episode twenty-six | peter lancaster

Published 30 October 2019

Miranda Metcalf  Hello print friends, and welcome to the 26th episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. I'm your host, Miranda Metcalf. I release an episode every two weeks, and on the off weeks, I publish an article on the Pine Copper Lime website, which features images and maybe a bit more information about the artist I'm going to interview. Print friends, my dear, dear print friends, do you realize that we've been at this for a year now? I have interviewed 26 artists from around the globe, and we've talked about love, failure, legacy, family, gender, immigration, creative process, witchcraft, print collecting, motherhood, death, God, Damien Hirst, robot porn, and the end of the universe. Having conversations with incredible printmakers has been my favorite thing. And sharing them with all of you has been nothing short of an absolute joy. Thank you so much to everyone who has listened, told a friend, shared a post, entered a giveaway, sent me a kind DM, become a Patreon member, left a review, or just given a simple fuck. Like anyone trying to create anything, there is nothing lonelier than feeling like you're shouting into the void. But I have never felt that with Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend). Printmakers, you have shown up, shown your love, and brought the community together in an incredible way to celebrate sharing stories and our love for this medium. Printmaking forever, shun the non believers, join the party. And my friends, this week is just that. My chat with Peter Lancaster is a joyful romp through all the things that printmaking can be, culminating with Peter's new and exciting project creating a print residency in his homeland of Fiji. I don't even want to say anything more about it. I just want you to sit back, relax, and prepare to join us on a tropical printmaking paradise with Peter Lancaster. Hi, Peter, how's it going? 

Peter Lancaster  Hi Miranda, how are you? It's good to finally make contact. 

Miranda Metcalf  I know, I know, I feel like we've kind of been circling each other a little bit, between Australia and Fiji, and timing wise, and all of that.

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, well, we both had moves. You've made a move, and I've made a move to Fiji, and it's been quite an ordeal. But exciting. Yeah, I guess I started, it was a long road to getting here, but I did start... I had a very strong interest in drawing. And I actually tried to get into, there was a drawing course you could do in Melbourne, Australia. And I was determined to just draw. I used to look at all the masters and set up objective drawing and just draw all day. And then I ended up not getting into this course, and I was convinced I was going to get in. And then my senior lecturer said, 'Oh, look, maybe you should try printmaking. You know, you can do a bit of drawing in that.' I said, 'Righty-oh.' I just had no idea. And most of that time, I was doing etching. And then in third year, there was a guy up the other end just drawing on these bloody big rocks, and he was a fantastic drawer. And then I just saw, 'Hey, this guy's just drawing directly onto that surface, and then it's going on to the paper.' I said, 'That's just like magic.' So from sort of third year, I was just hooked. I never looked back. I found, though, that I started just getting absolutely taken in by the challenge of things not necessarily going the way they should go, and that chemistry side of things started to play its way through the process, depending on the temperature of the day and where the sun came in through the window and lots of these things. So I eventually found that what became the bible for me is that Tamarind Book of Lithography, which I just used to read all day, all night, and highlight every - I think I ended up highlighting pretty much the whole book with a highlighter pen. And then challenging myself with the skills, and doing a postgraduate as well. And then I discovered in the foreword in the book about the Tamarind course. And so I got some great references from a woman who had actually done her masters at the University of New Mexico, her name being Kaye Green, and she ended up being the sponger for Garo Antreasian, who wrote the Tamarind book, and Clinton Adams. Clinton, I think, wrote it and Antreasian was the one who was doing a lot of practical demonstrations for the book. So she had some amazing feedback and experience working for him. So she gave me a great reference. And I ended up doing the printer training program, which was at that stage, I think it's now a year again, but they compacted that down into a four and a half month course. 

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, my gosh!

