A Commercial Art? Printmaking rose to prominence at the same time as the printing press was invented and economic conditions were improving for most people in Western Europe. Artists began marketing their work directly to the general population, rather than only to the wealthy and powerful. Because of the these beginnings, do you feel that printmaking is an art from that can be associated more with particular social and political environments than others? Is the commercial aspect of printmaking an important cultural consideration? How do the commercial and social implications of printmaking relate to contemporary American culture?

In Case Studies Coldwell, with deliberate irony perhaps, works from an image that resembles a tourist postcard of mountains – the kind one might send to friends announcing the pleasures of being away from home. The pixels of the original image have been manipulated to create a pattern of dots through which the mountains are barely recognizable. Some of the dots have been enlarged and deep-etched after transfer to the etching plate and thus, as white and embossed stars, they appear to fall in front of rather than beyond the mountains. The floating, open, empty suitcase is a poignant constellation, invoking both the idea of travel and the idea of travelling with nothing. The inversion of stars and mountains creates a kind of 'inside-out nature', suggesting that landscape, and by association, homeland or distant sanctuary, is something beyond reach – less accessible even than the stars themselves.

Printmaking is often a collaborative activity and workshops and studios have played a crucial role in the development of artists' ideas around print. The internationally renowned Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia and the community-based London Printworks Trust are just two of the organizations which have generated a range of imaginative print projects, collaborations, interventions and co-operative ventures. Both in their own ways have used print as a strategy for social and political engagement. This policy could almost be described as a mission statement for The London Print Studio, another important Centre for printmaking which has education and accessibility at its core. In the USA, the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, attached to a university, encourages artists from under-represented communities into an environment, where students can learn enormously from the new narratives these artists offer to the mainstream.

Jaune Quick-to-see Smith is a Native-American of mixed Salish, French, Cree and Shoshone descent. This print takes the form of an unfolded parflêche (literally 'parry arrow') a Native American carry-all, traditionally made from dried buffalo hide, a large sheet which is then folded, tied and decoratively painted. It has associations as a carrier of messages about history and origins, and suggests the 'carriage' of Native-American ideas and values into contemporary, Euro-centric culture.

Smith made this image in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda on American targets in 2001. The blood gushing from the hand is hand-painted in patriotic colors and suggests the suffering of the 'American people', but the deliberately ambiguous figure (it could be a fashionably dressed city girl, or a traditionally dressed Native American) also suggests that many 'Americans' may have ignored and forgotten the incredible suffering wrought on the people who lived on the land before the Europeans arrived.

Lithography can reproduce the formal qualities of many other processes too, such as charcoal drawing, watercolor, collage and photography. In this print many of these qualities have been drawn together with the addition of collage elements made of copied US postage stamps and other icons of American life. Smith was particularly appreciative of the skills of master printer Eileen Foti at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper who worked with her on this print and came forward with many suggestions for realizing the form of the image.

Explanation:

map scale refers to the relationship (or ratio) between distance on a map and the corresponding distance on the ground. for example, on a 1: 100000 scale map, 1cm on the map equals 1km on the ground.