1) Printmaking is well-suited for environmental activism because it allows for the cheap and widespread dissemination of messages through its reproducible nature. Prints can be mass-produced and distributed as posters, flyers, and banners to build public engagement. 2) The collaborative and accessible nature of printmaking promotes an inclusive environmental movement. Shared printing presses encourage diverse exchange and empower marginalized voices. The simple, low-cost process also makes printmaking financially accessible to all. 3) The creative process of printmaking provides emotional catharsis for artists and activists, helping them cope with environmental issues and stay motivated in their work. The final prints foster thoughtful contemplation and build empathy in viewers.

1. 1
Like printmaking, environmentalism is social by nature. We are all members of the
environment and so must democratically contribute to its healthy communal functioning.
Underlining the need for society as a whole to grasp this imperative, environmental historian
William Cronon writes, “People should always be conscious that they are part of the natural
world, inextricably tied to the ecological systems that sustain their lives. Any way of looking at
nature that encourages us to believe we are separate… is likely to reinforce environmentally
irresponsible behavior.”1 Thus traditional environmentalism has largely failed by favoring top-
down policy mechanisms and ostracizing media—instigating noncompliance and violent
divisiveness—over inclusive public engagement. We need social activism, and prints
exceptionally enable this new environmentalism because they are reproductive, cheap, easily
carried and disseminated, community-building, cathartic, and more personal than cyber media.
Printmaking more so than most other art forms engages a wide, diverse audience because
its reproductive nature produces quick copies of the same message, evoking a theme of
universality among a divided public. Though not all printmaking is reproductive, traditional print
media—woodcut, lithography, intaglio—and contemporary silkscreen prints are all stamps or
stencils that can be repeatedly reused. This reproductive nature assists activists in disseminating
information to a wide range of people as quickly as an issue arises. Some print media are better
suited for long-term reuse than others. For example, lithography uses a stone’s absorptive, flat,
erasable surface without the burrs or ruts (as in relief prints such as intaglio and woodcut) that
can be degraded with increasing numbers of editions. Likewise contemporary silkscreen
printmaking, as advanced by modern pop artist Andy Warhol, often uses durable synthetic
1. William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New
York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995), 85.

2. 2
fabrics rather than silk; however, biodegradable and nontoxic materials should be prioritized
when feasible.2 Also demonstrated by Warhol’s pop art, the multiplicity of the print medium can
reinforce a message of universality among all social classes and so strengthens interpersonal
relationships between people who may have previously conceived of themselves as having little
in common with their neighbors.3 This widespread understanding of commonality is crucial in
motivating action on environmental issues which both affect and are affected by us all. While
eliminating much of the labor of reproducing a standardized message to be widely disseminated
and viewed by the largest audience possible, printmaking also tends to be a far cheaper art
medium than most and thus is more accessible to all sects of the community.
Perhaps one of the most crucial imperatives for a vehicle of community engagement,
financial costs can deter less wealthy members of society from being exposed to information.
Many people do not have the funds, leisure time, or pressing desire to visit museums and
contemplate fine art. Additionally, only an elite minority of society can afford to purchase
meaningful artwork. But because printmaking is reproductive—minimizing the costs of labor—
and few materials are required in the creative process, prints are often inexpensively marketed or
freely disseminated around public spaces. A single stamp or stencil can be reused hundreds of
times, and paper and ink are cheap. Further adding to the allure of using printmaking to build the
environmental movement, the paper (or over absorptive material) need not even be new. This is
2. “Andy Warhol: A Master of the Modern Era,” last modified March 16, 2013, accessed
November 24, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-VFhb-oxHU.
3. Ibid.

3. 3
aptly demonstrated by Italian printmaker Chiara Giorgetti who printed on used railway tickets.4
The printing medium itself is also fairly cheap. Though wood and metal plates are fairly
affordable, they can only be printed once or carved over a few times, and so a stone lithographic
tablet or screenprint likely prove more cost-efficient long-term due to their almost indefinite
reusability. Indeed, artists within the Great Depression were drawn to silkscreen: “After all, it
was an economical medium, and the technique was available to all, resulting in low prices for
prints. Screenprint was an art medium for the people, perfect for their brand of politics and art.”5
In addition to being accessible to all consumers, the cheapness of printmaking encourages
the creation of prints by those of all social classes. This empowerment of marginalized voices is
crucial in building a diverse and inclusive environmental movement—which has historically
been pioneered by a white, male elite class—because many unrepresented voices are also those
most harmed by the disproportionately substantial industrial harms inflicted upon them by the
wealthy.6 These people predominantly include nonwhites, citizens of developing countries,
women, and youth, the latter having the largest stake in the environmental movement by
experiencing the future ramifications of its success—or failure—for the longest period of time.
4. Richard Noyce, Critical Mass: Printmaking beyond the Edge (London: A&C Black
Publishers Limited, 2010), 62 (picture not provided).
5. Robert Fay, “Printmaking: An Art Medium for the People,” Los Angeles Review of
Books, last modified March 19, 2015, accessed November 14, 2016,
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/printmaking-art-medium-people/.
6. Dale Jamieson, “The Nature of the Problem” in Oxford Handbook of Climate Change
and Society, ed. John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 42-9.

