By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Fort Hays State University's Moss-Thorns Gallery of Art is hosting its first traveling exhibit since moving to its new home in the Center for Art and Design building.
"Landfall Press: Five Decades Exhibition" is a retrospective of 50 years of Jack Lemon's print shop, which was in Santa Fe, N.M.
Lemon is a 1963 printmaking graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute. Landfall has printed more than 3,000 editions of lithographs, woodcuts, etchings and digital prints, according to the press's website.
The exhibit includes 60 works. It was supposed to begin touring in 2019, but the pandemic delayed the tour. The Moss-Thorns is the first stop on the exhibition's tour.
Lemon was at a reception Sept. 16 that kicked off the exhibit's time at the Moss-Thorns, which will be on display through Oct. 28 at FHSU.
"I got tired of teaching," he said of the founding of the press. "I decided I would really do something. It just came alive."
Lemon said he choose the prints for the exhibit to represent each decade of the press's operation. There's a book that accompanies the exhibit titled "Landfall Press: Five Decades."
Lemon said he didn't have favorites among the exhibit's work.
"There's a lot of them that I do like," he said, "I actually like most of them because I picked them."
He said his greatest challenge was marketing the work once the prints were completed.
When Lemon started Landfall in the 1970s, the fine art print business was booming. The industry was depressed during the 1990s and stayed that way for some time, he said.
Lemon said he enjoyed working with the artists in his print shop, some of which included Christo, Philip Pearlstein, Robert Cottingham, Vernon Fisher, Terry Allen, Robert Arneson, Jim Dine, Sal LeWitt, Allen Ruppersberg, Lesley Dill, Kara Walker and James Drake.
"Making is more fun," Lemon said. "If you're working with the artists, it's a lot of fun."
He added of the artists with whom he worked, "You pick one and you work with them. And there is just a lot of good camaraderie that goes on and a lot of connection in talking with them and sitting down at the lunch table.
"It's been a really nice 50 years," he said. "There's been ups and downs and turnarounds, but I like it."
Lemon, 86, is retired and still living in the Southwest. A long-time employee of the press took over the business, and it is now operating as Black Rock.
Lemon said it's been hard to leave the profession. He still sees artists that he would like to work with, including at FHSU.
The Moss-Thorns Gallery of Art is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. The gallery will be open from noon to 5 p.m. the first three Saturdays in October, especially for this exhibit.
"This is such a great opportunity for Fort Hays and the Moss-Thorns Gallery," said Colin Schmidtberger, gallery director. "For the community of Hays to have this level of artwork to come here is just fantastic. We can't thank Landfall Press enough for letting us be the inaugural show."