Master Printer: Bill Lagattuta and Friends

December 6, 2024 – April 5, 2025

Petti/Peiser Gallery

tCuratorial Statement:

In 2024, Master Printer, Bill Lagattuta generously made a significant donation of his professional artwork to Appalachian State University, his undergraduate alma mater. Thirty of Lagattuta’s fine art prints, created in collaboration with such well-known artists as Suzi Davidoff, Lesley Dill, Jim Dine, Tony Fitzpatrick, Tom Joyce, Louise Nevelson, Lilianna Porter, Johnnie Winona Ross, May Stevens, and Hollis Sigler, amoung others, are now part of the permanent collection at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts. A master printer works diligently behind-the-scenes to assist artists in realizing their vision for fine art prints. Master printers are talented, disciplined, diplomatic, adventurous, and insightful in their supportive efforts to achieve a print that meets an artist’s aesthetic expectations and their own exacting technical standards.

According to the Tamarind Institute where Lagattuta presided as the master printer for 27 years, “Lithography was invented in 1798 in Germany by Aloys Senefelder, apparently by accident … and … is one of the most versatile printmaking techniques that allows for a wide range of mark-making tools and materials. Unlike woodcut or intaglio, where the marks are incised into the block of plate, lithography is a chemical-based planographic (printing from a flat surface) medium that hinges on the principle that oil and water do not mix.

Tamarind editions are hand-printed and carefully matched to the artist’s approval print (known as a bon à tirer or B.A.T. meaning good to pull). Each impression includes the chop of the workshop and the collaborating printer.” In this case, master printer, Bill Lagattuta. A chop mark or seal is made with an embossing tool in the margin of the print. Typically, the chop marks will appear on the front of a print but because the collaborating artist determines the location of the chops, some prints may be signed and “blind stamped” on the back. Collaborative printmaking requires trust and clear communication between an artist and the master printer as they refine the vision for each print. The resulting artwork is determined by the dynamics of this unique creative relationship.

Madera Canyon Walk, Wire Rush, 199, Suzi Davidoff with Bill Lagattuta

Sidewinder, 2008, Tom Joyce with Bill Lagattuta

The Garden Fence, 2014, Enrique Martinez Celaya with Bill Lagattuta

Every Chance She Gets She Takes It, 1990, Hollis Sigler with Bill Lagattuta

La Libertad se Defiende y se Muere por Ella, 2015, Osmeivy Ortega Pacheco with Bill Lagattuta

Apple Oil I, 1998, Roberto Juarez with Bill Lagattuta

Madera Canyon Walk, Wire Rush, 199, Suzi Davidoff with Bill Lagattuta

En Honor de Frida Kahlo, 1998, Luis Tapia with Bill Lagattuta

Atom, 1998, Tony Fitzpatrick with Bill Lagattuta

About the artist

After graduating with a BA from Appalachian State University in 1973 and his MFA from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in 1975, Bill Lagattuta completed his master printer certificate training at the University of New Mexico’s Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque in 1979. Tamarind Institute offers the only formal education program in the world for collaborative printmaking; they specialize in the fine art printing technique of lithography. From Tamarind, Lagattuta went on to work in a number of well-known print shops including Vermillion Editions (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Sette/Segura Publishers (Tempe, Arizona), and Peregrine Press (Dallas, Texas) before returning to worked as the Master Printer and Shop Manager at Tamarind in1988 until he retired in 2015. Lagattuta collaborated on more than 600 editions completed during his 27-year tenure at Tamarind. Through the fine art of creative collaboration, Lagattuta afforded visiting artists the opportunity to work under his tutelage to learn lithography and assisted them in translating their diverse aesthetic sensibilities (rarely inherently print-focused) into the lithographic medium.