Alan Linnemeyer will discuss the life and work of renowned artist and educator Guy Maccoy (1904-1981). Linnemeyer knew and worked with Maccoy for more than a decade and is the caretaker
of hundreds of his original prints and ephemera and other materials from Maccoy's studio. He is passionate about sharing Maccoy's legacy through education. His talk will cover the serigraph process developed by Maccoy, the history of the studio which produced Maccoy's own work as well as that of other artists including Peter Hurd, Fredrick & Eileen Whitaker, Millard Sheets, and Peter Ellenshaw. Linnemeyer will illustrate his talk with a large portfolio of prints.
Guy Maccoy studied alongside Jackson Pollack, Rico Lebrun and Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in New York in the 1930s. During the depression he created murals for the WPA and was asked by Mayor LaGuardia to be involved in a post project for New York City. This project gave Maccoy the opportunity to further develop his ideas for a printing process that would allow artists to reproduce their work in a form that was itself a work of art. He is considered the "father" of the serigraph process and had the first one-person show of work in that medium in 1938. Maccoy relocated to Los Angeles in 1945 where he taught at the newly formed Jepson Art Institute. In 1949 Millard Sheets asked Maccoy to join the Otis Art Institute faculty and he remained there until retiring in 1960.
Maccoy's serigraphs were hand stenciled on their screens using a method of color separation controlled by the skill of the artist. The number of color runs required to produce his works of art could be as many as 100. This effect of color layering and intimate knowledge of color is what made Guy's work so beautiful and unique.
