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Exploring Print.
Panelists: Madeline Mackay, Abe McCowan and Yoshiko Shimano.

Not Yet Earth: Breaking Down the Body Through Print.
Madeline Mackay.

The paper discusses the use of printmaking to explore our conflicted encounter with substance and the transition of matter from body to flesh, to meat, to mud and water. Through working with these transitional substances, I interact with the concept of the body in time, considering it not as a discrete entity but as a fluid component on a continuum of matter. These ideas are addressed in the context of investigating the psychological impacts of ill-health, which can cause the relationship between body and sense of self to alter, becoming conflicted and uncomfortable when it can no longer be taken for granted.

Printmaking processes are key to exploring this. The breakdown of clarity and accumulation of depth that are created in the images through print are crucial in revealing the blurred edges of bodily substance and the conflicted relationship between the body and the sense of self. The 'otherness' of the malfunctioning body is represented in my work using strips of meat, which carry a familiar echo of the body but are at the same time uncomfortably foreign. In a series of CMYK silkscreen prints the meat vibrates between space and surface as their photographic clarity breaks down, echoing the tension between the body as entity and as matter. Another series of soap-ground etchings have broken down even further, depicting fleshy strands that resist recognition to the point of abstraction. Flesh is itself an abstraction; no longer animal and not yet earth, it exists somewhere between the two, inanimate and yet permeated by a history of being alive. Through print processes my images take on a similarly liminal quality.

Inner Animal and I.
Abraham McCowan.

What is the Inner Animal?
Why does Printmaking call to the Inner Animal?
Why Wilderness?
Why Drawing?
Why Mixed Media?
Why Black and White?
Is it better to make artwork from the Inner Animal rather than the Mind?
Where do the two meet?
Which comes First?
How and when does Harmony from the Inner Animal and the Mind meet?

Beyond a “Traditional” Look.
Yoshiko Shimano.

Over my years of teaching printmaking, I have collected images from my students and my own prints, which show a pushing beyond a “traditional” look. I would like to speak about not only the final images, but also each artist’s initial ideas and intentions and how the look of the outcomes became innovative prints. While I believe in the strength and beauty of a single print, I have always been interested in prints, which only a printmaker can create. I believe that true “interdisciplinary” only happens when there is an excellent “disciplinary,” innovative printmaking stands on the excellence of traditional printmaking.


Living In the Shadow of Thomas, Georgia and Albert.
Panelists: Chairs: Mark Ritchie and Cerese Vaden. With Anne M. Hoff,  Brooke Steiger, Sara Tabbert.

 In this panel “West” refers to a geographic region and associated cultures in the western United States. “Western Art” references art produced by artists living in the West and art produced by artists about the West.

“Western art” comes with baggage and many serious artists avoid being identified as makers of such.  Yet, those of us living in the West are western artists in the broadest sense and many, if not most of us, speak to issues specific to contemporary life in the western United States.  We are influenced, often deeply, by place, culture and the social and political issues of our communities.

This panel is an attempt to own our identities as western artists.  It asks both audience-attenders and presenters to consider their art lineage from western artists.  What artists working in the West or making art about the West have influenced their work?  How do they engage western issues in their work and continue this visual dialogue?  Has the role of making art about and in the West changed?

The hour-long panel will be fast-paced. We will open the panel with participant-attenders taking a few moments to consider and list their western artistic influences.  The panel will proceed with each of the panelists showing a few images of their work and several artists they have identified who have western art influences. Presented artists will be selected through an open call.  We seek to keep panelist presentations to 12 minutes each, then move to moderator generated connections with the final 15 minutes open for conversation and discussion between the panelists and the participant-attenders. Cerese Vaden and Mark Ritchie will moderate the panel.


Print as object - object as Matrix.
Panelists: Juthith Baumann, Mary Claire Becker and Kristin Sarette.

In Passages of Modern Sculpture, Rosalind Kruass describes how Auguste Rodin was able to recognize the simultaneity of meaning and experience by saying “meaning does not precede experience but occurs in the process of the experience itself.”1

This panel will discuss the use of print as object, object as matrix, and the symbiotic collaborative relationship of the simultaneity of meaning and experience. The panel will consist of three printmakers in different levels of career and diverse approaches to print which diverge from, yet honor, modes of traditional print processes.

Work produced in a print shop cannot be made without an expansive knowledge of print media; its strengths and limitations. Working within the parameters of a matrix, press size, or specific medium has given a defined set of standards to work within, and reach to go beyond. Honoring traditional print media, while continuing the legacy of technical innovation which has been set by contemporaries and predecessors, pushes the definition of print and matrix.

While expanding upon the medium of printmaking, and the processes with in it, the simultaneity of meaning and experience is achieved. As a considerable component to printmaking is trust in process, the act of printing becomes a metaphor for transition, and the timid but ever-present optimism which accompanies it.


Transposing Pedagogies.

Panelists: Jill AnnieMargaret, Amy Nack and Ameerah Bader.

Printmaking has innate abilities to bring people together. It starts with the sharing of supplies and equipment and spreads to the first magical moments of pulling a print off an inked matrix. This panel features two speakers whose pedagogical approaches engage participants and students with unique and seemingly disparate methodologies with printmaking at the core of both. Public printmaking pedagogy and mobile technology integration bridge in this panel with principles of community building and citizen engagement in common.

Experimental public engagement projects such as Print Boise, a multi-year project developed by Wingtip Press in partnership with the City of Boise engages the public in field workshops that gather the texture of the Boise River, the urban core and its people through the visual language of print.

Many educators have stories of students texting or logging on to social media during class lectures or at other inappropriate moments. Instead of banning mobile devices one educator’s attitude has been transposed and now this technology is being leveraged for the benefit of all students in the print lab. This panel will introduce the use of iPads and mobile apps at Boise State University to connect, integrate, inform and streamline the flow of information and build not break down community.