Printmaker’s new direction will be on display at fall fair
Photo by Rachel Pressley
Anna Bryant had a tranquil space and a freed-up calendar.
Last spring, the printmaker started an artist’s residency at the Vermont Studio Center. “I had all this time to just make art in this remote and beautiful place. There was nothing else for me to do — I had nothing but quiet time.”
But quiet time is not necessarily peacetime, and it was, in fact, an emotionally turbulent period for Bryant.
The fall before, in September 2024, she’d been excited to partner with printmaker, artist, and educator Denise Markbreit —founder of Asheville Print Studio in the River Arts District. Everything was falling into place, like a dream come true. But by the end of the month, the monster storm Helene had destroyed the space and that dream. “I lost some work in the flood,” Bryant says, “but the most detrimental thing I lost was my entire archive of hand-carved printing blocks.”
But six months later she was in Vermont, happy to get back into printmaking. “I hadn’t created anything [since the flood] — the longest period in my career. But when I tried to find inspiration and imagery along the usual thought pathways, nothing was working. Probably because I hadn’t had time to reflect after the trauma of the hurricane. I wasn’t even sure if we’d have printing presses when I got back to Asheville.
“During that first month of residency,” she continues, “I just felt like I was flailing. I felt so much pressure to produce, but nothing was working for me, and none of it felt representative of my thought patterns and inspiration at the time.
“Then, out there in the middle of nowhere, I ran out of screenprint ink.”
Bryant ordered more, but unsure how long it would take to arrive, she resorted to using intaglio ink, normally reserved for printing with metal plates (the art form originated in medieval Europe). She began experimenting, blending techniques from different genres to manipulate the ink directly onto the screen. “You have a vision of what you want to create,” Bryant observes, “and as you experiment, sometimes there are happy accidents along the way. Then you step back and see what you just did with the materials and wonder, ‘How in the world did I get it to do that?’”
In her case, such unexpected magic completely transformed her art. Bryant earned a Bachelor of Science degree from UNC-Charlotte but is primarily a self-taught artist. That autodidactic tendency allowed her to turn the untimely calamity into an entirely new body of monoprint work, born just at the right time to salvage her residency and steer her in a new direction.
“At first it was such a mysterious thing — lots [more] happy accidents and mistakes. There were no rules to follow. It was a different process and subject matter, but it really drew me in. I have spent the past two years learning and refining, and every day I spend in the studio I learn something new.”
Bryant creates layered abstract images, where no two prints are alike and a single print may represent dozens of different applications of ink, with different tones and colors subtly blended together. “That discovery of how intaglio behaves was so exciting, because it’s like painting meets printmaking. I build pretty condensed images on the mesh, then pull them down with a squeegee. I did one the other day that had hundreds of pulls.”
The image is affected by the angle and pressure of the squeegee and the viscosity of the ink, and intaglio ink can stay on her palette for nine months or more because it doesn’t dry until it touches the fiber of the paper. Bryant works with different kinds of paper that have their own unique characteristics, and now she’s embarking on printmaking on canvas.
Bryant and Markbreit rose resiliently from the proverbial ashes— and the literal muddy muck left in the wake of Helene. They hosted the grand opening of Print House, a spacious, two-story downtown Asheville studio, gallery, and education hub, two weeks after Bryant returned from Vermont. The space is thriving, as is their artwork and their contribution to the revived artistic community.
Bryant was also inducted into the Southern Highland Craft Guild as part of their Emerging Artist Program that seeks to re-energize the prestigious group by recognizing early-career artists. “What began as a visionary experiment to bring new voices into one of the region’s most established arts organizations has grown into something more significant: a signal that the [Guild] is actively working to widen its doors,” the org’s outreach coordinator Elizabeth Walton stated in April.
Bryant notes that the program gives its EAP members professional-development support leading up to the fair. “As someone who has been building my practice here in Western North Carolina,” she says, “it feels really meaningful to be included in an organization that has such a long history in Appalachian craft.”
Anna Bryant, Asheville, Print House, 29 Carolina Lane, annabryantart.com/ printhouseavl.com, with work on display at Atomic Furnishing, 178 Broadway. Bryant will exhibit Thursday, Oct. 15 through Sunday, Oct. 18 at the fall edition of the Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands (Harrah’s Cherokee Center—Asheville, 87 Haywood St., southernhighlandguild.org).