Digital Commons Network^™

Relief Mural Projects, Arturo Rodriguez, Arturo Rodriguez

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

I will have student-created print works installed on the exterior walls of buildings on the campus of Wayne State University during the MAPC conference. Additionally, I will have the same prints installed around the campus of the University of Toledo, thus bridging the two cities and creating one big connected “Print City”.

Students will create large woodblock prints that would be adhered to exterior walls of buildings. These large images will be printed on Japanese Kozo (rice paper). The life span of these murals depends directly on exposure to weather. The paper will be adhered to the chosen site using …

Print & (Pedagogical Issues In Printmaking), Shelley R. Gipson, Josh Dannin, Sarah Dahlinger, Emily J. Stokes, Whitney Korstange

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

This panel addresses how the contemporary printmaker must adapt traditional approaches to making, collaborating, teaching, and networking to an increasingly digital landscape. With creative adaptation a necessity for artists and the medium of printmaking's sustained relevance, panelists will discuss their experiences: transforming traditional journals into digital archives, seeking innovative approaches to portfolio exchanges, pursuing alternative vocations, and readying the next generation of artists for these challenges.

Poetry & Prints: Impressions From Detroit & Brazil, Marion Jackson Ph.D., Thomas L. Pyrzewski

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

This panel presentation will discuss how one good idea developed into the blueprint for a high-quality arts program for Detroit area youth that can be used year after year.

Eight Detroit arts organizations are collaborating to offer a 9-week summer program of workshops presenting high-quality instruction in visual arts and poetry for Detroit youth – introducing students to a variety of media and techniques, focusing particularly on poetry, screen printing, and letterpress printing. As part of the summer program, students will learn about a fascinating artistic tradition of the Northeast of Brazil known as literatura de cordel (“stories on a …

Gross Anatomy: Collaborative Book, Arturo Rodriguez

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

A panel discussion/reflection with several students who participated in a unique creative collaboration between two studio classes: printmaking and drawing. In the fall of 2012, lecturer Ben Pond and I taught Anatomy and Lithography courses respectively. Our students worked collaboratively on a large format (30”x22”), series of prints/drawings based on the theme “Gross Anatomy.” All students first created lithographs and then further embellished them using various drawing techniques. Three complete sets of print/drawings were created as a result of the collaboration, two of which were bound into hard-cover books. Students who participated in the creation of the book will give …

Beyond The Institution: Creating An Independent Creative Life Without Academia, Edward C. Bernstein

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

Having just retired in August 2013 as Head of Printmaking , School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington, I have had the privilege of IU’s providing me with a studio for 22 years. More importantly, I have had many opportunities to compete for institutional grants for creative research and travel, including trips to our professional conferences. I was able to make really innovative work and take risks that otherwise might have been very difficult. I am now transitioning to my own recently acquired raw studio space beginning a new chapter in my life without institutional support.

Like many baby boomerish …

Between Paper And Porcelain, Alternative Printmaking Techniques, Thomas Lucas

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

As contemporary printmakers continue to push the boundaries of the printmaking medium across the disciplines, the role of the print has proved an important creative element with mediums such as ceramics. This demonstration will showcase traditional printmaking techniques such as etching and lithography transfer applications to porcelain clay. The ceramics community has been aware of printmaking techniques such as screenprinting and monoprinting for many years. These approaches have opened up, the possibilities for applying images on the surfaces of ceramic vessels and sculptural forms. As well as, supporting a more interdisciplinary perspective towards the arts in general.

The idea of …

Integrating Digital Imaging And 4-Color Printing Using Photopolymer Printing Plates, Janet Ballweg

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

Demonstration:

This demonstration will integrate digital image-making (both 2d imaging and 3d modeling) with traditional and contemporary print processes. The presenter will walk through the process of preparing digital images in 3D and Photoshop, creating color separations, printing transparencies, exposing images to polymer printing plates, inking, registering, and printing the plates as a 4-color image.

Kinetic Inquiry In The Always-Already Expansive Field Of Printmaking, Noel W. Anderson

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

Kinetic Inquiry in the Always-Already Expansive Field of Printmaking

Printmaking, historically a language of mass dissemination – by association plural access – is now being explored and extended through other mediums. Ideas of multiples, multiplication, and repetition, at once fundamental to printmaking’s character, is now characteristic of video. Fitting with the theme of an intersection between academic and “urban” spaces, the members on this panel will present lectures and engage in a critical discourse about personal uses and/or visions of video’s role in the ever-expanding field of printmaking. Drawing from such diverse territories as folk, graffiti, pop, poetry, and academic …

Superstitions And Rituals Of The Print Shop, Meredith L. Setser, Brian Gonzales, Liz Menard, Mark L. Smith, Phd

