(bright music) - I cannot get into the debate about what is art and what is not.

I really don't know.

I just know that doing this feels good.

I've been working in digital all my life.

(bright music continues) Being in physical, having things that are in person, gives me some feelings that I haven't had in a long time.

I still have a hard time using the word artist, but I guess I am.

(traffic whirring) (bright music continues) Hello, hello.

- [Sam] Hey, ombre.

- Hey, Samuelito.

- Thank you so much.

- All right, here, I got it.

It's here.

- Fantastic.

- [Luis] This was a bit of a challenge.

- [Sam] You say that every year.

Oh, that's beautiful.

Yeah, thank you so much.

That's fantastic.

(gentle music) It's cool that you're able to do the digital to the analog, you know?

- Yes.

- That's what I love.

- Yes, I think came out nice.

- What we do every year is 12 of us get together and we each produce an original work of art, an 11-by-14 original, signed, numbered print, and it could be whatever the artist wants to do in whatever medium the artist wants to do.

We get all those prints together to 25 each and we create 25 beautiful Mylar boxes, the portfolios of these prints.

Yeah, here's an example of the portfolio from last year.

This is Tony Mirabile and his wife Peg, the Hotdog King.

So you have 12 prints encased in this box, separated by tissue.

And Luis, who's a wonderful designer, he creates an insert.

So you've got a beautiful printed spine.

And then thumbnails of each print so that when you look at the box, you can see what's inside and then each artist writes a little blurb about their print.

So it's a lovely, beautiful object, as Luis calls it.

- It's just the idea of something physical that you can hold on and keep and it could be an expression of the year or wherever you're at.

It's kind of rewarding to see it in one, physically in one place altogether when you have the collection.

Oh, wow.

Look at all of them.

Look how it works altogether.

I love how different all they are.

- Yeah.

This is by Eloise Shelton-Mayo.

Beautiful block print.

This is a block print by Petya Ivanova.

This is a fantastic silk screen by two guys.

They formed SuperCompStudios in Virginia Beach and what they've done, which is brilliant, is they have a reversible print.

One guy did one face, the other guy did another face, and they superimposed them.

It reads both ways.

This block print is by Donna Iona Drozda, who is a painter, fantastic artist.

This is Adrian Bohannon.

He's incredible.

This is mine.

It's a cyanotype.

First one that I've tried.

I really love it.

This is Brian Kreydatus, who pulled out all the stops, created this beautiful etching.

This is a beautiful silk screen by Cate Currier.

This is Clay McGlamory, Cate's husband.

Fantastic screen print.

They go all out.

Half Ass studios in Olde Towne Portsmouth is fantastic.

(birds chirping) - What we're printing today is just this metal, but I printed it all on one overlay to save film.

So now I'll position this based on the key image.

(bright music) Okay, that looks good.

So at this point we can turn the light table on.

I can take my extra eyeballs off and we can move over to the press.

(bright music continues) Since our work is more rooted in print than probably anybody else in the collective, it's fun to watch people that have less print knowledge.

Seeing anybody get excited about printmaking because of how much we love it I think is one of the big joys of the collective for me.

- The first year, we basically just invited people what we knew, and that first year I thought, "I guess we need to invite at least one professional tight-ass printer, Clay."

- Sam's and Luis' energy is infectious, and Cate and I lead kind of an insular art life a lot, especially since we moved to Olde Towne.

We work in our shop together.

We live in this house together.

Sometimes we don't see a ton of other artist friends.

So that's another thing that helps us engage with other artists and the print community and just the art community.

- Well, it's an unusual structure because they have six foundational members that then invite.

So every year, you have six new people bringing six new perspectives, ideas, and experiences to the collective.

So the variety that you see from the six invited people is often a lot more dramatic than what you see because we know each other's work now.

(upbeat music) What is interesting about the Chesapeake Bay Print Collaborative has been that it's an open themed portfolio, and this is wide open.

Everybody does different stuff.

But in this portfolio, I've tried to do things that I don't usually do.

My first print was using the grid.

I don't use the grid.

My second print was using black.

I don't usually use black.

And this is using photography, which I don't usually use.

So it's an opportunity to try something different.

So these are examples of three of the four layers.

We have the cyan that we just printed.

We have the next layer is a yellow to build in some of the greens.

And then we have a magenta layer and it becomes more and more in focus.

I know it looks blurry and it has a pattern to it, but that does come out in the printing.

So those three layers are the base of the image and the last layer is right there, and you'll see that at the reveal.

(bright music) - It's so wonderful to have everybody together.

I look forward to this every year.

It's the highlight of my year.

I'm so thrilled with the work that you guys did.

The fact that we are all here together is wonderful.

- I love this project because my job gets so busy during the year, it's almost like an excuse for me to be able to make time and stop things in my life to actually do my artwork.

- When you begin to look at each of these prints, what you're going to find out is the same things that interest me or excite me or inspire me, they inspire the next printmaker.

So we find our shared humanity in these prints when we put groups like this together.

We learn from each other.

And so we welcome everybody because they all bring unique perspective to the eyes.

- I think as a creative, you want to interest yourself.

It's just a really interesting process and I have a lot to learn.

This gives me the confidence and the opportunity to think about it more than I did before.

- All these artists have an urge to make stuff that resonates with them, that doesn't really serve any economical purpose.

We're serving our creative impulse, which is kind of fun.

(Sam laughs) Right?

- Bravo.

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