Peter Lancaster  It was definitely full on. It was like I'd walked into a military school or something. I couldn't sleep, just everything was lithography. But that was the training program before you went into the the next stage. They chose two people to go into the custom printing area, and Bill Legatudo was then the master printer. So I actually didn't apply. I was just determined to get back and start a shop. And I was still, at that point, a printmaking technician at a university in Melbourne. So I came back with these extra skills and did another year and a half or so as a technician. And then I just decided to throw it in, and people thought I was crazy, because I was on salary. But I just thought, 'But, you know, we just got to do this. Everyone's going to be doing it. It's just such an amazing process. I've got to start a shop, you know?' There was only like, one other place doing it then, the Victorian Print Workshop, it was called then, which is now the Australian Print Workshop. So I'm not sure if you've visited there.  Yeah, not yet. So that's a quite a big, funded sort of institution. And that does etching, relief, and lithography. They have that big offset press as well.

Miranda Metcalf  When you decided to start your own shop, where was that? Where did you start it? 

Peter Lancaster  Well, that was in the folks' garage. Maybe where a few people start, you know?

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And was that in Melbourne?

Peter Lancaster  That was in Melbourne, yes. So it was pretty make do, like, I tried to extend it a bit. I didn't have great building skills back then. And then I got this amazing hand operated 3460 Takach press, came in a crate [in] 1989. So that went into the garage. And then because I was still the technician at that stage, it was kind of good. I had a salary coming in. But also, there were obviously art lectures, and prints were selling a lot. So I kind of had these pretty well established artists wanting to make lithographs.

Miranda Metcalf  So when you said that prints were selling a lot, do you mean the ones from your studio, or just kind of in general, the market was a really good place for prints?

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, I just remember going to exhibitions and seeing 5, 6, 7 red dots going down under a lot of prints in an exhibition. And it was super exciting, and they were all handmade prints back then. So it was exciting to print an edition of, I don't know, like 15 or 20 prints, and then go to the exhibition and quietly walk around and see the dots going up, and being quiet, like a lot of printers are, just sort of quietly giving yourself a pat on the back in the background and letting the artists take all the...

Miranda Metcalf  All the glory. Yeah.

Peter Lancaster  It's nice to hear that, people not understanding what they're actually looking at, what was behind it, but just loving the work for what it was. Translation, the translation sort of worked. For me, that meant the translation had worked into lithography, whether they be a sculptor or a painter or whatever. Yeah.

Miranda Metcalf  And at this time, did you have your own personal practice? Or were you just focusing on the art of collaborative printing?

Peter Lancaster  I did make a lot of prints. They were not great prints. They sort of started shifting more and more towards technique, rather than the actual image. I said, 'What if I try this wash with a mix of... You know, I sort of kept searching for technical challenges, I guess, and thinking, look, if I can do this well, that's another thing I can offer artists with confidence. A good printer should be able to offer a whole range, a whole menu, of options, depending on their work, their main discipline, just trying to really entice them with the possible marks they can put down or washes or whatever. Yeah. So that's kind of how my practice ended up moving towards.

Miranda Metcalf  And then so when you started your own workshop, what did you call it?

Peter Lancaster  Yeah. Well, I was trying to think up some fancy sort of names. And, you know, something that sounded really cool, and yeah, just ended up being Lancaster Press.

Miranda Metcalf  That's good, though. You know, people know what they're getting, right?

Peter Lancaster  Yeah. So now we've just added on the Fiji bit. Lancaster Press Fiji.

Miranda Metcalf  Right. So how long were you in Melbourne for?

Peter Lancaster  I probably ran for about 28 years or so. Yeah. And I grew up in Fiji till I was about 12. Dad set up obstetrics in Suva, the capital. He set up the ward there in obstetrics and gynecology, and then training Fijian and Indian doctors. He was going to be there for two years, but he ended up staying for fifteen years. So we ended up doing all our early schooling in Fiji, which I sometimes think had a bit of an influence of loving the practical side of printmaking, because we didn't have TV and everything was done by the seasons, we had kite season and top season and marble season.

Miranda Metcalf  Wait, what does that all mean?

