Thesis Project Journey

I have been learning printmaking since my second year at Parsons School of Design. It has been enriching to connect with this very hands-on category of art making. I’ve been exposed to a wide variety of mediums and seen a lot of amazing work take place. However, I’ve noticed some issues over the years. I saw that in most mediums, we were using oil-based inks. At first, I accepted this as something we had to do, since my teachers and our shop technicians required us to use those inks. It really jumped out at me that maybe I shouldn’t be using oil-based inks when I was taking two printmaking classes in one semester, and I ended up getting a kind of dermatitis on my hands from the harsh chemicals and exfoliants needed to get it off my skin. Keep in mind, I would wear gloves every time I printed. Over the years, I’ve found that companies like Akua and Speedball make water-based inks for mediums like etching and relief printing. I wanted to see if those inks could work at the level of the oil-based inks we had in the shop, and I wanted to compare the clean up time.

Along with the issue of ink, I noticed another huge problem present in our printshop: paper. As a printshop that interacts with hundreds of students and around 10 teachers, I could see per class the amount of paper we were wasting all the time. Teachers advised us to use newsprint, and boy would they go through it. During any tutorial or demonstration, teachers would use copious amounts of paper, and along the way, advising us to do the same. One class could go through half a pad of newsprint (or 50 sheets) in one 3 hour session. And what happens to that paper? As newsprint isn’t archival and is just a matrix for testing a print (aka - could go horribly wrong), it was tossed aside and/or thrown out.

For my thesis project, I narrowed in on ways to make printmaking better. I wanted to cut down on waste and I wanted the ink we used to be safer for us to use.

Senior Thesis part 1

To begin

I started this project because I have one huge passion that has emerged throughout my time as an undergraduate at Parsons School of Design - printmaking. In sophomore year, I took lithography, my first ever experience of printmaking. It was very challenging for me, but I revelled in the technique, with its difficulties and its allure. From there, I took 6 more classes in my Parsons experience and ended up minoring in printmaking. I also became the Co-President of our school’s Printmaking Club in my senior year along with maintaining an internship and the International Print Center New York. Needless to say, printmaking has become a huge focus of my life and it was a clear candidate for the focus of my thesis.

In choosing a thesis topic, we needed to pick something whose audience we could study and talk to. For me, especially with my busy senior year schedule, I wanted to pick a topic I truly cared about with an audience I could easily access. It was a no brainer from there.

The place I would focus my energy on was the printshop. I had seen how it functioned for years now and I realized how much waste and harmful chemicals we used. I wondered why and if it was really necessary, something I had never questioned before. In printmaking, teachers

1. Passions

2. Sites of exploration

3. Planning research

4. Why I care

5. What I want to sustain

Answering questions

What the issue is

who are the stakeholders

influences and systems

opportunities

Preliminary research

looking at other resources for sustainable printmaking to guide me in a directions - what was missing from this conversation?

Testing process

testing fabric obtained from fabscrap in both silkscreen, etching, and relief

Initial Prototyping and feedback

Versions of guidebooks past, people’s feedback, my own feedback of my prototype

Guide book

How I made it, content, how i think it answers my project
attach pdf of project presentation

Moving forward

What I’m thinking of doing in the next chapter

• Trying to get the printshop to make these changes

• An exhibition to showcase work made sustainably

Senior Thesis Part 2

Insights gained

What I learned last semester and how that will guide me forward

Ideation sessions

thinking broadly about my options, listing those options and the feasibility, what emerges

New goals and timeline

What I want to do moving forward, the steps to take, and when i’ll be taking those steps

1 The problem is that printmaking is a system that is hard to change and the community has not embraced a discussion on sustainable practices.
2 This is a problem because it discourages smaller voices in the community as well as contributing to a negative cycle of waste.
3 Initially this is a problem for all the students, faculty, and stakeholders of our printshop at Parsons, but it expands to other schools, shops, are communities, and people affected by climate change.
4 I know this problem is true because of my own experience — I was going through paper so quickly when printing (probably around 50 sheets when doing one printing session). I also got dermatitis on my hands from using oil-based ink even with gloves on, so I saw then how harmful it is, but I didn’t know at the time that other options exist.
5 Parsons has the opportunity to set a precedent in the printmaking community, a marvel concept. If we change the system here, it could create a ripple effect, causing shops around the world to make a change, reducing harm and waste.
6 How can I best communicate this change? How can I make the best impact? Is this change even possible?
7 I want my audience to understand the system and the difficulties within it and I want them to see that I want to lead by examples since I don’t have the power to change the system further. I want them to see and understand my direction.

visualizations and progress

putting my research process into visuals ~ in progress ~

Alterations

changes and pivots due to coivd19

1 My vision has definitely changed from being physical to virtual since my original plan is impossible. People will have to interact with it differently.
2 I hope to walk away from this project with a sense of completion and feel like I affected some peoples’ mindsets of how their actions can be altered to be better. I want people to know there’s no one way to make prints.
3 My research plan was completely affected: my timeline is broken, my final product has to be altered, participation and displaying it will look completely different.
4 To accomplish my vision now, I have to change my project from being a visual space to be an online exhibition. I will have to have participation and viewing the exhibition work differently, but I am not sure how to yet.

centering exhibition online and focusing on home printing

Home stretch

Website building - creating new tabs of resources, guides, exhibition, contributions, and compendiums

interacting with people to collect information

Final product

pdf of final presentation

going forward - home studio tab (aka putting my money where my mouth is)