Art of Clay Printing with Artist Mitch Lyons (DVD)

Format: DVD
Run Time: 68 minutes
Studio: VideoCine Services, Inc.
Language: English
Dimensions: 7.5" x 5.4" x 0.6"
Shipping Weight: 0.2 lbs.

Award-winning clay artist, Mitch Lyons developed the medium of printing with colored clay more than 25 years ago. "As far as I know," says Lyons, "no one has ever printed from clay before."

Lyons studied printmaking at The Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts. It was while completing his Master's Degree in Ceramics at Temple University's Tyler School of Art that he made his discovery. He had been forming coils with colored clay. Placing the clay coils on a slab, he covered them with a piece of clean newsprint, and using a rolling pin, rolled over the newsprint to inlay the colors. When he peeled the newsprint off, he noticed an image printed on it. He has been refining his process ever since.

"There is a real lushness about wet clay that I like very much," says Lyons. "Printing in clay retains that lushness. It is a medium I respond to very strongly."

Over the years, Mitch Lyons has received considerable recognition: Two purchase prizes from Delaware and Illinois, two Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts Awards, a Visual Arts Grant from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, and a Vermont Studio Colony residency.

This new printing medium has become so popular, Lyons now gives workshops all over the country. Recently he was selected by Virginia's Museum of Art Outreach Program to demonstrate the art of clay printing.

He now shares with you in this video, the steps he uses to create his clay monoprints using this unique printing process.