Lawrence Lithography prints on display

Contact: Cara Barnes
Photo of prints from Lawrence Lithography Workshop.

Prints from Lawrence Lithography Workshop

KALAMAZOO—Prints from the Lawrence Lithography Workshop will be on display through Friday, March 22, at Western Michigan University's Richmond Center for Visual Arts. The exhibit will open in the Monroe-Brown Gallery Thursday, Feb. 21.

The Lawrence Lithography Workshop was established by Michael Sims in 1979 in Lawerence, Kan., as a contract printing and teaching facility for local and regional artists. It provided a place where artists with little or no printmaking experience could collaborate with a master printer to produce original lithographs, and was one of the very few independent presses in the Midwest. Over time, the workshop expanded its operation beyond contract printing for local artists to an increased emphasis on publishing regional and national artists.

Today most projects are done on an invitational basis with Lawrence Lithography acting as the primary publisher or co-publisher, though contract printing remains a significant part of the business. To date, The Lawrence Lithography Workshop has collaborated with over 130 artists from across the United States.

Michael Sims

Sims received his bachelor of fine arts from Western Michigan University and his master of fine arts in printmaking from Ohio University, then began teaching lithography and drawing at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. In 1978, he left KU to work as an assistant at Landfall Press in Chicago. Sims returned to Lawrence the following year with a number of lithographic stones and a small antique Fuchs & Lang press. Those tools, along with the support of area artists and friends, prompted him to set up shop, where the workshop operated and grew for eighteen years. In 1997 Sims closed the shop in Lawrence and moved the facility to Sunland Park, New Mexico; one more move in 2001 relocated the shop to its current location in Kansas City, MO.

Gallery hours

RCVA galleries are open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, and noon to 6 p.m. Saturday.

For more information, contact Don Desmett at donald.desmett@wmich.edu or (269) 387-2455.