Dan Welden: Artist And Master Printer

Dan Welden lives in Noyac, up a potholed, narrow path through the woods, reminiscent of Vermont. At the end of the path stands an elegant house with a twig-lined second-floor balcony and welcoming, buttressed porch. The house has the raw look of something built by hand, one beam at a time - and, indeed, Mr. Welden built this tri-level, comfortable place himself.

A compactly built man in his 50s, he was piloting a blue wheelbarrow piled with firewood toward the front door when his visitors arrived. Inside, he fed a few logs into a gray-blue masonry stove, made from soapstone, in a living room that features mismatched antique chairs and a comfortable old couch.

The house, while seeming like a work in progress, also has a calm, comfortable, lived-in feeling. The radiator shell from a 1932 Ford hangs high up on one wall, near a beautiful wasps' nest - unoccupied, of course - that Mr. Welden's companion, the art teacher Kryn Placke, gave to him for his birthday.

Collaborations

Dan Welden has taught at a number of universities, and he has exhibited his work widely, both in the United States and abroad; he has over four dozen solo exhibits to his credit.

But he is also well known locally as a maker of prints, at his home-based Hampton Editions. He has collaborated with artists including Willem de Kooning, Robert Dash, David Salle, Eric Fischl, and dozens more.

Josh Dayton, a painter who lives in North Sea and who worked on a series of prints with Mr. Welden in the mid-1980s, said, "I think he's a great teacher. I learned a lot from working with him. What's most interesting about Dan is that his work with artists tends to draw a lot out of them. He makes them try to do something new, something adventurous."

Early Attraction

Because his parents died early, Mr. Welden's grandparents raised both him and his younger sister. He was born in the Bronx but moved to Babylon when he was still young.

"My grandmother, who died a few years ago, was blind. She never saw any of my paintings, but she loved them anyway. She was a motherly, nurturing person, filled with all of the love she could possibly give. She would ask me to describe a painting, and then say, 'Oh, it's so beautiful.' "

It was in fifth grade that Mr. Welden became atttracted to art. He had "a motivating teacher,"Augusta Hoffman. She would leave "a pile of paper in the classroom. When you were finished with your regular school work, you could draw. She would say, 'Draw a historical event.' I learned history that way. She gave me the tools and the initial support, the rewards and everything that comes with making art. She led me toward learning the necessities of being an artist."

Five Necessities

As his cat, Turbo, climbed onto a nearby chair, Mr. Welden quoted the composer Robert Schumann's list of the five things necessary to any artist, which he took with him from Ms. Hoffman's classroom.

"First, you have to have inspiration. Second, you need the right tools to work with. Third, you need support from friends or parents or colleagues. Fourth, you should have some sort of reward - it's not very important to me, but perhaps a reward in the form of a prize, or cash. And the fifth - well, the fifth thing is that there is no fifth requirement. There is no reason to make art. You just simply have to do it."

"In high school, I drew and painted, but I wasn't all that interested in becoming an artist because there was a guy who was so much better than I was, an artist named Gary Viskupic. He was fantastic, an incredible draftsman. He still is. He made one of these tiles," Mr. Welden said, walking into his kitchen. The kitchen's floor includes 200 individual tiles that bear images drawn by as many artists, all friends of Mr. Welden's, most of whom live on the East End.

In Munich

Later, Mr. Welden switched high schools. In so doing, he said, "I became the Gary Viskupic of that school. I became more serious about art." He then attended Adelphi University, where he was class president, earned bachelor's and master's degrees in art education, and in the meantime got married.

He and his wife went to Europe for two years, and Mr. Welden studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst in Munich. A teacher named Kurt Lohwasser was Mr. Welden's mentor and friend at the academy, and, although he had learned something about printmaking at Adelphi, it was in Munich that he came under the spell of the process.

In 1971, Mr. Welden and his wife returned to the United States. They have two children, and have since divorced.

