Abrazos Press: Teaching at Home and Away

Annie Silverman has over 30 years experience in teaching college-level adults in various disciplines ranging from paper-making to relief printmaking into artist book forms. Being the “adjunct queen” at Massachusetts College of Art helped her hone skills in workshop design and afforded her the time to discover methods and materials which create respectful, inspiring points of entry into art-making for adult audiences.

Since the inception of Abrazos Press in 2007 Annie has had a teaching studio where she routinely offers classes in Woodblock Printmaking, Mixed Media Printmaking and Artist Books throughout the year. 

The small, intimate classes at Abrazos Press are geared to individual participants’ projects and often have repeating students who have studied with Annie for several years. It is indeed gratifying to have the privilege of working with people in a sustained way and be able to witness their aesthetic, technical and conceptual development. 

Special tutorials and projects are also part of the mix of activities that occur at the print studio. In 2015, MassArt Print Alum Michael Marafitte and Annie printed two editions of prints by Ed Emberley with original, 50 year old woodblocks from Emberley’s book Paul Bunyan. Former director of the Penland School of Crafts, Jean McLaughlin came for a weeklong printmaking residency over the July 4th week in 2019, and artist Wendy Fulenwider Liszt came for a crash intensive for a few mornings of work in the fall of 2019.

Annie has travelled internationally to be a visiting artist/teacher to residencies in Ireland and Denmark, and has a working relationship with the Fynsk Graphic Workshop in Odense, Denmark where she was teaching mixed media printmaking most recently in May of 2019.