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

Panel Proposal: Superstitions and Rituals in the Print Shop

Abstract: Printmaking, a medium that utilizes rational knowledge and a concrete understanding of scientific processes and chemistry, seems like a rather unlikely field for superstitions to abound. However, it is surprising to note that this is generally not the case, as the field is chock full of ritualistic behaviors, superstitions, and “good luck” objects. Printmakers, much like athletes, tend to be a very superstitious lot. This may be due to the fact that the act of printmaking with its emphasis on process, is performance based, much like athleticism. The types of …

Controlled Chaos; Versatility And Variety Of Mark-Making Within Screenprint, Jennifer Ghormley, Brian Spolans, Nichole Maury

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

Screenprint is highly accessible to artists of all sorts, and has many avenues of expression - fine art, installation art, t-shirts, posters, graffiti, really as many outlets as there are people who produce screenprints. A visible upsurge in the use of screenprint in contemporary printmaking and in the proliferation of new screen-based print shops can be seen as artists use its various processes to create work that is no longer restricted by identifiable style, scale, or dimension. This demonstration represents a range of potential methods in the expressive and flexible nature of the contemporary screenprint process, from hard-edged graphic forms, …

Abstraction, Landscape, And Contemporary Woodcut, Endi Poskovic

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

Title of Session: Abstraction, Landscape and Contemporary Woodcut

Chair: Endi Poskovic, Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan

Panel Members: Teresa Cole, Tulane University, New Orleans

Katy Collier, independent artist, Minneapolis

Susan Goethel Campbell, independent artist, Detroit

Goedele Peeters, Academie Berchem Beeldende Kunsten, Antwerp, Belgium

Abstract: The origin of modern abstraction may be rooted in the 19th-century Romantic landscape tradition of Northern Europe; a premise set forth by renowned American art historian and professor Robert Rosenblum (1927-2006) in the early 1970s. This panel invites artists and makers, critical thinkers and art historians interested in expanding the conversation about …

Artificial Nature: Building An Ecological Vision Through Printmaking, Taryn Mcmahon

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

Abstract:

Printmaking has a natural connection to popular culture and prints have traditionally explored the urgent issues of their respective times. From Jose Posada to Francisco Goya, printmakers have used their medium to bring about political or social change, some explicitly and others more subtly. There is a crop of current printmakers who build upon this history by investigating interactions and connections between the natural world and the built environment, highlighting issues of ecology, technology, and industry. Ecological disasters, natural resource extraction, and the excesses of this current place and time become fodder for their cross-disciplinary artworks. Dürer envisioned the …

“Recreating The Tinted Lithograph Using Stones And Photo-Plates”, Beauvais Lyons

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

This technical demonstration will present a simple and direct approach to combining stone and plate lithography to recreate tinted lithographs common to the first half of the 19^th century. My approach is an adaptation of methods described in Michael Twyman’s book The Techniques of Drawing on Stone in England and France and Their Application to Works of Typography (Oxford University Press, 1970). The tinted lithograph uses the same principles as the chiaroscuro woodcut, but is capable of achieving a significantly broad range of tones. It is also a very good method to introduce the principles of color lithography to …

The Quilted Print, Hannah M. Sanders, Blake A. Sanders

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

This demonstration utilizes relief printmaking in combination with found, repurposed fabrics and basic machine and hand sewing to create quilted collages. Utilizing old bed sheets and hand-me-down fabrics, hardware store plywood, basic black ink, and green cleanup with vegetable oil and dish soap, fabric printing is both a low-cost and sustainable alternative to paper. Piecing and collaging elements helps to overcome size limitations, opening up the possibilities for ambitious sculptures and immersive print-based installations.

Salvaging Print: Letterhead In Post-Industrial Urban America, Nancy Sharon Collins

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

This panel will explore the link between today’s small press movement and the formal aspects of commercial printing during the American 20th century. Panelists include Christine Medley , Philip Gattuso, and Nancy Bernardo.

Using as its primary example letterhead from defunct companies in Detroit, and secondarily, specimens of business and legal letterhead from other urban centers of the industrial United States, this panel will examine and discuss: What did letterhead represent to 20th century printers in local markets such as Detroit? What is the significance of printed letterhead, and stationery, to the art of small press printing in post-industrial cities …

Finding Printmaking’S Place In A Interdisciplinary And Post-Digital World, Jonathan M. Mcfadden, David Wischer

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

Over the past decade there has been an ever-increasing number of digital and post-digital processes being introduced into the studio. Post-digital refers to media that has emerged in the field after the acceptance of digital processes (inkjet printing, digital photography and video, etc.) which, includes the incorporation of Computer Numeric Control (CNC) routers, laser etchers, water-jets, rapid prototyping software, vinyl cutters, drawing machines, and most recently 3-D printing capabilities. As with most new technology over time, the equipment becomes more affordable and use of the technology becomes more accessible to the artist and institution.

At the same time post digital …