The Printmaking area is approximately 10,000 sq. ft. housing intaglio, lithography, screen print, book arts, papermaking, digital and darkroom facilities. We provide private or shared studio space for our graduate students as well as keys for 24-hour access to the shop.
The facility features a unique opportunity to work on large scale work, including two ten foot long Takach presses, one for etching, relief and monoprinting and one for lithography. Additionally there is a 5-foot by ten-foot vacuum table in papermaking.
Intaglio
The intaglio shop has a total of five floor-model presses. It is equipped with three Takach presses: 49” x 120”, 36” x 42” and 25 1/2” x 48”. There is also a large Brand press (36” x 42”) and a smaller Botega press (25 1/2” x 47”) available as well. The inking area is 4 ft. wide by 20 ft. long, and has three hot plates. The color inking area is approximately the same size and has two 3 x 4 ft. glass slabs for color mixing, one of which is on wheels.
The shop is set up for work on copper, zinc and steel as well as woodcuts and collographs. Furthermore the etching area boasts several large format, vertical tanks that can accommodate plates upwards to 4’ x 8’. There are viscosity or surface rollers with a range of varied durometers and sizes from 6” x 16” to 12” x 24”. The intaglio area also has a number of high quality professional brayers for student use.
Lithography
The lithography shop has six presses including three large Takach Garfield presses one of which has a 4 ft. x 10 ft. press bed with plate base. The shop owns about 140 stones ranging in size up to 30” x 40”. There is also a plate lithography area in the shop with a separate, ventilated, plate-processing space and spray booth.
The primary focus of graduate work in lithography is on color prints and the shop is well set up for this purpose with six large diameter rollers ranging in size from 6” x 16” to 14” x 24” and a variety of smaller brayers and rollers. There is a large format punch registration system and 4’ x 5’ light table as well as a large inking table on casters for ease in working on color ink projects in any area of the shop.
Silkscreen/Darkroom/Digital
There is a printshop darkroom facility, which provides the opportunity for both transparent positive and negative work in intaglio, lithography and screen-printing, as well as black and white film developing and printing. A large table type mat cutter is available for graduate student use.
The printshop has a large format (4ft. x 8 ft.) Nu Arc Vacuum Frame Exposure Unit and a 5 ft. x 10 ft. Cincinnati Screen Printing Unit. There are also several smaller vacuum table stations for screen printing, as well as adequate screen drying and storage areas. The digital facility includes an Epson E9800 plotter printer. Two Mac G4 computers, an Epson 7500 plotter printer, a Hewlett Packard 5000 laser printer and three scanners are also housed within the Printmaking Area.
Also conveniently located on campus are the School of Art MAD (Music, Art & Design) Lab and the CADGIS Lab which each boast extensive state of the art digital technology, which is available to our graduate students.
Book Arts/Papermaking
The Book Arts Area is equipped with two letterpresses, a Vandercook SP 20 (18” x 24”), and a Vandercook – I (15” x 22” ) as well as a small tabletop 14” x 24” intaglio press and a small tabletop proofing press.
A light table, eight galley cabinets with galleys, and three job banks (composing stations) are available. Over 200 drawers of foundry type round out all the necessary tools for relief and letterpress production. An extensive library, of type-high blocks with miscellaneous zinc cuts is part of the facilities resources. With the computer lab and darkroom close at hand, photopolymer plates are popular and we have four Bunting magnetic plate bases with scribed grids for adapting the letterpress.
A 52” Robust Board Shearer is available for easy cutting of binder’s board and book cloth. In the bindery there are two 16” x 20” book presses each with 28” of daylight, as well as two smaller nipping presses and a job backer.
The Papermaking Area includes both a 7 lb. capacity and a 2.5 lb. capacity Reina Hollander Beater. There is also a 30 ton McDonald hydraulic press, three large paper dryers, numerous vats, saw horses, and over 20 professional and student grade mahogany mould and deckles ranging in size from 8. 1/2” x 11” to 22” x 30” available for sheet forming. A 4’ x 8’ stainless steel vacuum table is available for forming large sheets and a pulp sprayer makes experimental and sculptural work possible.
A list of additional facilities and galleries can be found in the facilities section of this site.