Dear Dean Randolph Swearer,
I'm sure you've received a tremendous amount of correspondence concerning the proposed closing of Parson's printmaking department. Iwish to be brief, but I'd like you to have an idea of who I am.
I'm a friend of a large community of printmakers called the SouthernGraphics Council and a former printmaking/graphic design major from the Massachusetts College of Art. I'm a senior graphic designer in a law firm's in-house visual communications department and the sole proprietor of a letterpress printing business in Somerville, Massachusetts called Milk Row Press.
Admittedly, I'm not quite up to speed on what the current status of your plans/decision about the future of Parson's printmaking department, but I wanted to impart to you my feelings about the importance ofprintmaking in undergraduate and graduate programs in the visual arts.
I learned about printmaking and graphic design in an environment during the first half of the 1990s where many students at MCA were just beginning to reconcile the disparity between the analog world and the burgeoning world of digital design. My interdepartmental major allowed me to bridge the gap between those two worlds. I learned what it meant to put ink on paper and the concept of printing from a plate and from both digital and analog sources. My letterpress experiences (from both design and printmaking curricula) taught me the origins of type and typographic controls and terminology. Making reduction woodcuts, screen prints and lithographs allowed me to experiment and learn about layering and transparency (as well as how to sharpen a gouge, choose woods, papers, inks...make informed choices)?concepts integral to the leading software packages in design, illustration and digital image making today. Printmaking and Artist Books as well ( I soon learned to fuse my concepts and ideas across the two worlds and the supposed two platforms of design and fine art) addressed ideas of the multiple and sequencing I could go on and on...
...but the point is that printmaking as a medium spoke to me, it allowed me to explore my voice, become a critical thinker...an artist...another medium may not have allowed me to do that. The richness and depth of what I saw in printmaking is unequaled in my mind in any other medium I beseech you to maintain and even expand your printmaking program so that it may engender positive educational experiences that will help you achieve your goal of producing broadly educated and intellectually aware artists and designers.
I hope this reaches you in an open frame of mind and in good spirits. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you wish to discuss this further.
Thanks, Keith Cross