4. 4
Though clearly more privileged than many, few have greater need for cheap self-
expression as a result of growing social awareness than college students. This was reflected in
the period preceding social cyber media in which students in both Mexico City and Paris took to
the streets waving and disseminating protest posters—particularly mass-produced silkscreen
prints.7 These prints were bold, emphasized by the single color tone implying a single silkscreen
pressing, and repeated visual symbols of corruption and collaboration in the form of militaristic,
striped police officers (Fig. 3), collectively raised fists (Fig. 1 & 2), and labor tools reflecting the
student support of protesting workers.8 In addition, the lightweight, two-dimensional nature of
paper prints facilitates their use as picket signs, hand-outs, and fastened posters. Though it
should be admitted that these youth-led initiatives were not successful in dismantling the
oppressive political establishments critiqued, this use of silkscreen print embodies truly
inclusive, democratic ideals necessary within the environmental movement. Perhaps more
important than the messages conveyed, these printmaking processes built grassroots networks
through the communal sharing of university presses, keeping prints cheap and activists positively
supported.
Printmaking more so than other art forms promotes democratic collaboration with the
shared use of expensive equipment and the availability of untrained roles within production.
Printing presses—while not entirely necessary in transferring an image—are often bulky,
7. Katharine Josephson, “The Art of Protest and the Year that Changed the World: A
Study of the 1968 Student Demonstration Posters in Paris and Mexico City,” University of
Toronto Art Journal 4 (2011): 1.
8. Mark Vallen, “Demand the Impossible – Posters from the 1968 Paris Uprising,” Art for
a Change, last modified May 2001, accessed 8 December 2016. http://www.art-for-a-
change.com/Paris/paris2.html.

5. 5
expensive machines ensuring the paper or other absorptive material evenly receives as much of
the ink as possible. But with the New Deal Works Progress Administration’s financial support of
printmakers in the 1930s and pop art pushing knowledge of silkscreen printmaking into the
public sphere mid-century, collaborative workshops began to arise.9 Indeed, the “pressing” need
to share a single piece of printmaking equipment encourages diverse exchange, cooperation, and
an admirable use of financial privileges for someone already owning a press. This is aptly
exemplified by Robert Blackburn’s printmaking workshop in mid-twentieth century New York
which aggregated people of all social classes, races, genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientations
for the collaborative, fun, friendship-building production of meaningful social art.10 Producing
highly acclaimed prints embodying racism and poverty (see Fig. 4), this workshop and similar
collaboration promotes widespread exposure to typically marginalized ideas while building a
positive support group so vital in activism.
With this, the lack of inclusivity in production seems obvious: not everyone is a trained
artist or has the leisure time available to make art. But printmaking—especially lithography and
silkscreen, but traditionally woodcut as well—promote the division of labor in such a way that
no artistic skills are required for contribution, and so certain roles can be performed regardless of
the time constraints of the individual. Additionally, as mentioned earlier within the context of
museumgoer demographics, the artistic product itself can be viewed as lofty and removed from
the common public. Likely attributable to their tendency toward simplicity and wide publicity,
prints are typically viewed as more relatable than a painting; however, some prints are seen as
9. Deborah Cullen, “Art Making as Community: Robert Blackburn and the Printmaking
Workshop” (presented at the “Wild Noise: Art in Times of Change” panel at El Museo Nacional
de Bellas Artes organized by The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Havana, June 18, 2015); See note
2 above; Josh Macphee, Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today (Oakland: PM
Press, 2009), 15.
10. Cullen, “Art Making as Community.”

6. 6
more elitist than others. In the 1930s, printmakers increasingly turned away from the skill-
dependent medium of intaglio linked to “elite aestheticism,” replacing copper plates for the stone
tablets and silkscreens of more mechanical reproductive art. Due to the fact that both of these
media incorporate several technology-based steps, such as the repeated painting of chemical
coats in lithography or creation and placement of simple stencil pieces in silkscreen, anyone can
step in at leisure to contribute their labor without creating a preclusive, unfixable void. If the
medium itself is also seen as relatable, folks will be more likely to contribute these small tasks to
workshops and in the process even learn how to perform the more highly-skilled portions. This
empowerment of marginalized groups needs to be prioritized within the environmental
movement, and the printmaking process itself should be promoted as both the uplifting of and
therapeutic opportunity for people most harmed by environmental degradation.
Printmaking—and especially relief forms—superlatively offers a cathartic process for
environmental activists to externalize their emotions and thus convert them into helpful action.
The production of art in general—and prints especially—provides an emotional outlet to deter
environmental pessimism. By staying positive, environmentalists remain motivated to persevere
in the uphill battles typical to the movement. For decades, art historians have concluded that
printmaking enables, “intense spiritual abstraction, whereby artist and audience are brought to a
new, internalized understanding of the narrative and a greater immediacy of relationship to the
[subject material].”11 Thus printmaking in particular encourages self-reflection and careful,
thoughtful renderings of potentially ostracizing information.
11. Margaret Deutsch Carroll, “Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker,” The Art Bulletin
63, no. 4 (December 1981): 585, accessed 6 December, 2016,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3050165.

