On Oct. 25, Art Club traveled downtown to the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council to learn about the process of printmaking. Artist Neal Harrington informed the students on how he creates his own pieces. Workshops were set up to allow the students to participate in hands on activities and receive first-hand experience. 

Although the students didn’t carve anything themselves for safety reasons, they were able to learn, through demonstrations, how to apply the ink using brayers, commonly identified as rollers, onto small wood carvings that would later be pressed onto a sheet of paper. Printmaking is one of the more uncommon forms of art that numerous people struggle to understand, however, with practice, their skills can be improved. 

“Sometimes it’s discouraging when you see an [artist] that’s better than you. I guess I was just determined that I was going to get better, and I had to work at it,” Harrington said. “Drawing is about seeing the relationship of things. What does this look like? Where is this in relationship to my nose? I always tell my art class the lesson is to stop thinking.”

After workshops and tours of the art gallery, members of Art Club were able to return back to campus with a new grasp of the art world and its different realms. 

“My favorite part of the trip was definitely looking at the prints made by Neal Harrington,” junior Britney Ankton said. “I learned that printmaking is also a part of art. You can take little designs and create them into all these different prints and can [make money] off of them.”

The historic Regional Arts Center is constantly offering classes open to all ages for those interested in improving their art skills. This program offers numerous events and courses to help unite the community through art appreciation. 

“We want students to learn when they come to [Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council],” education coordinator Brooke Hopkins said. “I think our idea, having students come to look at the art and see the artists who created it, is to get the students thinking and to broaden their horizons.”