This course will be administrated through this website – housing the syllabus and other resources – and MOODLE for the distribution & collection of documents, references, and homework. Please bookmark both links.
________________________________________________________________
Course Outline
Block printing has a very long, complex history. Blocks have been used to make prints ranging from unique monoprints to books for around 1200 years (The world’s oldest book is in fact a block-printed manuscript from around 868AD- see below). Block printing has been used to make both delicate, intricate prints and hastily made flyers for political demonstrations; the applications of Block Printing processes within the arenas of political dissent and the rarified world of fine art are equally valid if contrasting in intent. Artists, of course, may use any media they desire to make their work, while activists use what they can to quickly and succinctly communicate their point. Artist-activists have adopted this latter strategy in their work, bringing engagement with the social-political arena into the clean well light gallery space. What this history offers students of this class is an enormous array of possibilities in terms of their printing. Students taking this class will be able to infuse their work with the issues they feel concerned about and access the flexibility of this form directly.
Course Format:
Students in this course will be expected to have an interest in art and equality, politics, justice, the environment or any issue derived from the social field. This course uses the very practical aspects of art-making to engage students in a critical appreciation of printmaking as a form, via the work that each student makes. Students will be graded on the quality of their work (via the grading rubric), taking into account the distillation of their (political/social) research into a print format. Students will be given regular introductions to the uses artists have made of printing and text to create an opinionated stance upon a topic or issue. Therefore, studying in this class will require students to develop visual and textual ideas relating to an issue that they identify and continue to work with throughout the course and perhaps beyond.
Working in the print studio demands a good level of organization and cooperation, as students will commonly be at differing stages in the production of their prints – students will become quickly aware of what the ‘stages of production’ means in terms of the tempo of working in the print studio and are expected to accommodate each other’s reasonable needs & requests. Accordingly, the print studio will operate on a calendar, and students must plan their time effectively. Attached to this syllabus is a calendar of the semester. Students are encouraged to write every commitment they know into this calendar so that you can clearly see how much time they can make available to print. All artmaking takes time, but printing, in particular, is time heavy – as you will soon discover. Therefore, planning & organization are very important.
Classes will begin with a presentation & discussion of prints and printing methods aimed at helping students sophisticate their work. Each session includes a review or critique of students’ work – one-on-one with the instructor or the whole class. All students will use a sketchbook to log their interests, draw, and develop their ideas. I will go over sketchbooks on the first day of the semester.