The LSU Printmaking Guild has completed a national print exchange | News
The LSU Printmaking Guild culminated a month-long national print swap on the final weekend of spring semester.
The Guild is LSU’s official student organization for printmaking, providing both a community and an important artistic resource for its 40 members. Building a sense of community is currently the guild’s biggest focus.
Cameron Savage is a second-year printmaking graduate and the president of the Printmaking Guild. He said that an exchange of prints seemed to be a clear way to proceed.
“We really want to build morale back up and get students interested and make sure the club is being active in whatever ways possible, so an exchange was a pretty simple way we could do that,” Savage said.
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He said printmakers are used to exchanging work because their medium is focused on reproducing it. Printmakers make several copies or an “edition” of a print, which often leaves them with a surplus of work.
Savage says that trading prints in a nutshell is the next step.
“It allows the pieces to not feel so ‘sacred’ or ‘priceless’ in a way,” he said. “It’s not like you’ve created this one painting, and this painting is one of one. For print we can create large editions and trade them even just amongst friends in the print shop.”
Savage said that in late august, invitations for the exchange were sent by Google survey to between 40-50 universities in the U.S. as well as a few Canadian ones. Participants would pay $15 for entry, send 15 of their prints in and then get 13 randomly chosen ones from the pool.
Savage said submissions began showing up in mid-April and didn’t stop until mid-May.
The exchange ended up with around 40 participants total, leaving the Guild’s four officers and handful of member volunteers with around 600 prints to sort through and redistribute, he said.
“It took days,” he said. “It was a madhouse.”
The prints that didn’t get sent back out won’t be wasted.
To continue the club’s current commitment to maximum involvement with the community, Savage said many of the prints sent in and used in the exchange will also be featured in an LSU exhibition during the 2023 fall semester. He believes that an exhibition will help to raise awareness about the guild and generate excitement for the exchange.
Savage encouraged anyone interested to get involved and follow the group’s Instagram account for information on future events.
The printmaking guild is open to anyone who’s taken LSU’s introductory printmaking courses and even to students who haven’t but have some experience with the practice.
Note: Click here to see the Louisiana Illuminator’s original reporting.
“If you make prints in a traditional sense, exchanges are always an easy way to be pulled into the community,” said Savage.