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, so what we used to do, kite season, you would make your own kites out of thin tissue and bamboo and rice flour, and they were very hard to fly, and just have kite fights. They used to crush glass and glue and put them on the cotton. And they could then cut another person's kite cotton, then so that kite's floating through the air, coming down. So all the kids would just chase these kites, you know, and try and get them wherever they landed. So you're running through villages, because there weren't any fences in Fiji. Everything was just one property joined to the next. Sort of Melbourne suburbia. So yeah, all these Indian and Fijian guys just had these amazing skills with all of these seasons, and also just skills in general growing up in the villages, cutting open a coconut or climbing up a tree. Those sort of things really sort of hung in there, I guess. And so I just love the practical side, or watching any printer who's really skillful at it, or cabinet maker, or... I just find that... you sort of look at it and you realize, you know, that person hasn't learned that in a week. That's years behind that.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people in printmaking have, that little bit inside of them where watching something that's very technical done very well just never gets old. It's just endlessly beautiful. And it's exciting. 

Peter Lancaster  And I've done a lot of lecturing in the unis in Melbourne, and one was Victorian College of the Arts, and the technician, who's a great lithographer as well, we could just pick the students who just had it. And we'd just both look at each other and say - just nod our heads at each other. And they had no idea, but just in the way they sponged, or the rolling, you know, and you'd just say, 'That person would be an amazing assistant.' Over the years, I've probably had two or three fantastic assistants. But in the end, you realize there's actually not many, you know, because it is quite a special skill to have, and work alongside, and not look bored. When I was at Tamarind and we had to sponge for the master printer, I was just, every roll and every move they made, I was just trying to take it all in, you know? And then I realized, why isn't everyone interested?

Miranda Metcalf  Right? Yeah, I definitely, as part of what I've been doing with this podcast and everything, is really being a communicator for printmaking, and trying to be that person who can explain it and bridge the gap. But it was a lot of what I did when I worked at the gallery as well, because it was a gallery that focused on printmaking, and someone would come in off the street, and they might not know what it is. And sometimes you would explain it to someone, and they would just look at you blankly. And sometimes you explain it and just this light goes off and you're like, 'All right, you've got the gene. You're going to be a lifer.' 

Peter Lancaster  That's it. It's like hooking in an artist, and you think, alright, yeah, that's it. They're gonna keep coming back.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely.

Peter Lancaster  What amazes me about some of those early - because I did love all the American greats, you know, the Rosenquists and the de Koonings and... was it Margaret Lowengrund, I think, who had a shop in Long Island, and she convinced some of these amazing artists to make lithographs.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I think that, when you say 'convinced to make lithographs,' I think that's something that people would love to hear you speak to, is that, how does one go from saying, 'Okay, I've got a press in my mom's garage,' or wherever, to getting really talented artists to come and work with you? How does that happen?

Peter Lancaster  I mean, so again, one of the particular artists that I liked, I'd go to their exhibition. By the end of this exhibition, I had the whole print made up in my head, how I could see it, how I could see the result. And I'd just get so excited, and I'd get home and I'd write a letter. And back then, it was all hand - the address was all handwritten, and I'd send it off to the gallery and it would then get through to the artist and I'd always normally get a response, and generally, mostly, those artists ended up coming around for a visit. And then I would have a stone already, we'd have it all ready to put some marks down. And the ones that generally - I think Ken Tyler once said that a great artist will just make great prints, you know, it's a pretty simple formula. And that's often the case. Just as soon as they'd touch the stone, something would often happen, you know?

Miranda Metcalf  When I worked at the gallery, I would see that a couple of times, where someone who might be a ceramicist, that a print of theirs would come through and it would just be incredible. And you'd get like, 'Oh, no, this was the first litho they ever made.' You're just like, 'What?'

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, it's really exciting. And that's part of the collaboration thing, apart from the technical side is just being able to please the artist, because that can be - you know, they're their own worst critic. And it's not easy to just make a quick change, move that line over there or here. So you do try and nurture them sort of into it, and having each artist with a different personality, and so you adapt to that. But I guess I think artists gravitate towards certain printers in their personalities as well. For me, I get attracted to certain sorts of work, because I see how it could translate.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I think I, at one point, Michael Kempson from Cicada Press was in Seattle where I was from, and he was giving a talk about what they do. And I don't remember what it was, but some person in the audience asked a question. And his response was like, 'Well, the thing is, at Cicada Press, we have a really strict no dickheads policy.' I think it was something about like, 'Is it hard to work with artists?' And it just was like, 'Well, you know. You can self select a bit.'

