Press reader

A PressReader is based on the Kindle, the amazon.com leader in making a near-perfect e-reader, with the added benefit that the PressReader also prints. It is a combination printing press and reader specialized for printmaking. Artists, designers and crafts people who are familiar with printmaking are scattered all over the world as a result of fifty years of education programs that included printmaking as part of the liberal arts courses in schools and colleges.

Compared to fifty years ago, when I was a student, there are now more people who know what printmaking is as an art form and that it is not only a means of reproducing other graphics and paintings. When I moved to Seattle, fresh out of graduate school with an MA in Printmaking, I found quite a few people had not been introduced to printmaking as a fine art form. I had invitations to speak at museums and schools about creative printmaking.

Glen Alps had preceded me in this evangelical campaign to bring a wider audience to the art and craft (and products) of printmakers. He went as far as to put the collagraph on the map of the printmaking world. We taught that technique is important, but that there were more than technical reasons to teach printmaking at all levels.

Social art

There is, for example, the social aspect of printmaking. When people must share a printing press, for example, they are forced to communicate, arrange their spaces and follow the rules of the facility. In many cases, it is the very human aspect of interactive exchange that draws people to printmaking in a shared facility. This opens the way to understanding other individuals, mutual respect and problem-solving.

Economics

A press is not crucial to printmaking because printing one’s hand is a simple proposition. The first prints made, intentionally, were hand prints on the walls of caves and cliffs. However, as printmaking became more complicated and the demand for detailed, exactly repeatable pictures increased, the machine age was at the forefront and, with it, higher costs. There are exceptions, such as the wooden spoon for relief printmaking and the Japanese-style baren. These are not expensive, but a press for lithography or etching can run to tens of thousands of dollars.

But the fact that an artist or designer can produce multiples with a press means that the sale price of the work is less and, therefore, many painters kept food on their table by producing prints alongside their master works in other media. It often happened that the exposure to printmaking even helped their painting and sculpture as methodology and material restrictions had their say in the creative process.

Society and economics meet

The press of the past has not kept pace with the changes brought about by the technologies that replaced printing on paper. Electronic arts and digital arts do not require a press, nor hard copy, to have their effect. Social networks are more powerful than the artists collective printmaking studios. I would venture that printmakers spend quite a lot of time on Facebook and updating their online galleries and blogs instead of laboring on an engraving. In fact, the pressure of modern times have made printmaking difficult.

Not only the pressures of time, but also the pressures of money. I am told the market for art of any kind is in a slump, lately, and it’s true for prints, too. Many artists are turning to inkjet prints to save labor and to offer work at lower prices. Recently two artists collaborated on a suite of print which were available both as hand printed woodblocks and giclee prints—the latter at about a sixth of the price of the former. At last report, they grossed over a quarter million dollars in a very short time.

The press reader

Therefore, I propose a new device to address the needs of artists making prints to surmount the problems of time and money, and get printmaking back on track as a social and economically viable art form. I call it a PressReader after the idea of the eReader, or eBook, such as the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo devices.

It is, as it says, a combination printing press and reader but it is different from an e-reader because it functions as a kind of global screen to connect with other printmakers. I base my PressReader on my design of the miniature etching presses (aka Halfwoods) and my plan for a global network called Proximates.

There is a bit of fun built in to my concept because social networks and casual video games indicate that there is an entertainment and playful quality that can be programmed into Internet-based communication.

The benefits of the PressReader go further, because education—the teaching of printmaking—is a field at risk. I saw my former employer—the University of Washington School of Art Printmaking Division—go into a tailspin after the mid-1980s, and today’s program is a shadow of its former self.

The world I was born into, and the joy of printmaking that I know, is so restricted now that we may be losing ground, going from printmaking boom to bust. The PressReader is my offering to pick up the loose ends and get printmakers all over the world back in “virtual touch” with each other and put back together what social and economic setbacks have damaged.