Insights to Africa:

A Quiz for the Fine Art Printmaking ITinerate Professor

He’s one of hundreds who gets an e-mail from a South African student who’s considering fine art printmaking and asks ten questions to help her make the decision. It’s an opportunity for him to test himself—like a role-play reversal of student and teacher.

An e-mail message came to me today by way of Spain. It was from an art student in South Africa. Her letter included:

“I have an assignment, in which I need to find out about a Fine Artist in Printmaking in the Professional world. Printmaking is a form of art, which I have a great interest in and would be interesting to know how it works in the “REAL WORLD”.

Then she asked ten questions. I was impressed with the thoroughness of her letter, and the kinds of questions she asked. I went to the Web site of her school, Technikon, in Port Elizabeth. It was very well done, and on the fine arts page the illustration included an intaglio press. I sent her a reply instantly, telling her I got the questions and I wanted to answer them.

As I do this, I am thinking about being her professor, which of course is make-believe. The truth is, I would like to be among her professors because I want to be a Great World Teacher. That is my goal.

If I can answer her well, she will make a decision, which will serve her best. If I do not answer her well, she may make a bad decision. In the past I was paid to teach and, sometimes, advise students; a number of them chose to pursue fine art careers and out of this number a considerable segment succeeded.

Times have changed, though, and I am no longer on a campus like the one where this student is enrolled. Nor do I teach on a regular basis because I have promoted myself into the role of a world teacher, traveling on the Internet to places all around the world.

I am what is known as an ITinerate Professor—one who travels the world using Information Technology. Now, as one can see, ten questions are asked by a student in South Africa and this professor is striving to answer them.

1. [What are the] Main areas of professional activity (detailed description of what an Fine Artist, Printmaker, does to earn a living)

The definition of “fine art” is understood to be works of art made without commercial intent. However, in many countries where people rely on monetary exchange for everything, artworks and the making of artworks has become tied to commerce.

The term “fine art” has been embraced by marketing and sales interests, tariff laws, copyrights, and advertising. The term fine art implies, however, something intangible, above commodity exchange.

Fine art has become an icon, standing for freedom, creativity, beauty and associated values. I like to use the expression “free fine art” after I discovered the phrase in use by US Customs agents to determine the difference between craft objects (for which duty must be paid) and fine art, duty-free objects.

There are some fine arts use use materials and processes other than paint, pencil, or sculpted matter; it is necessary then to apply the question: Was this object made for money or free expression? The person's intent becomes important.

Printmaking fine art has a strange and fascinating history. Printing came into being alongside painting, as we see in prehistoric art evident on the walls of caves. The handprint it might be said is the first sign of printing. When you think about the processes of both printing and painting you see that one is all-at-once from a printing surface (a hand or a plate) and the other is developed stroke by stroke, line by line or area by area.

The former uses a “tool” (the hand) as a printing surface or template, like a stencil. The other uses a tool, also, such as a stick or brush, but in ways to form and shape the image. The methods and tools for printmaking and painting are so different that I place them in separate classes.

Printmaking (and fine art printmaking) has a different history than painting and drawing. In my school experience I found that most printmaking teachers teaching in schools or through books have not been taught the difference as I see it. Most printmaking, sometimes referred to in the all-encompassing term graphics, is assumed to have grown out of the same source as painting, drawing and sculpting.

There are relationships, of course, and these have served institutions well. Society would not be what it is today were it not for including printmaking along with the other visual arts.

However, what is society today? I believe education is important to improve societal and international relations. I decided printmaking plays an important part in education because, first of all, it is a social and popular form of communication both in the making and the appreciation of art generally.

Secondly, the making of prints by hand—and sometimes in mechanical printing—requires teamwork and collaboration among individuals of diverse skills. Third, the price that people pay for prints, when they are first released, is usually much lower than for its sister arts, painting and drawing.

Today it is more necessary to make the distinction between fine art printmaking and fine art painting and drawing because many people worldwide are living in the digital reproduction age. The graphic technologies and processes that have been taken up by computer programmers are like the “children” of the old-time printing processes. All the technology of media—including photography, cinema, video and digital—have printmaking at their parents, their ancestral roots. That root is the handprint on the stone wall of a cave or cliff painting.

In the foregoing I have tried to make it clear that in order to talk about "what fine art printmakers do for a living in the real world", one can consider whether the printmaker is a fine artist or that what they make is a commodity that is intended to be offered for sale.

If this is the case and the individual wants to make a living making prints, they will analyze the market and sales carefully and then try to produce something along those lines. They will, in other words, conform to what most people think the real world is: A world in which art is not made for its own sake, but for the purpose of making money.

I visited a real world printmaking studio one time, which was well known for its large-size prints. They sold these to corporations and hotels. I was with my students that day on a field trip, and a student asked one of the artists working there how he chose his colors.