7. 7
While this therapeutic emotional expression is typical of art in general, printmaking
uniquely maintains inclusive public engagement alongside this catharsis of physical media
manipulation. Art historian Yvonne Rees-Pagh reiterates this, noting the aggressive process of
gouging out material within relief printmaking allows artists to reflect and externalize emotions
pertaining to the harm inflicted upon themselves by others.12 Using examples of Rembrandt and
Goya, Rees-Pagh argues that this embodiment drew artists to intaglio as a medium for
particularly horrendous subject material such as Christ’s crucifixion and war (see Fig. 5 and 6).13
More specific to the destruction pertaining to environmental degradation, Australian printmaker
Marian Crawford’s intaglio prints represent “loss and the mourning process,” which she feels to
be embodied by the physical removal of substance in relief printmaking as well as the
multiplicity and reproductive nature of printmaking in general.14 Therefore the way in which
printmaking mimics the emotional burdens of the subject material gives the individual artist—
even devoid of a collaborative support network—catharsis, enabling them to confront and
simplify negative subject material (such as environmental damage) that they might otherwise
evade into aesthetic products promoting social empathy.
Thus far, the advantages posed by cyber mass media over printmaking in the realms
discussed (multiplicity, cost, ease of dissemination, social connectivity, and catharsis) have been
ignored. After all, in many societies sending a tweet or uploading a picture to Instagram is
12. Yvonne Rees-Pagh,“Printmaking and the Language of Violence,” (PhD diss.,
University of Tasmania, 2013), 10-11.
13. Ibid, 10-15.
14. Marian Crawford, “The Unstable Image,” last modified on April 22, 2016, accessed
November 14, 2016. https://theunstableimage.com/marian-crawford/.

8. 8
quicker, cheaper, and easier than creating and disseminating a print while reaching a larger
crowd. Most humans today have some sort of internet access, enabling similar self-expression as
artistic renderings, and so undergoing the extensive printmaking process seems superlatively
challenging for a smaller audience. However, both the process and the product of printmaking
trump this contemporary media by promoting collaborative, thoughtful engagement with the
subject material while producing a symbol far more memorable than a digital work.
As mentioned previously, printmaking (especially lithography and silkscreen) encourages
collaboration between potentially diverse perspectives. This personal, intimate connection cannot
similarly be forged through digital media. Environmental writers have attested to this fact by
noting that the distant, impersonal, and one-sided nature of cyber media has proven ineffective in
changing behavior.15 The cyber social process is simply too fast and removed from the in-person
human communication—to which we have evolved receptivity—to promote the same meditative
contemplation and community that traditional printmaking, such as intaglio, does. Additionally,
the product of digital communication is often viewed as impersonal, irrelevant, or bossy;
whereas, with abstract artworks the audience is invited by their senses to independently
contemplate the material and form their own emotional connections and conclusions.
Perhaps counterintuitive, printmaking actually facilitates the personalization and human
connection of a social message so that a viewer might personally invest in the material more so
than with digital media. While most art forms are not reproductive, prints—especially silkscreen
and lithography, which do not require permanently changing the screen or stone medium itself—
allow for quick, easy alterations to fundamentally the same message. This is evident within Andy
15. Susanne C. Moser and Lisa Dilling, “Communicating Climate Change: Closing the
Science-Action Gap” in Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, ed. John S. Dryzek,
Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 168.

