John Mackechnie

Working with the New Glasgow Boys including Steven Campbell

Clip Title	Working with the New Glasgow Boys including Steven Campbell
Interviewee Name	John Mackechnie
Interviewee Role	Director of Glasgow Print Studio, John first joined the organisation as an etching technician in 1979 before becoming Workshop Manager and then General Manager.
Interviewer Name	Kerry Patterson
Interview Date	9 August 2018
Clip Length	2 minutes 1 seconds

Transcription

JM: Yeah that was great for Glasgow Print Studio to be able to work with them because we could sell the work, which was amazing. So we sold a lot of work by these artists. We di- we didn’t do much with Steven Campbell unfortunately ‘cause he was- in New York and just, maybe less inclined to make prints. Um, but the one we did make, ‘Natural Follies at Bee Junction’, again it was done partly by post where he’d actually send- he’d sent stuff through by post which I would then photograph and blow up and etch onto plates. Again, another three feet by four feet plate. And so, I’d etch it so far and then send him a proof and then that’d get sent back with some notes or something. And um, and then when he was visiting, he came and worked on it and I got him to do sugarlift directly onto the plate. Well, he did editions and also showed him how to scrape and burnish the plate so he did some scraping and burnishing the plates as well so… It was all quite intense at the time but er, he was very successful and quite, in some ways quite difficult. I mean, kind of, not in a bad way but like, he was hard to, he wasn’t very good at arriving when he was supposed to arrive, that kind of thing. And indeed, when he was going back to New York, I had printed so many proofs and he was supposed to come in and sign them, and he didn’t show up. So I ended up going to his folks’ house with the prints and just showed up at his leaving party and we had them out on the floor in the middle of this party with him signing them [laughs] so that we had something to sell. And er, being forced to drink lots of alcohol [laughter]. So er, yeah it was certainly, it was a kind of can-do attitude about me and the Print Studio generally that we did whatever we needed to do to get things done.