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, I guess I've had some doozies, which I've had to struggle to get through, but cuz I've sort of been self supporting, I guess I've had to be less fussy sometimes. I don't have funding. The sessional lecturing has sort of got me through some tight spots. But outside of that, yeah, I've just been reliant on the collaborative sort of printing, custom printing. Maybe the last five, six years, I've just found it becoming a real grind, and the lecturing work stopped. And so yeah, it was just becoming too hard to maintain. So that's when I started sort of that initial search around in Fiji.

Miranda Metcalf  So where did you end up in Fiji? I'd love to hear, I want to hear everything about where you are. But I have to remind myself to start with some of the basics. So where are you located, and how long have you been there, I guess is a good place to start?

Peter Lancaster  Well, when we lived here, we were in Suva. And we used to go for holidays on the Coral Coast, it's called, on the main island on the west side. And Korotogo is the sort of area where we used to go for holidays, but we're in a place called Malaqereqere, which is hilarious, because that in Fiji and in English, that translates into "rock." 

Miranda Metcalf  Hah! It's perfect. I love it.

Peter Lancaster  There's a lot of rocks under the ground. There was this eight bedroom house that had squatters in there. But it was actually just for sale on the real estate side. And so it was a delicate process with the squatters and getting them out. And we eventually got to take hold of the property, and my wife and I've been sort of renovating it for the last two years. So it's probably about two and a half, three years. So I've actually been getting it all ready. So it's sort of up on a hill, and you can see bits of the ocean in the distance, and then in the other way, you can look into the hills. So it's quite a nice panoramic sort of outlook from the studio. And it's actually a nice spot to sit and draw outside the studio. So the studio I actually had added on. So it was sort of a purpose built studio, I mapped it all out and measured out the presses in there and the   benches, so there's a classic bench with two returning benches coming out with the presses in between. So the property already, it's about an acre, and it had a lot of big established trees, which was also great. Mango trees, and breadfruit, which is another sort of bready, big, round thing that you can make curries with and chips and whatnot. Guava trees and lots of coconut trees, so there's quite a bit you can just get off the property for when we have guests come and stay, grating coconuts and drinking coconuts...

Miranda Metcalf  And what's the weather like?

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, it's incredibly humid in November, December, January, February. If you're sitting by a pool at a resort, it's kind of fine. But as soon as you start doing any physical activity, like even writing a letter, you just start sweating. So you either go with it and just get completely soaked, or you just sit still under a tree. And you jump in the pool all the time, you know, and the great thing is there's often a wind blowing through, so you jump in the pool and the wind just sort of cools you down. So then you sort of, the temperature drops a bit, and you kind of keep... but the studio's got air conditioning for when I'm printing. And it's sort of insulated the roof. So it's actually quite comfortable for printing.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, cuz I was gonna ask about how the humidity works with the printing, because I know that's definitely a factor. If it's climate controlled, that's like the best of both worlds, then.

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, the stones still work, and the surfaces stay wet for longer, because it's not dry. It's a humid climate, so your stone doesn't suddenly dry out like in a dry - like, I remember that in Albuquerque, in that dry heat - the stones would dry just one roll to the next, and suddenly, you've got that dry roll thing happening. Yeah. So it's good. It's got its sort of good and bad sides. But it's not an issue, really.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And then it's pretty warm all year round, or at least comfortable?

Peter Lancaster  Oh, yeah. So this time of the year, at night, you might have a blanket at night, but during the day, it's justt shirt and shorts every day. Yeah, and just a bit cooler at night. But I would usually recommend people to come May, June, July, August sort of time is just fantastic.

Miranda Metcalf  Beautiful. So tell me about the facilities, like how many presses, and what kind, and just dive into all the technical print stuff that I know people love to hear.

