Plucked Chicken Press - Introduction

Plucked Chicken Press:
Introduction

Plucked Chicken, a press specializing in lithography, was founded by Will Petersen and Cynthia Archer in 1978 in Morgantown, West Virginia. The idea for a press that would serve their own careers as well as facilitate the printmaking needs of other artists developed in 1969 when, as a resident lithographer at the Lakeside Studio in Lakeside, Michigan, Petersen printed for the first time the lithographs of artist Richard Hunt.
In 1980 the Plucked Chicken Press moved to Chicago and then in 1984, to nearby Evanston. The reputation of Will Petersen as a master printer attracted many of Chicago's prominent artists who brought their lithographs to the Plucked Chicken Press for printing, however, the Press devoted most of its time to subscription publication. Plucked Chicken, in his final location in Evanston, used a single Takash, a Garfield hand-cranked press, situated in a storefront shop of approximately 22 feet by 50 feet. The Plucked Chicken Press was active until Petersen's death in 1994.
This permanent exhibit, at the Ray Hartstein Campus in Skokie, is a tribute to Will Petersen and the Plucked Chicken Press and commemorates the beginning of Oakton Community College's art collection. The College was a subscriber to the Plucked Chicken Press publications. The retrospective exhibition includes Petersen's work from his early lithographs in 1951 until his last one in 1994, along with the works of artists whose prints were produced by the Plucked Chicken Press.