Making a big impression: HoMA School’s top-notch printmaking studio

The Honolulu Museum of Art School is home to one of the best printmaking facilities on O‘ahu. Head to Room 103 and you’ll find everything you need to dive into the world of printmaking, from intaglio to screen printing, whether you are a beginner or seasoned artist. Completely renovated in 2022, the studio is equipped with state-of-the-art print presses, including a large table-top press, materials to do etchings like Goya and Mary Cassatt, and a dark room for creating screens à la Andy Warhol. 
 
“We have five brand new printing presses, and the capacity for up to a dozen people to simultaneously screen print using photosensitive image-making processes,” says Joseph Smeraldi, studio programs manager. “The studio also offers the ability to do etching using ferric chloride on copper plates, which is not common on O‘ahu.”  
 
Smeraldi points out that the large press can print images up to 24 by 48 inches, while the new exposure units in the dark room can expose screens up to 22 by 30 inches.  
 
Helena Noordhoff has been HoMA’s printmaking studio programs teacher since 2022. She discovered the medium while attending Kapi‘olani Community College, where her printmaking professor encouraged her to train under Charles Cohan, professor of art and chair of printmaking in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.  
 
“I was blown away by the process of printmaking,” says Helena, who oversees the studio. “I found the methodology meditative and calming. In printmaking, you have to be actively present at all times, and slow down to take each step in order to get to the end product.”  
 
Printmaking encompasses a wide range of techniques that includes relief, lithography, intaglio, screenprinting, monoprinting, and etching. It’s that diversity that sparked Noordhoff’s passion. She was also attracted to printmaking’s collaborative approach, which allows for multiple artists supporting each other through the processes—making for a fun, social environment.  
 
Her own work tackles a meaningful issue—mental health. For her MFA thesis exhibition, Realphantasie, she used monoprints, zines, and audio to reveal mental health struggles. “Collectively, my artwork prompts the viewer to engage, perceive, and contemplate our awareness of and reactions to mental health,” says Noordhoff.  
 
As a HoMA School teaching artist, Noordhoff strives to provide empathy, patience, structure, clarity, and fun for her students, who she hopes walk away from her classes with a new skill set and a sense of belonging. As with all HoMA School classes, visits to museum exhibitions and galleries are a key part of learning. For example, Noordhoff took students to see the past exhibitions Forward Together: African American Prints from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection and Fashioning Aloha and had them incorporate the print and pattern concepts they saw into their own artworks.   
 
Noordhoff aims to foster dialogue within Hawai‘i’s printmaking community and cultivate a new crop of printmakers who will go on to get involved with organizations such as the Honolulu Printmakers and Downtown Art Center. And she especially wants her students to take what they learn and run with it. Emphasizes Noordhoff: “There’s no wrong way to be a printmaker.”   

Make your mark

Interested in exploring printmaking? Or want to hone skills you already have? Sign up for a printmaking class. Fall classes start in October.

Register online