The artist - actually an employee of the company - pointed to a pile of Vogue, a fashion magazine, under the table and said, “I look through those and I get colors from them. The magazine hires experts in fashion and they know what colors are in fashion this season. So I use the same kinds of colors they do.” This artist was concerned with making a living by making prints that he sold partly because their color was “right” in the real world.

He was free to do this, and he had all the technology he needed to do a good job of it. Choosing fashion colors does not invalidate his art, but his money making motive was clear: He wanted to sell his prints and sell them as soon as possible. It was his living he was concerned about.

Another artist might be more interested in colors that fit his or her idea, however the colors may or may not be in fashion. The free fine artists take a risk in not making a living. In order to make a living, he or she might get a job printing the prints of the artist whose work is selling well. A printmaker, after all, makes a good printer; he or she knows how to print using high standards of craftsmanship.

That artist who used fashion colors, by the way, was a part-time employee at the printing studio. His art never did succeed to a great degree in the so-called art world. He steadily made more money by printing for other people than he did from sales of his own art. Over time, he got tired of making work for the market, as there was little joy in it and little money.

The artists for whom he printed, however, continue to make artworks to this day. Their prices continued to climb over the years until they are full time artists with private homes, imported cars, and who could send their children go to private schools and universities. How they balanced their freedom to use whatever colors they thought were right and the willingness of the marketplace to pay for them is a significant achievement, like a top athlete who gets it right again and again.

I would be interesting to read a survey to find out how fine art printmakers make their living today. I estimate that printmakers who have spent from 10 to 40 years in printmaking art comprise a very small number in the population of any country, and many of them have, by now, decided to stop making their prints by hand and are using new digital technologies.

Incidentally, a big percentage of these individuals have full or part time teaching jobs that support them so they do not have to rely on their prints or printing skills to earn a living, pay for medical bills and help support a family.

In conclusion I suggest that few printmakers earn a living at the middle-income level in any country by making prints as sole producers. To understand a person’s prospect for making a living making prints, you need to understand the processes that are done mostly by hand, the health hazards, and the artistic style of the times in which they work at their art and craft.

In many places, prints are not regarded as being on the same monetary value as paintings. They are small works on paper, usually, as this is all an individual can afford to handle.

On the other hand, if you look at printmaking outside the “free fine art” definition (work that is made free of any commercial motivation) and look at it inside the world of commerce, where fine appearances, a high face value, are important, then an individual can make beautiful objects using printmaking methods. In fact, it is the face value, not the content or meaning of many works of art, that sells them. These are factors of selling, plus the “name” value of the artist who signed it.

Naming the areas of professional activity (in the question above) would involve following a successful printmaker around for a period of time and noting what they do all day. I suspect most of the time they would be doing numerous activities besides making prints, like a business person. They might hire someone—a student of fine art—to print their work and do the preparatory tasks. They might have art dealers who take their work on consignment in a number of places. They may have to divide their professional time with their family if they have a family.

As a final thought about professional ways to earn a living as a fine art printmaker, I think about education. Printmakers are adept, I believe, in using the new technologies to make their art and also to use the new technologies to teach their art and craft. I count myself as one who wants to do both.

The field, or profession, of education is to me a more important human activity than fine arts because the intent is to raise people to higher consciousness and creativity. Fine art that merely decorates does not inspire or grow peoples’ minds the way education, or education and art together can do. That is why my goal is to be a fine art printmaking teacher on-line, a world teacher.

Therefore, I’m thinking deeply about the ten questions that arrive in my e-mail, via Spain, this morning; and I advise a person in their student years to take printmaking instead of other art classes, knowing they are achieving more than meets the eye.

They are working with the roots of the most powerful information and communications forms in our universe—digital technology. As creative artists and experts in the full spectrum of printmaking (from the hand made to the digitally made) they can be individuals of great value as members of teams working for education, the environment, and world peace.

The author's stamp from the Perfect Studios artists stamp collection Copyright 2003 Bill Ritchie.

The artist's stamp, above, is one of a set of ten from his fantasy region he named Emeralda. This stamp depicts the island called Perfect Studios, the domain of expertise in artists asset management and legacy transfer.

About the Author: Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. is an Itinerate Professor based in Seattle. He taught college (UW) and after promotion to full professor of printmaking and media arts, he resigned at 43. He then launched several teaching, research and practice companies. In 1992 he discovered Emeralda, a fantasy region accessible only by computer. He invented the rules-of-play and created an operating system for online interactivity for himself. 

He writes for the benefit of discipline, using a PDA when he's wandering around and a desktop PC to organize his essays. He has a thousand or more saved. He keeps a blog on the island of SPEACON in the Emeralda Region.

For further information contact Bill H Ritchie via e-mail at ritchie@emeralda.com. His professional Web site is at www.seanet.com/~ritchie. The company name is Emeralda Works, 500 Aloha, Seattle, WA 98109. He can be reached by telephone at (206) 285-0658.