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Good
News, Bad News
The good news is that the World Printmakers website is growing nicely. The bad
is that this baby requires constant care and feeding and is getting greedy and
spoiled. The more material you feed it, the more it demands. And if you ease off
its ration of promotion to attend other responsibilties, it immediately castigates
you with an alarming drop in page views. Nothing serious, mind you, nothing that
a few sleepless nights of rocking the cradle won't remedy! New
Features
One result of that "cradle rocking" is a series of new
user-friendly features on the site, features like a Search Engine which makes
it possible to track down your favorite artist or technique in a snap of the fingers.
We have also added a Site Map, with a plain-vanilla alphabetical listing of just
what's available on the site. Also new is the World Printmakers FAQ, with a lot
of information which wouldn't fit in anyplace else. Digital Printmaking We got
such a nice response to Brett Lortie's Short History of Digital Printmaking article
that we followed it up with Alan Bamberger's Giclée Update, which reflects the
state of the art in the digital print world. These two articles have given rise
to an ongoing controversy, the upshot of which seems to be that there are two
kinds of printmakers: those who love computers and those who don't. The World
Printmakers view on the subject (until someone comes along and convinces us to
the contrary; we're flexible, if not downright wishy washy) is that no medium
for producing fine-art prints should be discarded just because it's different
from the older methods. What we do ask is that digital printmakers respect the
traditions of the signed-and-numbered limited edition, which for us forms part
of the very essence of the "limited-edition fine-art print." The
Nicest Surprise
One of the nicest things that arrived at World
Printmakers this month was an invitation to host the virtual version of the University
of South Florida's "Homeostatic" print exhibition (which is to be hung both at
the university and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art). Put together by Professor Bradlee
Shanks, the show highlights the themes of "human touch vs. technological advance"
and our species' necessary adaptation and evolution in dealing with it all. So,
stay tuned. This exhibit should be interesting.
The Rhythm 'n Blues Screenprinter Andy MacDougall's screenprint course is up to
chapter four and five is coming up soon. A number of people have asked if the
previous chapters were still available, and the answer is yes. Just go into the
current chapter and work your way successively back with the back arrows which
appear at the end of each article. World
Printmakers Artbooks
After much thought on the subject we decided
to put an Amazon.com bookstore on the site. We know that everybody and his brother
has an Amazon affiliate program on their sites, but in the end we decided to do
it, as we feel it will give our loyal readers a way to express their approval
and support of the World Printmakers project buying their books through us. It's
the least we could do(!) WPDID
Have you seen the World Printmakers Digital Image Downloads yet? In the
end we decided to offer them as gratuitous gesture, just to bring a little senseless
beauty into your life. You can load them down, print them up and use them as bookmarkers
or bookends (for that you have to stick them on a large stone.) If you like them
we'll do more. The Future World Printmakers has begun to implement our sponsorship
agreement with Airtel, the Spanish mobile phone company. This collaboration will
bring some major changes (for the better, we hope). Does this mean that World
Printmakers will become a Spanish site? No, for that we have Spanish Printmakers,
our sister site (in Spanish "Grabadores Españoles" http://www.losgrabadores.com)
which will also be sponsored by Airtel. So stay tuned. | 
