Printmaking

A lasting impression
The KCAI printmaking program will provide you with a deep understanding of the processes, creative concepts and issues that inform contemporary printmaking and art in a global creative environment. The faculty will challenge your pre-conceived notions of the world to help you express your ideas with a greater level of competence and clarity.
You’ll become engaged in a dynamic interchange involving individual studio narrative, collaboration, professional practice, and digital media possibilities and concepts. All printmaking students must have experience working collaboratively and be able to organize graphic work production in a studio setting. A minimal of graphic experience is required to work with silkscreen, plates, and blocks. Students must have a strong sensibility in drawing and form.
Traditional printmaking processes and concepts — etching, lithography, drawing, collage, silkscreen, letterpress and book arts; as well as post-modern processes, including mass media, collaboration, simulation, appropriation and dissemination — are taught concurrently.
Classes
Once you declare your major, printmaking students take the following core courses as they progress from sophomore to senior year. For additional electives and liberal arts courses, download the complete Course Catalog.
Printmaking Major Requirements
Sophomore
- Relief & Monoprint
- Etching
- Drawing Applications for Printmaking
- Silk Screen
- Lithography
- Digital Applications for Printmakers
Junior
- Dimensional Printmaking
- Junior Print Seminar
- Color in Printmaking
- Advanced Printmaking I
Senior
- Advanced Printmaking II
- Professional Practice
- Printmaking Senior Thesis

Professional Practice
Professional practice is a compulsory component of the KCAI program in which students benefit enormously from insights provided by world-renowned visiting artists, scholars and professionals.

Jobs + Internships
Printmaking graduates now work as professors, educators, and artists across the country. Recent graduates also have become professional printers and engravers working for commercial printing companies.
KCAI printmaking majors have worked or interned for the following studios and companies: Vahalla Studios, Hammer Press, Lawrence Lithography, Landfall Press, Porter Teleo, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, KC Ink and Paper Center for the Arts, design studios and fine art galleries.
Find out more about the Landfall Press Summer apprenticeship.