San Francisco artist Sandow Birk didn’t know anything about printmaking until he started working with Paul Mullowney in 2004, so a few years later when the master printer invited him to his studio in Hawaii, Birk took it seriously. Mullowney had some downtime in his shop and wanted to work with an artist.

“I said, ‘I don’t really have any ideas,’” Birk recalled, “and he said, ‘That’s okay, just come out anyway.’”

Flipping through a book in Mullowney’s library, the two found a series of small Belgian prints, each no bigger than a dollar bill, from the 1600s about the Thirty Years War, “considered by some to be the first anti-war art,” Birk said. As they toyed with ideas for a similar project, Birk’s wife weighed in, suggesting large-scale prints. Mullowney then suggested they use wood.

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OREGON CULTURAL HUBS: An occasional series

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“We jumped in his pickup truck and went to Home Depot and got the biggest pieces of wood we could find in Maui,” Birk said. A year and a half and 15 sheets of plywood later, the two had produced a visual history of the American war in Iraq, The Depravities of War, jointly published by presses in Maui and California.

That’s the modus operandi the 65-year-old Mullowney brings to Portland, where he built a sprawling shop right after the pandemic hit. It’s an extraordinary facility where collaboration is both essential and inspiring for the artists who take advantage of the many workshops offered or who come aboard for a longer haul as an intern, apprentice, or artist-in-residence. It’s a unique cultural hub whose growing number of spokes reach well beyond the local nonprofits and schools the company partners with, to professional artists around the state, the country, and the world.

Mullowney Printing Company landed on my radar a year ago when the art gallery at Linfield University in McMinnville featured an exhibition of prints made there by a half-dozen artists using analog methods — including a few sprawling pieces by Birk.

The largest, White House, was an 11-foot-tall image of an imaginary monument to American history in which only the achievements of people of color were illustrated, using imagery and handwritten text. The piece, resembling an astonishingly detailed page ripped from enormous graphic novel, was made from two dozen copperplate etchings.

When Mullowney and his business partner, fellow master printer Harry Schneider, told visitors at the Linfield show about the centuries-old technologies used to make these prints, I knew that I simply had to see the place.

From San Francisco to Portland

Mullowney transplanted his printing business to Oregon from San Francisco about six years ago, forced out by high rents. In December 2020, he got an occupancy permit for 5,000 square feet of space in a nearly block-sized building in Northwest Portland.

Little more than a month later, the pandemic shut the world down. That turned out to be a dark cloud with a silver lining: It enabled Mullowney and Schneider to build a fine-art-print publishing studio without the distractions of work coming through the door.

“It worked out great that we were able to do the buildout uninterrupted by projects,” Mullowney said. “I mean, we barely survived like everyone else, but we’re here now.”

Here and thriving, in fact. With the caveat that funding is a perennial concern and struggle for anyone whose business is the arts — and this is a business — it’s fair to say that five years on, the silver lining of that first strange year has become sunshine.

As an economic entity, Mullowney Printing Company isn’t unique, but it is unconventional. Much of the work is supported by the company’s nonprofit fiscal sponsor, the Undergrowth Educational Print Fund, which allows the privately owned commercial printing operation also to function as a training ground for established, professional artists and emerging artists and students. In practical terms, it also is something like a community arts center that, through outreach to minorities and underserved populations, gives ordinary folk access to tools and expertise they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.

Mullowney grants that it’s a “confusing” model. Basically, through organizations such as The Ford Family Foundation and, more recently, the Boedecker Foundation, the Undergrowth fund provides financial means to “support and nurture artists’ careers as printmakers and practicing studio artists working in traditional print media to expand their technical skills and knowledge base through learning experiences in a professional print studio,” according to the description on the website.

Since around 2022, the fund has grown to support seven programs: the Federico Sevilla Sierra Memorial Residency, the Ford Family Foundation Hallie Ford Residency, Studio Apprenticeship Program, Gather:Make:Shelter Partnership, New Avenues for Youth Internship, the North Pole Studio Partnership, and the Portland Public Schools High School Internship Program.

“The Ford Family Foundation is hugely important to us,” Mullowney said. “They’re sort of like our main donor right now, it’s a huge part of what we do and we’re extremely grateful for their support.”

There’s a story behind every funding stream, of course. Here’s just one, which emerged from the first of several apprenticeships Mullowney has hosted over the years.

Four years ago, after earning her BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), Alejandra Arias was steered by a mentor toward Mullowney Printing, where she got an apprenticeship through the Undergrowth fund and eventually became the lead printer for a couple of years before continuing her work in Brooklyn.

Her father, Hector, was so impressed with her experience that as 2021 drew to a close he invited Mullowney and Schneider to dinner and asked how he might help expand opportunities his daughter had enjoyed.

The resulting Arias Sevilla Family Charitable Fund helps pay for the residency named after the late Federico Sevilla Sierra, a Mexican printer and Hector’s father-in-law. The residency “aims to preserve traditional printmaking practices by offering artists of Mexican heritage space and support to create work, while building connections between diverse communities.” Since 2022, seven resident artists have enjoyed two to three weeks of 24-hour access to dedicated studio space along with travel and accommodation expenses, an honorarium, a per diem, and supplies.