Peter Lancaster  So I brought the container over initially and just jam packed it. And I've got in my 3460 bed size, that 34 inch by 16 inch bed size Takach, an electric one. And then I've got another hand operated one, which is a Melbourne made press, Melbourne Etching Supplies, which VCA, Victorian College of the Arts, changed up all their presses, so they were getting rid of a few. So I kind of fixed that one all up and re-sprayed it and that one works great as well. So I do the stones generally on the hand operated, and I've got a big slab on the electric, which I do all the ball grind plates on. So the plates off, they're practical for, you know, an artist can take them back to wherever with them, or people can work around somewhere on the property. But with the stones, I've got a big stone there, I've got quite a few in Melbourne, which I'm slowly sort of getting them over here. But I've got 56 by 76 size, which is that sort of large paper size. I've got quite a few medium size, which will do 45 by 60 paper size. And then I've got a bunch, so I thought if I did classes, I've got a bunch that will do either 28 by 38, which is like a 56 by 76 cut into four. I've got a bunch that size. Then I managed to get over a photo exposure unit, a vacuum frame, as well. And some positive plates and developer and so on. So there's an option for that, combining colors on some of the photo plates with the stones or the aluminum plates. Yeah, so it's just sort of downsized a little bit until I can get more. I mean, the plates are fine for larger paper size. So the first year, I did work with a local artist who just dived in and did these five, six color lithos, and he just didn't hesitate. He was just amazing. He's just this huge, big Fijian guy just covered in tattoos. It's just, it's such a presence, you know? And he just loved it.

Miranda Metcalf  Tell us about what you offer there. Are you doing regular workshops? Do you have residences? Do you have opportunities for groups to come? Tell us about what it offers.

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, well, the house is big, it's got like four bedrooms. And we're trying to encourage artists of any discipline. Because the studio is kind of... things are on casters, and things can be moved. So I kinda like the idea of artists coming to use it as a residency. And they could have family in tow, or the first resident artist from Australia, Sue Anderson, she brought her family, they just went off and did stuff during the day, and we just made prints, and then our wife and I went off for a while and had our own holiday, and they just sort of had some downtime initially, before getting into the studio stuff. So yeah, it does allow for a larger group, and also, we kind of encourage - we're trying to work out packages for just an artist who wants to come on their own as well, try and fit different budgets as well. It's sort of a bit of a learning curve to see what people are looking for, and trying to customize to make it enticing for people, I guess,

Miranda Metcalf  Every printmaker I know, anyway, would love to organize a holiday around making prints. I don't know that I've ever taken a vacation or any kind of holiday that wasn't print related in some way. Even when I was working in a gallery, it's like, 'Oh, I have a couple weeks off, I'll go to Chiang Mai and go see CAP Studio and all the printmakers there.' It's always been...

Peter Lancaster  Such a good way to get involved in a place, you know?

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. It's so beautiful, it's so fortunate to be a printmaker, because you show up anywhere in the world, and you've got people. If you can find a studio, you can find your people.

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, that's it. And immediately, you're going off to an opening. Yeah, I did that in Brixton, in England, I think, I went to Artichoke Press, it was called. I just took everything with me and just started making lithos there. And it was just fantastic. Going on the tube each day and getting out there and doing stuff. Talking to people. Yeah. So it's quite a - the property allows, there's a lot of visual information for landscape artists just around the property itself, but there's a lot of great stuff just within a short drive, and there's a lot of amazing stuff, flotsam and jetsam stuff on the beaches. So I don't know, some artists, it would really suit them if they were that way inclined, with the visual imagery. There's a lot of color, and everything just grows, you stick it in the ground and grows. It's a beautiful sort of vegetation, jungle-y, sort of, to take in. Such a nice mix to be in the studio and rolling and looking out and these coconut trees are swaying. I'm just like, 'Shit, this dream actually came true.' Because there was so much thought process before. It's quite a special time, because our folks just, in the last - dad passed away probably a month, or a few weeks ago. And then mom passed away 12 months before that. So there's been a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and now we're finally settled back, it's kind of dad being here that's [why] this has all resurfaced and I've ended up back here. And luckily, Dinah, my wife, likes it as well. The plan was in motion when I met her, and then we got married like a year later. And then I said, 'Gee, sorry, but I'm really kind of living in Fiji.'

Miranda Metcalf  It's like, 'Surprise, baby.'

Peter Lancaster  Yeah. She's done a lot of traveling and lived in other places. So she just loves it.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, that's wonderful. How close is it to the equator?

