"Fishy Whale Press."

"We were fitting our studio in Clark Arts Center and asked Roland Poska to design our graphic arts studio," Philip Dedrick said. "He created our Lithography facility, helped find our great press, found a great collection of litho stones in Buffalo at no cost... he also found a Washington Press and type as well, so that we are able to do all types of Intaglio, litho and relief processes and to set and print type and make paper." 

Roland originally came to Rockford College as a history major, then switched to art. With an MFA from Cranbrook Academy, he taught at Rockford, became head of Printmaking at Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, co-founded a new school called the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and in 1961 began Fishy Whale Press: a studio that attracted artists from around the country with its lithography stones, printmaking equipment and papermill: "Where prehaps some of the finest stone litho printing since Toulouse-Lautrec is coming."

Enigmatically enough, it was at Fishy Whale that I first exhibited my early sculpture when at Rockford College; no doubt having something to do with P.D.'s influence.

Back then I remember meeting this imposing figure that had to be eighteen feet tall, touring his equally imposing facility in Milwaukee, and witness to a variety of artists' works on the wall. Eventually word came that a woman's coat had caught on one of my sculptures and dashed it to the floor- just as she dashed out the door ("Never fall in love with your pots").

~The statue that was~
Robert John Guttke