“Our two kids are artists, so we’re learning from their journey,” Hector Arias told me. “We are huge believers that art has the power to transform societies, and that artists are not just observers, they are the architects of cultural and social change.”

‘Respectful of the artists’

The singular character of Mullowney Printing Company may be found in the building’s history and unassuming physical presence and in the business model Mullowney and his team have built to pursue their mission of “creating a hub of innovation, collaboration, and education in celebration of our community.”

The concrete structure was designed by famed Italian-American Pietro Belluschi, who started as a draftsman in a Portland firm. It was built in 1946 in the International style of postwar America; Belluschi designed it, in fact, for its present purpose: printing.

The former Sweeney, Straub & Dimm Printing Plant, which occupies nearly a full block on Northwest 17th Avenue between Glisan and Hoyt streets, has a rich history and is listed on both the state and national historic building registries. Printing operations on the second floor of the nondescript building are not visible from the street; it’s not at all obvious what might be going on inside.

The shop’s name appears by a door on the west side, but no “open” or “welcome” sign greets visitors. If you don’t already have the door code (some artists do) someone on staff must buzz you in. The shop is not ADA-accessible, which prohibits Mullowney from having public gallery space. Many artists I spoke with, including some who have lived in Portland for years and another who works just a few blocks away, did not know the place existed — until they did.

Printing in Paul Mullowney’s family predates the building he and his crew work in by nearly half a century. His grandfather, J.D. Mullowney, ran a commercial print studio in Minneapolis in the early 1900s until it became a casualty of the Great Depression. Paul’s printmaking life began in the Brooklyn studio run by the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt during the late 1980s. Later, he worked at Crown Point Press in San Francisco, where he earned the title of master printer and met Birk.

In addition to the stint in Hawaii, Mullowney founded a press in Japan, where he developed an appreciation of the “ecosystem of Japanese papermakers.” He still supports that system by using an array of traditional handmade papers from Japan, such as kozo paper, which is made from the bark of a mulberry tree — and he’s always happy to introduce these materials to artists who’ve not yet discovered them.

“When I started working with Paul and Harry, they said, ‘Let’s try this Somerset paper, we think you might like this,’ and they were right,” said Portland painter Stephen Hayes. The resulting work was part of the Linfield exhibition. Also at Mullowney’s suggestion, Hayes used two types of traditional handmade Japanese paper — gampi and kozo — for 10 monoprints on display at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery.

To be fair, Hayes added, sometimes he’s rejected an idea from one of the printers. Mullowney’s shop is an idea factory and the printers try to defer to the artist’s vision.

“They’re very respectful of the artists in making their work,” Hayes said.

An analog oasis in a digital world

Before he acquired the Northwest Portland building, Mullowney split his time between his studio in San Francisco and Portland, where he taught art at PNCA. Schneider, a Portlander who did his undergrad work at the University of Oregon, was one of his students. After UO, Schneider landed an internship with Hatch Show Print, the storied printer of concert posters based in Nashville, Tenn., that celebrated its 145th anniversary last year. After finishing at PNCA in 2016, Mullowney invited Schneider to work with him at the San Francisco studio he’d opened in 2011, which he did until 2019, when they decided to move Mullowney Printing Company to Portland.

As a millennial, the first generation embedded in computer technology, 38-year-old Schneider sees connections between 21^st-century tech and the centuries-old technologies students and artists are introduced to at Mullowney Printing.

“I think the work that we do here with old technologies helps inform how we interact with new technologies,” he said. “I think it helps inform young designers, it gives them a way to create and understand some of the technologies that they’re using.”

When I met Mullowney in McMinnville last year, one of the things he told me was that the business is, among other things, a publisher. Once they have a plate with an image, regardless of the tools and skills used to put it there, printers attach it to a machine and make editions — not “copies,” because each is a unique object. “A motto I use is, ‘Always fresh, never digital,’” he told me. “We don’t do ‘command-print.’”

Mullowney and his crew say that the students and emerging artists who end up working in the shop, whether for a few weekends or a longer residency, are clearly interested in keeping at least one foot in the analog end of the pool and maintaining a physical connection to artistic work with their hands.

“They’ve all grown up with iPhones and all this technology we didn’t have when we were younger,” Mullowney said. “Young people are really hungry for this analog work. They appreciate connecting to traditions that are 400 years old, or even older, like Japanese woodblock printing. There’s a real need and desire among young artists to stick with this and get away from their computers and iPhones, I think.”

The diversity of programming and of the equipment available in such a large space means multiple projects are in the works at any one time, and younger artists have an opportunity to see the work that’s been done in that same space by professionals, and occasionally even meet them.

“It’s fascinating,” Schneider said. “The one thing I always tell my apprentices is that when we have successful artists come through here, like Stephen Hayes or Marie Watt and even some nationally known artists, it’s important to pay attention to how they create, to see that creative flow and the decisions they’re making about their art.”