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, well, it's pretty close, because the sun goes down and one minute it's light, and then within five minutes, it's dark. Whereas in Australia we've got this long evening, slowly going into darkness. But because we're close to the equator, you don't get much evening sunset time. So you've got to have a quick gin and tonic before.

Miranda Metcalf  And then what about wildlife? Birds, iguanas? What kind of things would you see if you were sitting on the porch, drinking gin and tonic in the evening?

Peter Lancaster  Well, you step on those cane toads a lot, which is a bit of a surprise for some visitors. Just because they hop around at night, and if you're sort of walking around in the half light, you'll sort of squash one of those. There's mongoose, which means there's no snakes.

Miranda Metcalf  Nice! It's not nice for the snakes, but it's nice for anyone who wants to go strolling in the evening.

Peter Lancaster  Not like the Australian Bush, which is pretty freaky, seeing a snake on the path in front of you. So there's quite a lot of bird life, like parrots, and like more into the interior of the island. But around the coastal areas, there's not a crazy amount of wildlife, there's not monkeys or whatever swinging around in trees. It's more sort of like little beetles and lizards and all that sort of stuff. They'll sort of run across, you know, those geckos that run across your wall at night in your room. So there's the odd scream from people, new arrivals, from their bedroom. Dinah had her daughter here with a few girls, and they would scream out now and again. There's plenty of stuff out in the ocean, so we pretty much eat fish all the time. And pretty much all the cooking is you grate coconuts and squeeze out the juice, and a lot of stuff gets cooked in coconut juice, whether it be curries or more Fijian food, which is a lot of stuff out of the ground, like dalo and cassava, they call it. It's like heavy, starchy, vegetable stuff. And then a lot of grain, you know, cabbage and stuff. So you can eat really well here, but unfortunately, Coca Cola and refined foods have all taken hold of a lot of the Pacific Islands and it runs havoc with diabetes, which is a real pity.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, for sure. How close is the studio to the beach or to the ocean?

Peter Lancaster  Well, like I said, you sit on the studio deck, and you can see, through the trees, bits of ocean. And you can sort of walk down the hill and across the highway, which is a two lane highway, which is like a back road in Australia. Yeah. But we generally just jump in the car and it's like a five minute drive down to a nice beach. But then there's a 25 minute drive, there's just an absolutely stunning beach called Natadola, where we take guests, and you can get massage and horse riding and surfing. And that's just a fantastic sort of half day, day trip. That's absolutely stunning.

Miranda Metcalf  So what are you looking forward to? Is there anything on the horizon that you two are particularly excited for?

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, well I may do a bit of that full circle and actually try and make a few dodgy prints again myself. And I am really keen to try and get artists to just come here, some good artists, because it is, we think it's a pretty amazing setup. And like I said, we're just trying to make it. So I think especially around Brisbane, Sydney, you know, those places are pretty close. And then I think west side of the states is not that far. So somehow, I'd love to try and spread the word along that side. And because, you know, it's a good stop over, I mean, Fiji Airways now goes direct to LA. So stop over LA, Fiji, make some prints, and then go to Australia, you know?

Miranda Metcalf  Why the heck not?

Peter Lancaster  So, yeah, the website, we probably just got that finished only six weeks ago. So we've got a bunch of information on that, but we'll just sort of keep adding packages and get feedback from artists that have been here. Like, there's one up there from the first artist that came, she put up a fantastic testimonial. Because like I said, it is a thing, you don't want to come and find that the whole thing's a bit of a disaster. So we want to give as much flexibility for people as possible to sort of fit their needs.

Miranda Metcalf  So the website is a good place for people to find you. Do you guys have anything else? Are you doing social media as well?