Mr. Welden bought his Noyac property in 1980. But his first exposure to the East End had come much earlier. "When I lived in Babylon, I was a Newsday paperboy, and each year Newsday would treat their top paperboys to a week of camping in the Northwest Woods. I was the only kid to come home with two trophies: for archery and tennis. Archery, because I could hit the target. Tennis, because no one else showed up, so I won by forfeit."

Mr. Welden taught at the State University at Stony Brook for eight years, as an assistant professor, but failed to gain tenure.

"It was one of the biggest blows of my career. According to them, I wasn't well-known enough. I didn't have a New York dealer. It had nothing to do with teaching. Nothing at all. My classes were always very well attended - in fact, I had the best enrollment in the department. But that didn't matter."

An Artist's Artist

So Mr. Welden moved on, to Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, where he worked as artist in residence. He has since taught at Long Island University, as a visiting artist in its summer master workshop in art, and at Suffolk Community College.

In the last dozen years, Mr. Welden has established himself as the printer major artists seek when they look to collaborate with someone who is not only technically gifted, but who has an aesthetic sense.

"Working with Dan was sublime," said William King of East Hampton, an artist who made 250 monotypes at Hampton Editions in the late 1980s. "It was two summers of paradise."

"He gets you to do things you didn't think were possible. He manages to get things out of you that you can't predict," said Roy Nicholson of Noyac, a painter who has also made prints at Mr. Welden's workshop. "He has a wonderful rapport with other artists, and he works in an intuitive way. It opens up avenues of creativity."

Mr. Fischl agrees. "You work with a printmaker like Dan because of the riches of the collaborative process. He figured out a way to take the way I draw and expand it into another medium." Mr. Fischl and Mr. Welden worked on a serise of five etchings a few years ago.

Toxic Tools

Mr. Welden also designed a program in printmaking, "Artists in the Schools," sponsored by the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, that sends him to schools on the East End as well as schools in New Jersey and upstate New York.

He is concerned about the toxic effects that certain art tools - inks, for example - can have on people. The late Arnold Hoffmann was, in his view, made ill by the very medium in which he worked.

"I've always been concerned about health and safety, partially because of my dear friend Arnold Hoffmann, who was really affected by the chemicals that he inhaled while making silkscreens. Between smoking, and inhaling those fumes - it's going to do you in, sooner or later."

Low-Tech Process

"I developed these water-soluble techniques as a way to keep more toxicity from getting to me or into the environment. It's a very exciting thing for artists to be in the workshops I give" on non-toxic materials, he said, "because it gives them new ideas."

An exploration of his downstairs workspace revealed three presses, each featuring a wheel like a ship captain's that is rotated to draw a sheet of paper through rollers, and thus impress an image.

It's an extremely low-tech process, although Mr. Welden's use of non-toxic materials has made him an innovator in the world of printmaking. He travels frequently to teach groups of artists how to use the pigment, both in the United States and abroad. He is a particular favorite in Australia and New Zealand.

He has led workshops on the use of non-toxic materials locally and out of town. "Every time I do a workshop, it seems like there are two more groups that are interested," he said. "It snowballs. Not that I would want to do it every day of the week. But it's very rewarding."

A print by Mr. Welden from his "Sheepwalk" series hangs in the honored place in the living room, over the hearth - it is a strong, slashy work, more pronounced in its execution than most of his works. Mr. Welden is an artist whose pictures are largely about texture and color; they have emotional resonance but they also speak of the process that allowed them to exist.

"I've been working with artists around here since 1978. The first was Gina Knee," Mr. Welden said. Next came work with Mr. Dash, which led to his working for two years on a portfolio of prints by artists including Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Jimmy Ernst, Dan Flavin, Syd Solomon, James Brooks, and Mr. Dash that was sold to benefit Southampton Hospital.

"Working with all of these different artists over the years has been very nice, but when I was working with Bill de Kooning, I was afraid that I would start painting like him. It has been scary in a way. If I were working with other artists on a regular basis, I would lose it."

But Mr. Welden has his own style. It shows in his house, in the way that he carries himself, and of course in his art.