I visited Mullowney Printing Company several times over the summer. The main shop consists of a long, wide rectangular room that gets plenty of natural light from windows on the west and a narrow, vertical clerestory skylight. On the other side of a wall running nearly the length of the space is a smaller studio, storage rooms, and a cozy break area. At the far end, there’s a darkroom. The shop can handle etching and relief printing, photogravure, direct gravure, screen printing, letterpress, and monotype printing — some of it done with large, hand-operated equipment that would be too expensive and too large for a single artist.

There was always work going on, with artists huddled over workbenches and presses with projects-in-progress, sometimes working together and talking quietly, sometimes alone and silent. The high degree of focus was particularly evident when an artist attempted to align two separate images by carefully glueing one next to another — the building blocks of a single piece of art.

“This place is really special,” said Katie Sullivan, an art teacher at Ida B. Wells High School in Portland. She’d brought one of her students, Kate Frewing, a senior this year who interned at Mullowney over the summer and was helping Sullivan one morning I dropped by.

“Kate’s the teacher sometimes,” Sullivan said. “I’m half a decade into printmaking; I feel like I’m such a beginner, and their ability to see the level of craftsmanship that’s possible is mind-blowing. To get to step into this space as an artist is just amazing.”

Another artist I met was Gloria Kondrup, a recent transplant to Portland from Pasadena, Calif., where she taught at a design center where she’d had access to this type of equipment. Portland’s reputation as an artistic hive attracted her, and Mullowney Printing is just one example. Only a few weeks after moving here, she heard from a friend that someone had dropped out at the last minute from a summer workshop, so she reached out to Mullowney and filled the spot.

“It’s a very creative environment, Portland has that reputation,” she said. “These guys here are terrific, really terrific. Artists are always on their own to create.”

I also spent some time talking with Jessica Lagunas, an artist who is the founder and creative director of IDEAL PDX, a collaborative group of Latino visual artists in Portland. The group offers private workshops, community mural-design after-school art residencies, and other projects. When she started getting acquainted with Portland’s Latino artists, one thing she saw was a need for professional training. Partnering with Mullowney enabled the group to realize that goal, getting several artists into the shop last summer to broaden their creative horizons.

“I knew this would be a boon for them in their careers as artists,” she said. One of them, Jose Gonzales, told me that the experience “turned my brain on to a different creative side.”

“That really makes me want to work harder and think about different techniques,” he said. “Just being there in the building and talking to fellow artists and Paul and Harry and seeing what they’re doing and just feeding off them and asking them every possible question about the machines, how they work, how they do this. It’s like the kid in the candy store.”

One of the new partnerships Mullowney Printing embarked on this year was with the nonprofit North Pole Studio, which works with artists with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities. These two centers of creativity are separated only by I-405 and three blocks, but like many artists I spoke with, Phoebe Mol, North Pole Studio’s director of community learning and engagement, hadn’t heard about the printing shop that lies only a quarter mile west of her office — until she did.

“Mullowney does a lot of really cool programming for communities of people that don’t get much access to this type of fine art studio space, and I think they were excited to work with us for that reason,” she said. “We were excited to work with them, because it’s such a huge deal in terms of access, just a really wonderful opportunity for artists.”

“I’ve always wanted to work with this population,” Mullowney said. “My wife is an art therapist and she was running an organization in California that services neurodivergent clients. So, I was like, ‘Let’s do a workshop, and let’s publish something.’ Because by publishing it and putting it out there, they can sell many impressions and that will help raise money for the organization, and the artists get commissions, of course, so it’s great.”

For the North Pole Studio collaboration, five artists participated in 12 workshops — six at Mullowney, and six at North Pole Studio. In each of the first five monthly sessions, which started in January, artists learned a different type of printing: monoprinting, etching/drypoint, linocut, screenprint, and letterpress. In the sixth and final session at Mullowney in June, artists were asked to do a project using their favorite method.

The result was a collection of pieces that are part of a show, Future Mythologies, that’s at the J. Pepin Art Gallery through Nov. 30. The Portland studio describes the work this way: “These prints speak a new symbolic language — reimagining folklore, identity, and storytelling through ink and impression. What emerges is not just technical accomplishment, but the forging of myth: layered, expressive works that look both backward and forward.”

One of the North Pole Studio artists, Eva Adnarel, incorporated ideas from Eastern Orthodox Christianity (a church Adnarel is no longer a part of) in an etching and Vietnamese folktales in a linocut block print as their final project. “As the Orthodox religion made itself a big part of my childhood,” they said, “I often reference its iconography in terms of style, symbolism and visual elements in my work.”

“It was a positive experience for our artists,” said Mol, an artist herself who attended every session. “We were doing a lot of group critique and reflecting and learning together, hearing about artists sharing their processes and thoughts behind the work they were making, which helps people reflect on their own work in a new way. Having that kind of communal learning model at Mullowney was super valuable.”

“That’s what we do with all our artists,” Mullowney said. “We give them ideas and we direct them in the right direction for a successful outcome. But they’re calling the shots.”

Hayes said the shop is nothing less than “amazing.”

“I mean, they are master printers, and that’s a real thing, you know?” Hayes said. “It’s not just a nice title. It’s something you have to work at to earn and become.”