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, so there's Peter Lancaster for Facebook. And those links are both on the website. So the website's just lancasterpress.com.au. So people can get an idea of the layout of the studio and the accommodation. And that's kind of nice, because for an artist who came with their family or a couple of other friends, they can be self sufficient. They can do their own cooking, and they can go off to the market, which has fresh food daily, and get whatever's in season, and then go off and look around the area, go in to the interior to waterfalls, or you can go outward and go snorkeling and diving and whatnot. And it's all fairly well located for all that sort of stuff. It's kind of a nice place to just hang out because of the layout of the house and the property. We've had quite a few friends over and it's good getting feedback from them. Luckily, the house, the sort of initial layout, was pretty good, we just had to cut out a few walls and open up a few areas, and we put doors in the front of the bedrooms and put decks so guests can sort of have their own little private deck. And I guess it's only been the last sort of three to five months that things have really been finished. And I've tried out the presses, and I've made some prints, and so I kind of feel comfortable that everything's sort of working, and there's a place to grain stones, and the graining machine works. And all the power is the same as Australia, the 230 volt thing, which is a great thing, it just meant the press could be just plugged in and it was up and running. So just all that practical stuff. There was a bit of stuff, and getting the internet on, so the internet's great, which is really good. It's really fast. So that's obviously a big requirement for people these days.

Miranda Metcalf  It just sounds like such an exciting time, that this amazing new studio and this amazing experience that you're offering people is just starting to really blossom and go somewhere. It's so cool. And I hope that we can be a big part of sharing that.

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, well, it's been fantastic. We've both being listening to your podcast. Sometimes we don't quite make it to the end, because we fall asleep. It is such a nice soothing program to listen to, and listening just to how different artists describe their passion for the process. It's a nice discovery.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, thank you. Well, I've loved making every episode. And I'm super excited to share this one.

Peter Lancaster  It's great that you've got involved with Megalo as well, because I gave some lithography workshops there and I just love the community feel of that place.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, they do that so well.

Peter Lancaster  I think one of the technicians left, John Hart. But he was just great to have around. 

Miranda Metcalf  Is there anything else you want to make sure people know before we sign off?

Peter Lancaster  It's hard to find a mentor in lithography, because there's not a lot of those around, but I've got on to Fred Genis, who's retired now, but he printed in Sydney. And he printed in New York for about 10 years with Irwin Hollander, who actually died in the last year, I think, when Hollander was 90 something. But I wrote to Fred, and he invited me to his studio in Glebe in Sydney. And he was just, he's such a modest guy. He's Dutch, and such a nice guy. And it's just fascinating, because he collaborated with all the greats over there, with Hollander doing these de Koonings and Rosenquists, and he'd just, now and again, he'd just come out with a story. He just said, 'Oh, yeah, I remember when I worked with Helen Frankenthaler, and she was really hard work. She made me do this and this...' And he was amazing to watch, rolling the stone. And he was just this wirey guy, and just really charismatic. It was just such a buzz to go and work with him. And I learned kind of almost more, or really just fantastic, tips off him that I didn't learn at Tamarind. He had a different style of etching stones. So when he was a Tamarind right at the start, they got him in with another European printer, just to see the difference between their style of printing and the Tamarind style. And I think he worked with Tyler for a while, and then he ended up with Irwin Hollander. And then he worked as a printer for about 20 years in Australia, working for John Olsen and Brett Whiteley and all of those guys when things were, again, everyone was selling lots of prints. So anyway, yeah. So that was good to just get that in.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. Good. I'm glad you did. Because I think that mentorship is so important and so huge, particularly with lithography, because you can sweat over the Tamarind Book of Litho all you want, and you can get pretty far with that. But there's nothing that replaces being in the studio with a master printer.

Peter Lancaster  Yeah, yeah. Look, there are just a couple of methods that he did that just really changed and quickened things up and made things work better. It was just fantastic. 

Miranda Metcalf  Beautiful.

Peter Lancaster  Well, keep in touch about your possible vacation times.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. Thank you so much. I'm so glad this worked out. And I'm excited to share your story and what you're doing, and I'll be in touch as that kind of evolves. 

Peter Lancaster  Thanks so much, Miranda. That was great. 

Miranda Metcalf  Thank you, Peter. This was a real pleasure. Talk to you soon. Well, that's our show for this week. Join me again in two weeks' time, when my guest will be Annalise Gratovich. We talk about her beautiful monumental woodcuts, creating a sense of home as the daughter of Ukrainian refugees, iconography, and the fabulous party which is Print Austin. This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, and, like all episodes, I could not have done it without my incredible editor and incredible husband, Timothy Pauszek. And we could not have made this sound legit without the incredible music by our dear friend, Joshua Webber. I'll see you in two weeks.