Excerpt:
This past November, Allison Uttley Bianco ’01 had a full-circle moment. The award-winning visual artist spent a day on Mount Holyoke College’s campus sharing her latest work and tips on printmaking with students in the Printmaking I and Advanced Studio courses. “The art department felt so familiar,” says Bianco, who majored in studio art and Spanish. “The students and faculty were super welcoming. … They were really engaged. I felt very comfortable and at home.”
The experience also sparked a memory from Bianco’s senior year, when Kiki Smith spent a week as artist-in-residence at the Mount Holyoke Printmaking Workshop. Smith brought along her master printer, the late Carol Weaver, a co-owner of Harlan & Weaver, a New York City workshop and publisher that specializes in etching and intaglio. Bianco remembers looking on in wonder as Smith, who was working with the College’s taxidermy collection, sketched an intricate dead bird at the bottom of a zinc plate.
Bianco says she remembers thinking, “‘Oh my gosh, what’s happening?’ It was another world. This is an artist. This is also someone who’s really made it. They’ve got their master printer traveling with them. … We were observing Kiki in her element.”
