About the Program
As all media, printmaking meets the challenge of contemporary practice by continually renovating and reorienting its rich heritage. One addition is incorporating advancements in technology and process into classic curricular concerns about form and content. Print and Paper offers a range of approaches and methods in lithography, intaglio, screen, relief, including classes in papermaking, artist books, and bookbinding. Study where new ideas in history have always begun–print and paper!
We offer complete facilities for plate and stone lithography, all intaglio approaches, mono print / monotype, alternative methods, screen print, and relief. In-studio computer stations allow for transparency production for photo print approaches. Other department digital labs and labs all over campus provide students with further opportunities. The first studio houses large Takash and Brand Litho presses, matched with large Takasch and Crull Etching presses, with a third smaller Brand Etching press. A second studio is equipped with two Vandercook, a Washington, and four slightly smaller proof presses used for text development and further valuable approaches to relief printmaking. A full exposure unit for photo processes, and clean areas for paper preparation before printing and post-printing procedures, and book classes. Our fully dedicated Papermaking studio has four Hollander Beaters, a custom steel frame hydraulic paper press, hundreds of large felts, large oversized vat stations, two large, warm forced-air stacking dries and all equipment for Oriental Papermaking as well. Lastly, extensive Bookbinding equipment includes an electric book tooling unit, and industrial scale book drying stack presses. There is plenty more beyond this equipment!
Print & Paper currently has a newly developing affiliation with an innovative type publisher press, where internships are available. Advanced type printing classes are taught on site. Students discover the history of prints at the prestigious Albright-Knox Art Gallery just across the street, and the campus' Burchfield-Penny Art Museum, an entirely new 2008 building. At both, students have direct access to prints, documenting key areas of the history of printmaking, from the fifteenth century to the present.
SUNY Buffalo State's print and paper program focuses on skills, experimentation, and dialogue, making it a place to explore and emerge as an artist. Our Bachelor of Fine Arts (B F A) Print & Paper Major/Minor concentration develops abilities to think creatively, giving the confidence to realize individual vision. This program provides equal-parts skill development, guidance, challenging discussion, and freedom to explore. An important time to focus on your interests, the Print & Paper curriculum offers adaptable opportunities including studio, seminar, critiques, independent study with individual faculty, and internships - enabling you to design your own individualized off-campus learning program.
Print and Paper education is a process of dialogue and reflection, attuned to the challenging responsibilities of the individual artist in a changing world, engaging broad knowledge and technology. This education is creative, directed, and collaborative. Artists play a role in shaping our collective understanding. The Print & Paper program is not about one single necessary outcome. It is an education for possibilities, preparing you to shape work and life in effective and unexpected ways. Print & Paper study encourages questioning accepted definitions, building working tools for your practice in contemporary print art. This concentration educates students in a wide range of endeavors as creative thinkers, explorers, and visionaries. The B F A Print and Paper major/minor concentration supports knowledge growth based on reading, thinking, and writing informed by in-depth understanding of practice and theory, now both essential for engaging and understanding contemporary print and paper art.
