SeattlePrintmakersCenter

sp150501 Printmakers win under Obama Administration  

Seattle Printmakers Center starts up in 2016 

The author thinks that, despite people loving prints, printmaking and printmakers are not necessarily among those who feel good about the Obama years, printmakers worldwide are about to find out about a good thing that happened during Barack Obama’s watch.

Caveat

The reader may not think there is a connection between President Barack Obama and printmaking, and writing about printmaking in the context of a political theme is outside the art. Actually, printmaking history shows many instances of political crossovers—so numerous that volumes have been written about it. Benjamin Franklin was a printer and an advocate of universal education, and Walter Benjamin wrote an essay on the theme of art itself having changed from a cultural value to a political practice because of mechanical reproduction.

Now, a new experience is opening up, thanks to laws passed in congress with bipartisan approval—the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) act. As a student of Benjamin Franklin, Walter Benjamin, and dozens of writers, artists and technology for fifty years, I am starting the Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc. and in so doing I will demonstrate how the law passed during the Obama Administration, and which will take full effect by the end of 2015, will benefit people who love prints, printmaking and printmakers worldwide.

Printmaking, politics and economics are bound together by their historic record, and one aspect cannot be considered without considering the others. Few, if any, art forms can make this claim; in fact, almost nothing would be known about the arts of the world were it not for printmaking, which is the ancestor of all technologies known to humankind.

Printmakers win under Obama

Despite that you might not among those who feel good about the Obama years, printmakers are about to learn about a good thing that happened on Obama’s watch. The Federal Government enacted the JOBS act in 2010 and, in 2016, printmakers worldwide will find their lives improved—some in small, unnoticed ways, others in big ways.

The important thing, to me, is that education will benefit because printmaking, in the arts, crafts and design, is loaded with educational value. In fact, I think the sum of the educational parts of learning printmaking—its history, art, craft and design—is greater than the parts of art education in general.

Now, thanks the JOBS acts Titles I, II, and III, the Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc. will open for business in 2016, and it will establish a new level of printmaking products and services worldwide.