow Institute for the Arts through their website. I'll put a link to that, as well as the book Karl mentioned, the one that was published by the University of Washington press, and celebrates Crow's Shadow's 25 years of being a fine art print publisher. I hope to see you all again in two weeks time when I chat with the indelible Myles Calvert. In the meantime, you can follow Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) through my Facebook and Instagram. And of course at helloprintfriend.com. This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, with editing by Timothy Pauszek and music by Joshua Webber. Thanks so much for listening. I can't wait to see you again.