Overview of Printmaking

Maryland Institute College of Art

The potential to make multiple images through techniques sympathetic to other visual art disciplines has lured artists to printmaking for centuries. MICA printmaking offers a broad range of studio experiences, from traditional to experimental, in our exceptional printmaking facilities.

The department’s approach to the four major printmaking disciplines—relief, intaglio, lithography, and screenprinting—is fine-art based, allowing you to realize your personal vision. Wide exposure to traditional and contemporary techniques and directions such as book concepts, photo-printmaking, computer-assisted printmaking, collagraph, and monoprinting encourages interdisciplinary combinations of printmaking with other media or installations. You can gain experience in papermaking at a professional papermill at Pyramid Atlantic, and then return to MICA to create traditional papers at the department’s paper lab. After a thorough technical exploration of the various print media, you further develop personal content through independent experimentation and focus on the advanced processes of a chosen printmaking medium. A generous number of printmaking and other studio electives allow you to adapt the major to fit your individual interests and talents. In a year-long senior thesis, you develop a personal direction through both a written thesis statement and a sustained body of work.

MICA is one of the few schools in the country with a book arts concentration offering an interdisciplinary framework for explorations of the book form. Dolphin Press & Print was established in 1998 to bring visual artists and writers together with students to produce limited-edition letterpressed books and broadsides, and now also produces printed editions in a variety of printmaking media. Each year, an undergraduate student in the department is chosen as staff printer for the press, leading projects, maintaining the shop and archives, assisting classes and workshops, and representing the press to other institutions. MICA students also play a major role in the biennial Baltimore Print Fair at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and have gained valuable experience working with major print galleries and print shops locally and in New York.

Our department’s focus is on preparing you to succeed in any area you choose after graduation. Students have gone on to prestigious graduate programs and become master printers at Tamarind Institute, Pyramid Atlantic, Goya Girl Press, and Harlan and Weaver.

For more information, visit the Printmaking Department, find printmaking information for students and learn more about Dolphin Press on the web.

Pushing the Boundaries of Art on Paper

In a week-long artist’s residency, internationally renowned artist Lesley Dill ’80 joined MICA students and faculty in printmaking in spring 2006 to create “Divide Light (Healing Man),” a stunning 10-foot art kite commissioned by Hand Papermaking magazine in celebration of the organization’s 20th anniversary. The kite was displayed, along with 28 contemporary and traditional kites created in Kochi, Japan, by nine international kite artists, in an exhibition in MICA’s Brown Center as part of Hand Papermaking’s anniversary celebration and symposium in 2006.

Facilities

Our outstanding facilities include separate, spacious, and well-equipped studios for intaglio/relief, lithography, screenprinting, and letterpress/book arts; screen rooms and a plate exposure room for photo techniques; numerous etching and litho presses able to print large plates and stones; vacuum tables for screenprinting; and a library of over 90 litho stones. The department is building awareness of ways to use non-toxic materials in printmaking, cleaning, and washing. New equipment includes a laser cutter for wood as an enhancement for students working in woodblock. New courses are added to provide access to the latest equipment and techniques, such as digital and photographic printing. MICA is one of the few schools with its own polymer plate processing machines for letterpress printing.

Visiting Artists