Originally Posted by
Boys Noize
p0tat0 5alad, check out Neil Shigley's work. He's an instructor at my school and he has an ongoing series right now called 'Invisible People.' He walks around the downtown San Diego area, meets and talks to the homeless people that live in the area, gets their photograph, and creates these really impressive large-scale prints. I don't know what they're exactly called but he carves his images into Plexiglass and then prints onto paper.
http://www.neilshigley.com/
Just checked out his website and holy ishhh those prints are impressive...
. I would have thought that they were woodblocks though, but it honestly makes little difference. You say he prints on paper? Cool--but he would have hit a home run x 10 if he were actually printing on those cardboard sheets...
. But then his prints would likely not have looked that great after the fact...
. PLexiglass though--very interesting choice of medium. Know why he uses that? ( I can imagine that one benefit of using plexiglass is that you wont have any of the unwanted wood chip breakage that comes along with working in/on wood blocks).
Even though I'm a senior, I'm just now taking my first printmaking class (basic) and I'm really enjoy it. The physicality of the art-making process one experiences while making and working towards prints is really unmatched, I find, and in my opinion, in any of the other studio fields.
Originally Posted by p0tat0 5alad
Also, for you cats out there that are into Printmaking, what are your plans? I've done linoleum, plate litho, copper etching & engraving with aquatinting, screenprinting, and woodblock cutting & engraving. My main focus is Graphic Design but my professor and I don't quite see eye-to-eye on a few things. Long story short, he has worked in the advertising industry and I understand where he is coming from but he tries to mold us all into that type of designer which I don't want to be. Due to this I've dabbled, quite heavily as you can see into printmaking and when I graduate I'll have enough experience to comfortably shoot for an MFA in either fields if I choose to go this route. All the jobs I've held have been due to my graphic design background. I've interned for a freelance designer doing logos, layouts, etc, this past summer I worked at a screenprinting place doing creating all the artwork in PS/AI, and then my job during the school year is working on campus creating logos and other stuff for our school/government co-op program.
I just want to know what kind of jobs you printmakers are looking at getting once you are done with school? And what kind of experience do you have and does that dictate where you would apply?
Me, I plan on taking about 3-4 years off from school after concluding my BFA to really develop my skills before applying to an MFA program. I'm kind of a weird case in the sense that I've only been an art student, formally and academically, for two years (including this academic year) but by the end of the spring semester, I would have met all the requirements necessary to obtain my BFA. While I'll have me "degree", it is my opinion that I still have much to learn. THis is why I'm taking the extended time away from school to really build myself up + developing a solid portfolio of work before I get back into school as an MFA candidate.
There's actually a master printmaker around my way that I will be contacting in due time to see if he's in need of an assist (I work for free, you teach me stuff--fair trade, right?...
). As I'm situated in the NYC area, there's also of good art schools around where I can take classes here and there, meet people, build a network, etc. I'm also looking into/researching volunteer/job opportunities in the area (MoMA, Met, Jewish Museum, Gugg, Chelsea area galleries, etc). Honestly a lot of opportunities that I will be exploring.
I think in art, the only experience that matters when applying to graduate programs is that which concerns itself with the question--"how well do you know field"? Of course, that question is very broad and takes into consideration not only studio practice, but an awareness of the contemporary direction your field is heading in. That latter point itself will be dictated by the historical underpinnings of the field + present day influences and last but not least, those leading figures within the field who are actively shaping it with their work. In a way, it's a lot to know, but it's certainly necessary and worthwhile to know if you are serious about your practice. It behooves all artist to know ishh like this as it will both inform their/your practice and contextualize said practice.
Lastly, and personally, I don't think that "job prospects" should be a major factor, if one at all, in deciding to pursue the fine arts at any level. Can't really explain it, but there's something great, dare I saw even spiritual, about these various artistic enterprises we're involved in and a part of. I know there's bills to be paid and in this economy, money is a serious and legitimate concern, but to me art transcends all this. I am an artist because I'm concerned with the world and its inner-workings and I see things in a way that is both beyond and incomprehensible to the scientist and mathematician, etc. My vision is not polarized by any single school of thought (math, science, religion, history, etc), but is rather an amalgamation of knowledge from all these schools. I am a visual poet--we all are--and to reduce our "craft" down to the level of a "job" is, for me at least, insulting.
Consider this:
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But Homer's words are as costly and admirable to Homer, as Agamemnon's victories are to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas, and utterer of the necessary and casual. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet.
Whether or not we realize it, as artists, we're concerned with revealing the previously mentioned "primal warblings" to men with lesser and/or limited vision--men with polarized visions. These "warblings" are truths about our world straight out of nature, and the man with the "delicate ear"--the poet, the artist--is the man best capable of deciphering these warblings.
Pardon me if that comes off as being pretentious and/or insulting and/or condescending, because that is not my intention, but it's the truth. Limiting ourselves to the canon of Western art history, look at just how important a role many of our esteemed and artistic heroes have played in their respective societies--the truths they revealed about said societies to jaded contemporary citizens and to us as onlookers from the future. That's why I personally go "
" anytime I see one of these "ignorant" college major threads on here, that always hums to the banal tune of "Math, Engineering, Professional level Science majors > Liberal Arts and the Fine Arts...." Y'all wouldn't hold those opinions if y'all really courted a holistic approach to understanding the world.
I could keep going on and on, but I guess all that it boils down to is this--don't allow "job prospects" or lack--there--off-- to influence your formal education in the Fine Arts. The entire history of western civilization was captured and illuminated by men and women who were more concerned with presenting some sliver of truth, than with "job prospects." Present your truth to the world, man. If it's earnest, money will be the least of your worries.
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