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The California Printmaker 2007

Art Hazelwood was the guest editor of the 2007 California Society of Printmakers journal, you can download a pdf file (3.2mb) here California Printmaker 2007.

Prints in All the Wrong Places
Recently a national art magazine with an historical emphasis on printmaking had an issue dedicated to art and activism. In these great times, one might expect something… well… something…serious, in such an issue. But the magazine seemed to have a concept of activism that even Dick Cheney and his Pentagon think tank couldn’t have found threatening. There was the usual art world discussion of political art about art, and most glaringly there was not a single mention of prints.

Inconveniently for the art world as represented by that magazine there is a good deal of printmaking going on that has something to say about the state of the world. For the editors of that national magazine it would be art for all the wrong reasons, by all the wrong people, in all the wrong places, made in all the wrong ways.

But there is more than politics that is affecting the way prints are made and presented. Technological changes mean that printmaking as a way of thinking is moving into different realms. The tradition of printmaking is perhaps less in the actual techniques than in the way of thinking about graphic media. When is a car a print, or a tapestry for that matter? The final form that prints take now is not fixed; a billboard, a website, an offset poster, an op-ed piece. The final form of the print, (that for which the print was made), has moved further down the line towards something else. And the means of distributing them – in traveling shows at everyday venues, in web site sales, in free distributions of prints on tortillas – pushes prints into a role it has not played in the US in many years. It is a role that printmakers often speak of, but usually nostalgically as if to say “we were once important.” But a new activity is in the air. It is being reclaimed – the return of the democratic print.

Art Hazelwood, guest editor

California Printmaker 2007 Articles:

Prints in All the Wrong Places:
San Quentin Prison Block Prints, Katya McCulloch
Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca, Calixto Robles
Celebrating Secret History, Josh MacPhee
The Industrial Revolution of Street Art, Ryan 'Mose' Benford
Graphic Collectives in the Mission, Calixto Robles
30 years of political posters, Lincoln Cushing
San Francisco Print Collective
Middle of the Road Prints, Jenny Robinson
Without Housing, DeWitt Cheng

Prints in All the Wrong Places: Exhibitions
Yo! What Happened to Peace?, Mark Vallen
Art and Intimidation, Stephen A. Fredericks
Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex, Carol Wells
Paper Politics, Josh MacPhee
Propaganda III, Art Hazelwood

Prints in All the Wrong Places: Where Will it End?
Screenprint into Billboard, Favianna Rodriguez
Weaving Prints into Tapestry, Nick Stone
Muertorider, Artemio Rodriguez
Corn in the Service of Revolution, Great Tortilla Conspirators
Prints in All the Wrong Places: Art and Disability
NIAD Printmaking, Joan Finton
Prints in All the Wrong Places: In the Paper of Record? OP – Ed – Art, Frances Jetter

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