4-News Releases / Articles

Photo courtesy of Pomegranate Editions, Granada, Spain

Contact: Mike Booth
World Printmakers
Email: mike@worldprintmakers.com
Tel: +34 658 953398

For Immediate Release

Print Workshop Central – A New Resource
Site for Fine-Art Print Professionals

World Printmakers, the international fine-art printmakers’ reference site since 2000, announces the creation of Print Workshop Central (http://printworkshopcentral.com), a new website designed specifically for print studio professionals worldwide. The site is both a forum designed to bring together print people from all over the world to share ideas and solutions, and an online resource center to provide them with contacts and information to enhance their operations.

“Clearly there is a current of common interest running through printmaking workshops around the world,” says Mike Booth, World Printmakers founder and publisher, “but until now there has never been a medium for uniting their community, expressing their needs and points of view, or for redressing their grievances. That’s what we hope to achieve with Print Workshop Central. Essentially it’s about uniting a community which, until now, has hardly been aware that it’s a community.”

Distinguishing Between Art Prints and Vulgar Copies
Online in a beta version since mid-June this new Print Workshop Central initiative is also concerned with fine-art-print advocacy. “There are so many interests in the world today which are in the business of blurring the borders between fine-art prints and vulgar copies,” says Booth, referring to the industrial campaign to market “giclee” copies as art prints. “Behind this trend lie the interests of massively powerful manufacturers of inkjet printers, inks and papers,” adds Booth. “After years of seeing digital copies passed off as ‘fine-art prints’ we finally decided that someone had to take the initiative in denouncing these practices and empowering print professionals everywhere in their own defense against all forms of fine-print fraud.”

Objectives
Print Workshop Central‘s objectives include:

• Providing a high-visibility universal showcase for professional fine-art printmaking workshops, their artists and their work
• Providing these workshops with an open forum for the interchange of ideas, suggestions, best practices, and points of view
• Making creative use of the World Wide Web and the Web 2.0 to increase awareness of authentic fine-art prints among art lovers everywhere
• Offering information regarding issues of print authenticity and authors’ rights
• Being a central advocacy and education center for the defense of authentic fine-art prints
• Maintaining a central register of opportunities for print workshops and artists
• And offering them a comfortable and familiar context in which to relate to, learn from and share with one another

Members Come from All Over the World
Early response to Print Workshop Central has been positive around the world. Thus far they have signed up member workshops from the U.S.A., Canada, the U.K., Australia, Ireland, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Spain, Denmark, France, China and New Zealand. More information on the Print Workshop Central project, and the procedure for participating are available here: How Print Workshop Central Works, or email World Printmakers.

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October 16, 2008

Contact: Mike Booth
World Printmakers
Email: mike@worldprintmakers.com
Tel: +34 658 953398

News Release
For Immediate Release

Print Workshop Central Launches “Studio Survey 1”

Print Workshop Central (http://printworkshopcentral.com), the new website for fine-art print workshops, launched today its “Studio Survey 1,” the first in a series of online polls designed to collect information on printmaking studios from around the world. This first questionnaire will collect basic information on print studios internationally-their size and number of staff, the media in which they work, whether they’re public or private, who their members and clients are, how they function and how they promote themselves and their artists.

Once the survey is complete it will be compiled and published on the Print Workshop Central site in order to give printmaking professionals and other members of the fine-art printmaking community a clearer idea of what the studios of their colleagues in other countries are like and how they function.

“All types of printmaking studios are invited to participate,” says Print Workshop Central director, Mike Booth, “whether or not they’re suscribers to the Print Workshop Central site. This means large and small print studios, commercial studios and community open workshops, art schools and university printmaking departments. It’s easy for print workshop people to participate in the survey. They just need to follow this link to the online-survey host site: http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=1735a1e7-e645-4bcb-9275-b3a24fa84cb1

“Nobody has bothered to gather this information until now,” says Booth, “and we think it’s important, as fine-art print professionals from different countries share many characteristics, problems and concerns. We suspect they can learn a lot from one another, information which we hope will give them ideas to refine their operations and better serve both their print artists and their communities.”

This first survey consists of just 12 multiple-choice questions and takes less than five minutes to complete. “We do our best not to waste people’s time,” says Booth. “We realize that print workshop people are busy, so we are keeping our surveys brief and to the point.

Print Workshop Central, online since June of this year, is a new initiative by World Printmakers (http://www.worldprintmakers.com), the fine-art printmaking reference site based in Granada, Spain. World Printmakers has served printmakers, print collectors, educators and gallery and museum people from around the world since the year 2000.

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