Undergraduate students can study printmaking at Lamar University through the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art with a track in printmaking.
The printmaking curriculum strongly encourages interdisciplinary work, especially drawing upon graphic and surface design techniques, mixed media and digital art techniques, materials and sensibilities. Experimentation with any number of substrates available in the current marketplace is emphasized to promote student invention.
Equipment and facilities support the printmaking curriculum, which covers both historical and contemporary approaches using planographic, intaglio, relief and digital processes. Additional coursework provides the opportunity to experiment with serigraphy and papermaking. Students are asked to use both hand imaging and photographic matrix-producing techniques to best express their artistic vision through the language of the multiple, with a darkroom facility nearby to support this.
Students master traditional ideas of the editioned impression and its presentation, and then build upon this through experimentation with mark-making, ideas inherent to the multiple, and through production of multi-process prints.
The printmaking studio facility is fully equipped with a source point ventilation system, three etching presses (two manual and one automated), one laser cutter, one automated Challenge letterpress as well as a manual galley press for proofing, and one lithographic press. In addition, there is a library of more than 30 lithographic stones in a variety of sizes, as well as a NuArc exposure unit and aquatint box. This studio includes a classroom and a faculty office and storage area.
The undergraduate printmaking study experience culminates in Lamar’s unique senior thesis program involving a series of original works produced by each Bachelor of Fine Arts degree candidate, exhibited in the Dishman Art Museum and defended by the student in a formal written thesis.