The Fantasmagoric Printaloon Transformathon Project

The Ohio University Printmaking Area hosted a week-long, creative, collaborative event with the University of Tennessee - Knoxville (UTK) Printmaking Department graduate students and faculty, October 25 – 29, 2011. The combined group worked together to create prints, objects, costumes, masks, other transformative attire and printed sculptures. The artists worked with visiting artists, Patty Mitchell and Robert Lockheed, to explore the possibilities of "inflatables" in conjunction with printed materials. The final creations were presented on Saturday, October 29th on Court Street in Athens, Ohio as part of the annual Halloween celebration.

An additional component of the project is an exchange portfolio between OU/UTK, titled "Ghost Prints". Over thirty original prints are being created prior to the event and will be on display in late October. The project was supported by Arts for Ohio through Ohio University and the Betsy Worden Printmaking Endowment through UTK.

Artifacts from the experience are on display on the outer wall of the sculpture tray in the Art + Architecture Building.

Fantasmagoric Printaloon Transformathon
Ohio University celebrates 'HallOUween' with Court Street block party
Toxic-themed balloon animals to grace Court Street tomorrow
Halloween becomes high performance art

Welcome to Printmaking

The Printmaking Program provides a complete studio experience leading toward BFA and MFA degrees with regular courses in intaglio, lithography, relief and monotype, papermaking and screenprint. Emphasis is placed on both traditional and exploratory techniques and concepts, including monoprints, combinations of print and non-print methods and photo-print processes including non-silver photographic processes. No style, technique or aesthetic approach is stressed over another, so that the individual quality of one's work is the essential measure of achievement. UT art students, especially our graduate students and undergraduate majors are expected to work with the entire printmaking toolbox, from traditional to digital processes. Gaining a command of these tools allow the artist to choose the appropriate print medium and technique for a given concept.

The print area encourages a pedagogical approach that treats prints as one of many tools in an expanded field of art production. In serving this wide range of areas within the school of art, printmaking has the potential to function as an important meeting ground for artistic issues and approaches, from the autographic and painterly, to the mechanical, computer aided and photographic. In this sense, print forms can function as a bridge, crossing the boundaries which divide the fine from the applied arts. For this reason, we see the mission of the print area as a critical component of the school's overall mission.

The Printmaking program has a linkage agreement with the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland. Through this relationship two of our students spend the month of May as guest artists in Poland. Two students from Wroclaw come to UTK each September in the same capacity. The program offers our students an opportunity to form lasting relationships with their printmaking peers in Poland.

At the University of Tennessee we have an active community in our shop, with frequent visiting artists, an active student-lead print club, and an annual Open House and Celebrity Print Sale (including prints by UT athletic coaches, at right UT Football Coach Phil Fulmer makes a zinc etching plate for a student fund-raiser to attend the annual Southern Graphics Council Conference.). We have even made prints with elephants from the Knoxville Zoo under the direction of the New York artists Komar and Melamid. We believe that making art can be serious fun.