9. 9
Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych (Fig. 7) in which each edition easily employs a distinctive color
scheme simply by using different acrylics in each pressing. Though standardization of the print
may publicly promote a sense of unity within a community, personalization can present the
advantage of promoting artist-audience interpersonal trust in particular if more privately
distributed. Both capabilities exist within printmaking, expanding the flexibility of this artistic
medium. Furthermore, printmaking distinctively diverges from the blaring neon signs of our
digital landscape because prints appear handmade, thus standing out to people evolutionarily
drawn to the human touch.16 This immediate recognition and connection establishes trust while
opening the viewer to the message depicted in a way digital media rarely can.
While many art forms enable environmental activism, printmaking uniquely provides
certain advantages for building the public engagement necessary to a unified and sustainable
cultural shift. Printmaking is reproductive, allowing activists to easily produce a large quantity of
information for a wide, diverse audience. As prints are lightweight, they can be easily
disseminated and used as protest banners, handouts, and posters. Equally corroborating the
inclusivity of this art form, prints are typically both cheap to purchase and produce, and so
environmental messages from those with significant stakes in the environmental movement have
greater access to this art form than elite, museum-confined others. Ensuring printmaking stays
cheap, sharing a printing press promotes collaborative exchange and the empowerment of people
traditionally excluded from artistic creation and environmentalism. This exchange promises to be
positive as artists therapeutically externalize their emotions into a simple, shareable symbol,
further building community on emotional empathy while promoting perseverance. Lastly, the
advantages posed by today’s cyber media—its superior speed, cheapness, and range of
16. Macphee, Paper Politics, 6.

10. 10
exposure—are outweighed by printmaking’s cathartic, thoughtful process and greater success in
building friendships while standing out as a personal, trustworthy message among a sea of
distant data. The environmental movement requires this medium as it continues to struggle with
inclusivity despite working toward initiatives that favor all human beings: clean air, clean water,
sustainable resource use. Environmentalist William Cronon characterizes humanity by saying,
“We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth
itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it
chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.”17 Fundamentally, humans
will put in work when given the information and support necessary to make change, and
printmaking fulfills these pressing needs by uplifting the marginalized and showing us all the
commonality of our connection to the environment—with a medium embodying that very same
universality.
17. Cronon, Uncommon Ground, 86.

11. 11
Bibliography
“Andy Warhol: A Master of the Modern Era.” YouTube. Last modified March 16, 2013.
Accessed November 24, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-VFhb-oxHU.
Carroll, Margaret Deutsch. “Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker.” The Art Bulletin 63, no. 4
(December 1981): 585-610. Accessed December 6 2016.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3050165.
Crawford, Marian. “The Unstable Image.” Last modified on April 22, 2016. Accessed
November 14, 2016. https://theunstableimage.com/marian-crawford/.
Cronon, William. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York, NY:
W.W. Norton & Co., 1995.
Cullen, Deborah. “Art Making as Community: Robert Blackburn and the Printmaking
Workshop.” Presentation at the “Wild Noise: Art in Times of Change” panel at El Museo
Nacional de Bellas Artes organized by The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Havana, June 18,
2015.
Fay, Robert. “Printmaking: An Art Medium for the People.” Los Angeles Review of Books.
Last modified March 19, 2015. Accessed November 14, 2016.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/printmaking-art-medium-people/.
Hoffman, Andrew. How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2015.
Jamieson, Dale. “The Nature of the Problem.” In Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and
Society, 38-54. Edited by John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Josephson, Katharine. “The Art of Protest and the Year that Changed the World: A Study of the
1968 Student Demonstration Posters in Paris and Mexico City.” University of Toronto
Art Journal 4 (2011): 1-12.
Langa, Helen. Radical Art: Printmaking and the Left in 1930s New York. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2004.
Macphee, Josh. Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today. Oakland: PM Press,
2009.
Moser, Susanne C., and Lisa Dilling. “Communicating Climate Change: Closing the Science-
Action Gap.” In Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, 161-9. Edited by John
S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
Noyce, Richard. Critical Mass: Printmaking beyond the Edge. London: A&C Black Publishers
Limited, 2010.

12. 12
Rees-Pagh, Yvonne. “Printmaking and the Language of Violence.” PhD diss., University of
Tasmania, 2013.
Stoknes, Per Espen. What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming:
Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action. White River Junction: Chelsea Green
Publishing, 2015.
Vallen, Mark. “Demand the Impossible – Posters from the 1968 Paris Uprising.” Art for a
Change. Last modified May 2001. Accessed 8 December 2016. http://www.art-for-a-
change.com/Paris/paris2.html.
Figure 1 The Vote Changes Nothing, The Struggle Continues. 1968 Paris Student Protest Silk Screen Print,
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Paris/paris2.html

13. 13
Figure 2 We are the Power, 1968 Paris Student Protest Silk Screen Print, http://www.art-for-a-
change.com/Paris/paris2.html
Figure 3 Borders = Repression portrays a French policeman painted with the stripes of a border crossing barricade. 1968
Paris Student Protest Silk Screen Print, http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Paris/paris2.html

14. 14
Figure 4 Girl in Red by Robert Blackburn, 1950 Lithograph.
Figure 5 The Three Crosses by Rembrandt van Rijn. 1653 etching, 43.8 x 38.1 cm.

15. 15
Figure 6 The Disasters of War by Francisco de Goya. 1810-15 series of eighty etchings, each 15.5 x 21 cm approximately.
Figure 7 Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol. 1962 silkscreen acrylic on canvas, 2054 x 1448 mm