UW–Madison’s Tandem Press has awarded graduate students David Love and Emilee Taxman the Gabriele S. Haberland Graduate Student Printmaking Award for Travel to Europe.
In 2019, UW–Madison Professor Emeritus Willy Haeberli established two annual travel awards of $4,000 each in honor of his late wife, Gabriele Haberland. Haberland believed in the power of travel to expand a student’s worldview and influence their artistic development, and she especially believed that art was best viewed in person rather than in reproduction or online.
Haberland’s husband created this scholarship in her name so that UW–Madison graduate students in printmaking could further their studies and experience firsthand the works of Europe’s master printmakers.
Both Love and Taxman are pursuing MFA degrees in printmaking in the School of Education’s Art Department, and expect to graduate in May 2024. Love will use the award funds to visit Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany, where he plans to visit both historic and contemporary print shops and study the relationship between historic preservation and progressive innovation.
He wrote in his application: “My goal for this travel opportunity would be to learn about the lineage from the old masters of printmaking to the rise of commercial printing to the shift toward fine art publishing as an alternative art market. I want to experience contemporary print studios that are rooted in historic places to see how the lineage of printmaking is honored today from the European artists and printers themselves.”
Taxman, who studies book arts and letterpress printing, will use the funds to travel to Berlin, Amsterdam, and Madrid to engage in research and enrich their future artistic pursuits. “My (recent) show centers around transgender stories and experiences, but it is from an American lens and focuses specifically on Madison,” they write in their application. “There is such a rich queer history in Europe, and engaging with those communities and areas would be generative for my work and broaden my perspective.”
Tandem Press is a self-funded entity housed within the School of Education’s Art Department at UW–Madison. It is one of only three professional printmaking studios and press affiliated with a university in the United States. As a gallery, Tandem Press represents, promotes, and sells the artworks created in their studio both locally and nationally throughout the year. As a nonprofit educational institution, Tandem Press partners with other departments at UW–Madison to offer artist lectures, tours, printmaking workshops, and other special events to serve both the student and public community.