OFICINAS INGLÊS – Printmaking

Post graduate students can make use of the printmaking facilities once they have been inducted in the discipline area . During first semester students will follow a series of introductory workshops in lithography, etching and relief block printing, silkscreen. After this period of 7 weeks, students have full access and use of facilities and technical assistance by arrangement with the technical assistant.

Lithography offers stone lithography, offset and photo-lithography up to A2 size. Autographic processes include traditional stone, aluminium plate lithography, polyester lithography and mokulito (wood lithography).

Etching and relief-block printing includes the full intaglio range of photographic and autographic process. Etching areas use saline mordants. Relief processes include lino, collagraph and woodcut engraving techniques.

Screenprinting offers large-format photographic and hand-drawn printing options. Only water based systems are used.

Workshop Digital provision includes basic scanning and film reprographic facility. Students may access other workshop facilities located in Photography area.

Workshop provides various other equipment for paper preparation such as industrial cutter.

The printmaking workshop area supports and conducts practical research into the artistic, historical and industrial significance of creative print practices, processes and technologies, involving collaborations with a variety of practitioners, institutions and print collections . The facilities and technical equipment support students in their explorations of the creative possibilities of the new and the traditional, and the interplay between their interests which may be located in creative design, illustration, visual arts, publication. Research conducted in the printmaking workshop is based on the production of the physical artifact in classical printmaking techniques using traditional workshop facilities but also in its expansion linked to historical industrial development and new technologies. Such connections are maintained with all areas of FBAUP. Most recent projects involve combining photomechanical print technologies regaining new insights into local industrial and scientific heritage processes, as much as glass printing and incursions into the use of digital imaging technologies and its combination with intaglio.

By adapting the printing heritage to changing demand in the academic context and the requirements of its different users, we are able to offer new results and enhance the quality of the work produced that has direct application a fine art practice. Our focus is also involved in the possibility that exists between different uses of technology, ideas and craft skills situated in areas such as glass, ceramics, photography, painting, book arts, and with companies connected to a local graphic heritage. By using materials and processes linked to different contexts we intend to push forward new ideas.

Over the past years, the printmaking studio in conjunction with I2ads, a research centre headquartered in FBAUP, has published portfolios of prints on traditional printmaking techniques with a focus on the field of fine art printmaking, and limited edition publications. Since 2008, we work collaboratively with artists, studios, contemporary makers and research centres proposing the printmaking area as a research platform where to develop limited edition prints and multiples but specially projects that can foster a new understanding of print media and creativity.