What Innovation?  

Listing my innovations for fun 

Reading a tome of a book titled, “Diffusion of Innovations” by Everett M. Rogers, this artist/teacher must pause and ask himself, “What, if anything, did I innovate?” and, then, “Why was any one of these adopted and diffused?” The question bears thinking. 

It started with a trip to Europe

If I “innovated” in any pursuit, it probably started with the trip Lynda, my wife and I, took in 1969 to work in Europe with Rolf Nesch in Norway, and some follow-up visits to Stanley Hayter and others on the continent.

My pursuit was an unanswered question: “What was it like before WWII when it appeared that printmaking innovation was diffused?” Such diffusion of the inventive printmaking that Nesch and Hayter—to name only two renowned artists who helped make printmaking a fine art form in its own right—is an example of “Diffusion of Innovations” which Everett M. Rogers wrote about in his book of that title.

At 72—the same age that Rolf Nesch was when I went to work with him and see his technique he called, “material grafiks,”—I look back almost every day and wonder why my innovations were not diffused. Or, the most important ones to me, the innovations in printmaking as the art is taught in college.

Rogers’ book is helping me understand why my innovations weren’t adopted in college art and why I continue to see my innovations slow to be diffused to the degree that I wish they would.

A current example is my proposal for a Seattle Printmakers Center—I find very few people interested. Rogers might tell me why. Thus far his book has taught me the truth that even though an innovation might be a good thing for many people, not many people will take it up.

Those who do are called “early adopters” of the innovation. Their number is small at first, but it grows over time and then it soars—providing the circumstances are right for it.

What did I do?

This morning, as part of my research, I thought it would be instructive to list what I think are my innovations—the ones that have not been diffused. Uncertain whether to start at the top—the Seattle Printmakers Center—or at the early innovations of my career, it’s hard to choose.

The old innovations are easier to understand—starting in 1969 in other words. My innovation that year was that printmaking shares with painting, drawing and sculpture certain creative processes. I was steeped in creativity theories, not only in art, but in science, mathematics and music. What is the creative process, anyway? Whatever it was, it seemed to be the key to success for artists. Whether it is innate or if creativity can be taught—these are the questions that motivated me to go to Europe in 1969.

And the question was specifically grounded in printmaking, because printmaking is not a creative process itself, but a repetitive, mechanical process that lent itself to non-human production. If printmaking were to be valuable in the humanities, or if printmaking were to be justified as material for higher education, then creativity might be the only question to study.

Creativity in printmaking was the only thing that interested me after that epiphany, and might save me from a long, dull career in teaching college. If I could share with other university teachers a kind of research, worthy of the name, then it would be to find the keys to creativity in this otherwise mechanical reproduction process called printmaking.

Creativity denied

I learned there are many people in secure positions, socio-economically speaking, who deny there is any such thing as creativity—that there is nothing new under the sun. When Glen Alps, whose innovation was the collagraph name twenty years before I came to the UW School of Art, began his push for diffusion of the process, it took ten years for him to enjoy the recognition of having named it.

It was what Rolf Nesch called “metal grafik” or “material grafik” but the name collagraph (collage graphic, and also collograph, with an “o” referring to gluing) was more popular in the United States printmaking nomenclature. It was an innovation, but to me it was not important that a person used one technique over another to make a work of art that had something about it that was creative and important.

Technique can be learned by machines. I was looking for the human element that must be part of the experience. Besides books on creativity, I also read books like, “Mechanization takes Command,” “Prints and People,” and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

Paralleling this literature I read books on education; one that sticks in my mind is “Art on Campus,” because it is here that I learned the history of art becoming a topic worthy of university-level study, research, production and services.

My first innovation

That must be my first innovation—that the four cornerstones of university work are teaching, research, production and services. Not really an innovation when you realize that these are the basis of all great universities for hundreds of years, actually, but my adoption of this as my mantra (signified by the acronym, TRPS) was innovation enough to keep me on course for fifty years.