Printmaking

Printmaking is as much a mindset as it is a collection of media and techniques. Whether your passions lie in mark-making, story-telling, changing culture, figuration, abstraction (or any combination thereof) printmaking offers equal opportunity empowerment.

By delivering marks to surfaces like paper or fabric with the help of a mediating element (e.g., a plate, screen, digital file, or block of hand-set type), print offers opportunities to create in a non-pressurized manner that encourages risk taking. Students develop and hone technical skills, material sensibilities, and a formal understanding of the history of print as both a fine art form and an important vehicle for vernacular culture, social dissent, and cultural identity. Printmaking lets you put words and images into the world to educate, protest, and effect positive change.

Our department embraces new technology while stewarding time-tested technologies that are just as, or even more, relevant today than when first invented. You may find the expansiveness of intermediary space lets you breathe, experiment, and ultimately yields both one-of-a-kind works and the capacity to iterate as images and ideas develop.

Majors graduate equipped with the technical and professional practice skills needed to generate, promote, and distribute their work. Students develop the means of making work wherever they are and regardless of access to specialized equipment. You might decide to create your own unique or editioned prints, develop a collaborative and/or civically engaged practice, or use your knack for communal creativity in a way that is uniquely yours. Wherever your path leads, you will be connected to a network of community partners, alumni, and artists eager to help with internships, employment, exhibitions, and special projects.

Life After Graduation

1. Director of Pickwick Independent Press, a communal printshop, and adjunct professor of printmaking
2. Apprentice to the Master Printer, Tamarind Lithography, and graduate of Tamarind Printer Training Program
3. Mural painter and founder of Tachee clothing and houseware design company, with gallery representation for paintings and quilts
4. Founder and proprietor of District Batch, body care products company, retailing online and through WholeFoods
5. Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner specializing in ADHD
6. Proprietor of Saudade, serial popups specializing in floral arrangements and botanical monotypes
7. Artist, Designer, Strategist, [former] Director of Community Learning, Artists Communities Alliance
8. MFA in Printmaking, now working for Jim Henson studios (redesigned Ernie & Bert’s sneakers), as well as making custom sneakers and running transgender clothing line
9. Elementary school art teacher