Everyone is Invited to Make a Giant Impression!

Join us for a bold and creative celebration of the Year of the Snake, where art goes big—really big. We’re rolling out the ink (literally) for a steamroller print event, and we want you to be part of it!

How to Participate:

Sign up on Saturday, May 17^th – 1pm to 4pm. Drop by Saltgrass Printmakers and grab a block. Each block is $20.00. The blocks are 24” x 24” square. The blocks will be toned and sealed ready for you to start drawing and carving. You will have the entire summer to design and carve.

Starting at 2pm on May 17^th, Stefanie Dykes will cover the basics of carving. She’ll talk about tools and answer any questions you might have. 

Print Day – September 20^th, 2025

We will start at 11am and print until everyone’s block has been printed at least once.

Bring your block and wear clothes that can get inky. Saltgrass Printmakers will provide all the materials for printing. We will have aprons and gloves to wear while printing.

The blocks will be marked with on two edges indicating where your image will need to start and stop. We will link the blocks together to create snakes that combine your imagery with other participants. Think Exquisite Corpse. We will be able to mix and match the blocks to create multiple snakes throughout the day.  

Location: Saltgrass Printmakers, 412 S 700 W #110, Salt Lake City Utah 84104

Whether you’re a seasoned printmaker or a curious first timer, this is your chance to carve, ink, and press your design using a full-size steamroller. Expect big prints, bigger fun, and a chance to be part of a creative community bringing ancient symbols to life in an epic way.

Theme: Year of the Snake 
Channel the wisdom, mystery, and transformation of the snake into your block design.

Snakes are packed with symbolic meaning across cultures, mythologies, and literature. Here are some of the major themes and associations that come with snakes:

• Transformation & Rebirth. Shedding skin = renewal, growth, change. Common in spiritual and psychological journeys (e.g., Carl Jung’s symbolism).
• Duality: Good vs Evil. Snakes can be healers or killers, protectors or threats. In many myths, they’re seen as both sacred and dangerous.
• Fertility & Life Force. In ancient cultures (e.g. Mesoamerican, Hindu, Greek), snakes are linked with fertility, creation, or mother earth. Often tied to cyclical life forces.
• Wisdom & Knowledge. In the Bible, the serpent in Eden offers forbidden knowledge. In other contexts (e.g., the Greek god Asclepius), snakes are associated with healing and wisdom.
• Deception & Temptation. The snake is a classic symbol of trickery, manipulation, and seduction Often represents a hidden threat.
• Mystery & the Unknown. Snakes live in hidden places—underground, dark, silent—linking them to the subconscious, dreams, and the occult.
• Immortality & Eternity. The Ouroboros (a snake eating its own tail) is a symbol of infinity, cyclical time, and wholeness.

Mokuhanga – Japanese Woodblock Printmaking

This workshop will be an introduction to the printing process mokuhanga, which uses water-based pigments, a kento registration method, and hand printing with a baren. Participants will learn about tools and materials, and the carving and printing methods associated with this process. All participants will have the opportunity to carve and print a single-block and multi-block with multiple colors. 

Instructor: Katherine Kenal 

This intensive class will be held at Saltgrass Printmakers on two consecutive weekends. 

Dates: May 3, 4 & 10, 11, 2025. 

Times: 10 am to 5 pm each day. 
Location: 412 S 700 W #110, SLC UT

Limited to eight participants. All materials are included.

Class Fee: $350.00

Non-refundable deposit on the class is $150.00. The deposit will hold your spot in the class and includes your personal set of carving knives, baren, block paper and felts. 

CONTACT: Stefanie Dykes at stefanie.dykes822@gmail.com to register

After six weeks of hard work, we are ready to showoff what we have accomplished! 

Join us for our culminating event and exhibition at Saltgrass Printmakers. We will be celebrating the completion of ‘Ordinary Things – Screen Printing workshop’ for the 2025 Utah Division of Arts & Museums’ Creative Aging Program. 

We took our inspiration from Corita Kent. Kent taught art and printmaking at Immaculate Heart College in Hollywood, CA during the tumultuous 1960s. Kent had a simple methodology; Begin, look, connect & create, work & play, celebrate! We combined some of Kent’s drawing and observation exercises from her book ‘Learning By Heart’ to the medium of screen printing. We learned screen-printing techniques including multiple color registrations.

Hands-On events: 

Screen print demonstration starting at 2:00pm. Come pull your own ‘Warhol’ print to take home with you. We will also have a letterpress poster set up with one of Corita Kent’s ‘Rules’ for you to print on the Showcard press.  

Saltgrass Printmakers is grateful to have been awarded this grant for the fourth year to teach with the Creative Aging Program funded through the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.

Thank you to Salt Lake City Arts and Salt Lake County’s Zoo Arts & Parks for continued support!

Print by Kandace Steadman

Mark your calendars! 

Saltgrass Printmakers is hosting a Wayzgoose this November 8^th & 9th!

A Wayzgoose is a celebration thrown by printmakers celebrating the end of the season. 

Saltgrass Printmakers’ members will be showing off our freshest prints. You can chat with the printmakers about their prints and their favorite process during the Open Portfolio sessions Friday evening and Saturday afternoon.

