At PNCA, you explore the history, technology, and craft of print media as you discover how to give form to your ideas. You learn the skills to investigate, articulate, and critique your own ideas and those of others. In the extensive printmaking curriculum, you explore technique, context, and content. You equally investigate courses in intaglio, relief, lithography, screen printing, monoprinting, and print history, while also having course opportunities in experimental print and mixed media applications, conceptually-based seminars, as well as intensive workshops in bookbinding and paper making as tools to develop your personal vision. Printmaking students have access for research to the extraordinary resources of the Portland Art Museum and the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts - one of the premiere drawing, photograph, and print collections in America.
All students work in cooperative studio environments and seniors have semi-private studio space.
Creative work is fostered by some of the newest equipment in computer graphics used by printmakers today in PNCA's state of the art computer lab. Other printmaking equipment includes a full range of presses, darkrooms, an electronic copy camera, and a large vacuum light exposure unit. As you investigate your interests, PNCA's large faculty provides diverse viewpoints that help you develop your own personal visual and conceptual language. Utilizing PNCA's close ties ranging from the regional to international printmaking community, students are exposed to professional artists' ideas and expertise through our visiting artist program involving lectures, critiques, and demonstrations, as well as local internships, field trips, workshops, and special projects. PNCA strives to foster a strong sense of community and an intensive engagement of mind with media for all students exploring printmaking.