THE EXPERIENCE:
Plate. Ink. Print.

A student mixes ink until it's a rich, smooth, velvety black, and rolls it with gloved-hands over the burnt-sienna surface of a copper plate. Acid has cut through the ground on the plate, and etched grooves where the drawn lines had been. Ink fills the grooves, and the plate is prepped for printing. Press, soaked paper, roll. There is an inherent excitement, even anticipation, about the final piece. There is an air of uncertainty, but also of spontaneity.

In the lithography studio, a student moves a one hundred and seventy-five pound slab of limestone from the table onto a lift and rolls it over to the press. A self-portrait. An etched image of the student's face staring back from the stone, waiting to be inked, waiting to come alive.

The printmaking experience at MIAD is about blurring tradition and exploration. From creating a limited edition of identical prints to working on unique, one-of-a-kind artist's books, the breadth of the Printmaking curriculum at MIAD develops students into serious, multi-faceted artists. Surface-intensive, and process-based, printmakers are masters of technique who use drawing, painting, and photography as foundations for truly interdisciplinary work.

As a sophomore in the Printmaking Major, you'll embark on a technical journey, stopping at many points along the way to learn a variety of printmaking processes. The sophomore year includes explorations of Stone Lithography and Artist's Books. Intaglio classes introduce you to etching on copper and steel, woodcut, linoleum cut, and collograph. Screenprinting becomes a part of your arsenal. You'll understand how much pressure to put on the roller of the three by six foot intaglio press to get the perfect print, how to burn an image to a screenprinting screen, how to transfer a photograph to an etching plate.

In the junior year, you'll continue to be exposed to a series of advanced printmaking techniques. Extended knowledge of lithograhy, including plate and photo-litho, work with multiple etching plates and colors, cut plate processes, large-scale formats, advanced screenprinting, and the inclusion of digital manipulation will round out the year technically. Additionally, students take two semesters of Interdisciplinary Approach, a course designed specifically to encourage the combination of various printmaking techniques appropriate to the content of the work, as well as the incorporation of other two- and three-dimensional materials and processes. In the second semester of Interdisciplinary Approach, students begin to determine what form their Thesis work will take in the senior year, including technical processes and content.

From the first day back after the summer break, seniors run head first into their Thesis Projects. In Printmaking at MIAD, the Thesis Project is a culmination of technical pursuits and the sophisticated exploration of subject matter. Students spend most of the senior year developing a comprehensive body of work in preparation for the Senior Thesis Exhibition that occurs in the spring.

Printmaking is an expression, and truly an extension, of who you are. Whether your work deals with personal narratives, observational studies, or political or social controversies, we give you the tools and printmaking techniques to best express yourself. As a Printmaker at MIAD, you'll learn the traditions of the discipline, so that you can break them, reinvent them, make them yours and yours alone.