Saltgrass Printmakers’ will be sharing printmaking techniques on Saturday starting at 11am. 

We’ll be offering a carving & printing hands-on activity. Come experiment with Gomuban (Japanese vinyl) relief printmaking. Easy to carve and shape! Saltgrass Printmakers will provide 3” x 3” Gomuban blocks, Speedball carving tools, ink and paper. You bring a design. We’ll carve together and then print your block! 

Alex Lines – Artist Reception

Alex Lines is Saltgrass Printmakers’ current Artist in Residence. 

Alex Lines (they/she) is a printmaker and painter originally from Salt Lake City. Currently living in North Carolina, Lines has returned to the valley to extend their printmaking techniques while working in a collaborative printshop.

Their work often celebrates the beauty of the natural world and our connection to it. They are currently exploring what it means to develop a personal style as an artist.

Join us Saturday, September 14th – 3pm to 6pm for an afternoon exhibition with Alex!

Saltgrass Printmakers’ next Artist in Residence is Bruce Crownover. Bruce will arrive at the shop on April 14, 2024 and be working throughout the week. He will be creating a reductive woodblock print during his time at the press. Saltgrass Printmakers will be hosting an artist reception and Q&A session on Saturday, April 20^th, starting at 1pm.

Artist reception Friday, April 19th 6pm to 8pm.

“Continuing in the long-standing tradition of exploring nature, I am fascinated by ordinary–and extraordinary­–landscapes, weather, and space. From the micro- to macroscopic, I find myself in the center and am compelled to draw or paint this juxtaposition, as I perceive it.”More about Bruce can be seen here http://crownoverart.com

Since 2009, Bruce has been working collaboratively with Todd Anderson and Ian Van Collier on “The Last Glacier” project. Their collective artwork is presented in a limited edition artbooks. Check it out! https://www.thelastglacier.com

“As a professional artist and craftsman, it’s been my daily practice to draw and paint whether at home or travelling. Most recently, I have been investigating observable changes in the environment through paintings, prints, and books. 

The Last Glacier, a well-received book published in 2015 (sold out edition of 15), is now in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the U.S. Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. Additional books include ROMO: The Last Glacier (Rocky Mountain National Park) and Sentinels, which focuses on tree migration in south-east Utah. Currently, I am working on two books, Baffin Island and Wind River Range, in addition to large-scale woodcuts about the Himalayas.”

“As a master printer, I have collaborated with scores of artists, including Chuck Close, Judy Pfaff, Sean Scully, David Lynch, and Robert Cottingham, to co-direct and develop thousands of successful fine art projects in a variety of print media. I’ve closely mentored hundreds of student employees and volunteers.”

“I wanted to do something really intimate, really small that didn’t draw an attention to itself….that was about intimate viewing.” Jacob Samuel, New Ground 2023

Etching is a commitment, but this course is designed in small learning portions. Participants can sign up for the sessions they are interested in. Each session will focus on a particular etching  technique. We will begin each session with a demonstration of the technique followed by plenty of shop time to complete the print. 

While sequential, these sessions are designed as independent workshops for beginning to intermediate students. Each session fee includes all your tools and materials necessary to complete a 5” x 7” print. 

Line

First Session: Saturdays, January 6 – February 24, 2024 – 12:30pm to 4pm

Contact: Stefanie Dykes – stefanie.dykes822@gmail.com to reserve your place in the class.

Maximum 6 participants

Students will be working on copper plates and drawing with etching needles to create their imagery. We will be using a traditional hard ground application to draw through and expose the copper. Once the image is complete, students will submerge the copper plate in the etching bath to incise the drawing below the surface of the copper plate. We will cover basic copper plate preparation, image transfer, hard ground application, etching the image, ink applications and printing the plate with Saltgrass Printmakers’ Takach etching press. 

Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Saturdays, January 6, 13 & 24, 2024 – 12:30pm to 4pm 

Class Fee: $135.00 includes 5” x 7” copper, etching needle/burnisher, ink, BFK Rives printmaking paper and everything else! If you have your own etching tools, class fee is $125.00.  

Line & Tone

“Discovering a new tool or a new medium was for him…an incentive for finding new ways for creating images.” David Hockney The Complete Early Etchings 1961-1964

Second Session: February 3, 10 & 24, 2024 – 12:30pm to 4pm

For the second session, we will be adding tone & value to our images. We will start with a line etched image and then apply an aquatint. We will cover the basics for applying an aquatint (so called because aquatints can look like watercolor washes) to establish values within the image. We will look at David Hockney and his early autobiographical etchings and Paula Rego’s nursery rhythm etchings. This session can be coupled with the etching one session.  

**I’m thinking about building our own DIY Claude glass which is a tool for drawing to help compress the value range. With a Claude glass, visible tones go from near black to some sort of grey. The Claude Glass appears to group images into a limited number of similar values. Many artists seem to work within a simplified tonal range, and this helps to give clarity to the image. 

Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate 

Class Fee: $135.00 includes 5” x 7” copper, etching needle/burnisher, ink, BFK Rives printmaking paper and everything else! If you have your own etching tools, class fee is $125.00.  

A $25.00 non-refundable deposit will be required to hold your spot. Contact Stefanie Dykes stefanie.dykes822@gmail.com.