printmaking

The Department of Art Provides Ample Resources to Help Their Students Succeed

In a BYU art class Brandon J. Gunn (BFA ’03) quickly discovered that drawing and painting weren’t his forte. But his wife, Nicole Flores Gunn (BFA ’01), had enjoyed a lithography class from Wayne Kimball and thought Brandon might like it too. He did—so much that he eventually went on to study at the University of New Mexico’s prestigious Tamarind Institute, where he today serves as education director. “I’m half teacher, one quarter artist, and one quarter technician,” he says. Lithography’s laborious printmaking process—involving stone, grease, and chemicals—suits Gunn. “Printmaking gives me time to think,” he says. “The technical part lets me step away to look at things in a new way. . . and add things that I can’t just do by drawing.” Read the article and see Gunn’s work at magazine.byu.edu.

Brandon Gunn graduated from BYU empowered to continue exploring and combining multiple personal interests in a powerful way. Rather than pursue a one-dimensional career, he learned he could be an artist, a master printer and a teacher simultaneously. With the strong technical and conceptual foundation provided by his undergraduate education at BYU, Gunn went on to receive an MFA in printmaking at Illinois State University, followed by an intense two-year study of lithography at Tamarind Institute in New Mexico to become a master printer. Gunn described the institute as “really competitive, and the only school like it in the world for printmaking,” so he was excited to receive a letter of acceptance to the eight-person program. “I was over the moon,” Gunn recalled. “The thing I thought I had no chance at was the one I’d gotten.” After teaching printmaking and collaboration for eight years at Concordia University in Quebec and then at Indiana University Bloomington, Gunn was asked to return to Tamarind, where he has served as the education director for three years. In this current capacity, Gunn is responsible for preparing first-year students to become the best printers in the world. Read the full story at art.byu.edu.