| Andrew Blanchard was raised in Waveland, a small beach community on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Like most boys who grew up close to a beach, he fished and swam until the ring of the dinner bell. At a young age, he became fascinated with the bold, curvilinear woodcuts of another Coast native, Walter Anderson. From this early inspiration, he established his love for printmaking.
Blanchard earned a B.A. degree from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2000 with an emphasis in printmaking and a minor in photography. Shortly thereafter, he traveled to Paris, France to work, study, and learn the photolithography process with Frederic Possot, a master lithography printer. This experience solidified his desire to be a lifelong artist-printmaker. In 2004, he earned his M.F.A. degree from The University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS.
In the last three years, Blanchard has been included and won awards for his lithographic/photo silkscreen combination prints in over two dozen national and international juried printmaking exhibitions. In addition, his prints have been collected throughout the United States, as well as in France, Bulgaria, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Throughout 2007 and 2008, several of his lithographic/photo silkscreen prints are traveling from Wales, U.K. to London, England, then to Belfast, Ireland as part of the Stone-Plate-Grease-Water International Contemporary Lithography exhibition. Blanchard is currently the Assistant Professor of Printmaking and Photography at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. |
