Narrators include Kathy Caraccio, Nanette Carter, Deborah Cullen-Morales, Devraj Dakoji, robin holder, Michael Kelly Williams, Luanda Lozano, Eleanor Magid, Dindga McCannon, Otto Neals, Ademola Olugebefola, Richard Powell, Juan Sánchez, and Nitza Tufiño.
Interviews conducted by Camille Crain Drummond.
In 2023, EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop was awarded a Hauser & Wirth Institute grant to complete a video-based oral history entitled The Only Thing That Lasts: An Oral History of Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, to document founder Robert Blackburn (1920-2003) and the history of the community workshop.
Raised amidst the Harlem Renaissance and of Jamaican American descent, Blackburn was a visionary African-American artist, a pioneering master printmaker, and a celebrated educator. As the longest-running community print shop in the United States dating back to 1947, the Workshop holds a diverse record of printmaking in the United States that reflects the communities with which Blackburn participated, including the Harlem Renaissance, Black Arts Movement, and Caribbean, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, feminist, and ecologically-focused activism.
The Only Thing That Lasts features fourteen narrators sharing personal stories that capture the socio-historical context and collaborative culture of The Printmaking Workshop. Highlights include Ademola Olugebefola introducing his involvement in Weusi Artist Collective, founded in Harlem, 1965; Dindga McCannon discussing the cultural shift in the 1960s and 1970s of natural hair to locks; Eleanor Magid recounting the New York City Teachers’ Strike of 1968; Nitza Tufiño talking about her early development of El Museo del Barrio; Michael Kelly Williams telling a story about Geri Allen’s album “The Printmakers” inspired by The Printmaking Workshop; Richard Powell describing the studio’s influence on his earliest curatorial work; and Nanette Carter describing Blackburn’s support of Black artists: “Again in the Black world 70s, 80s, 90s, New York City – this man was behind all of us...Everyone knew him.”
EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop extends its deepest gratitude to Hauser & Wirth Institute for their generous support, and to Creative Producer, Camille Crain Drummond for her guidance and expertise throughout the entirety of this project. We also wish to thank HC Huỳnh, Francesca Strada, Larry Jones, and all project narrators for helping preserve Bob’s legacy.
