Printmakers

 Printmakers -- true hardcore printmakers, not the kind that takes their drawing or watercolor to a digital wizard and says "Hey buddy, give me a 1000 of these in a poster size." But the kind that likes the smell of acid as it burns and etches their metal sheets; the ones that roll thick black ink onto etched plates, and lose track of where the cheesecloth is, and the ones that really know what a "ghost print" is - that kind of printmaker represent some of the least appreciated artists in any genre of the visual arts today.

The word "print" has been kidnapped by marketers and watercolorists and photographers and every kind of visual artist on the planet wanting to sell more than one of their original. 

But remember this: anything that is in a media that is different from the original piece is a reproduction - not a print. A true print is something created by an artist from beginning to end: a woodcut, a linocut, a lithograph, an intaglio etching, etc.!

One of the best places in the nation to find great real artists' prints is here in the Washington area DMV at the aptly named Washington Printmakers Gallery.