This site is inspired by the eighteenth-century British poet, printmaker, and painter, William Blake. Students of English at Washington State University have a unique opportunity to spend a semester studying Blake’s poetry and engravings and then creating their own images and poems in the Fine Arts Print Studio.

Blake used copper and acid to create the relief etched plates to his poems, from Songs of Innocence and Experience to Jerusalem. Here, students use a somewhat different process, although it is not unlike what Blake would have done.

Starting out with images drawn on paper, students transfer them onto Plexiglas plates (two different sizes, 5x7 and 8x10). Then begins the labor-intensive job of scribing the images and, in some cases, the poems, using a variety of engraving tools. The next step is to fill the plates with ink, wipe them clean, and prepare them for application to the paper in the press. Once the images are printed to paper, students then hand color the prints with watercolors just as Blake did.

Images and Poems:


Reviews of the Workshop:

"Footprints Left by a Romantic"—Daily Evergreen Newspaper

"Imagine"—WSU Magazine


Instructors:

Debbie Lee is Associate Professor of English at Washington State University. She received a PhD from the University of Arizona and currently teaches courses in British Romanticism and the relationship between text and image among poet/artists, including Blake. Lee has several books on Romanticism, including Slavery and the Romantic Imagination (UPennPress, 2002; 2004) and Romantic Liars: Obscure Women Who Became Impostors and Challenged an Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Kevin Haas is Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Washington State University. He received his training at the Art Institute in Chicago and currently teaches printmaking and digital imaging. His work explores urban and industrial landscapes though prints, photos, and digital media. Described as a meditation on montage, urban spaces, and collective memory, Haas’s work often takes the form of books, souvenirs, puzzles, or web specific media.