Impressions in Isolation: Monoprints from SFSU

Impressions in Isolation: Monoprints from SFSU

Like other printmaking processes, monoprints rely on the transferred mark. Ink is applied to a surface and manipulated. Paper is then placed on the surface, and the ink is transferred by applying pressure to the paper. However, unlike woodblocks or printing plates, which permit numerous prints of the same image, monoprints, as the name implies, can only be created a single time.

San Francisco State University students created these monoprints in the class Intermediate Printmaking led by professor and printmaker Susan Belau in the fall of 2020. Typically, Belau teaches the class in a studio equipped with printing presses, rollers, a full complement of color inks, large printing plates, and papers. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Belau taught the class online. Students set up their own studios, using minimal space, small formats, and just a few specialized tools for printing at home.

Learning printmaking while in isolation takes time and discipline, a willingness to experiment and possibly fail, and determination to master new materials and processes. This group of students met the challenge and produced works that include traditional monoprint, hand-coloring, toner-transfer, and collage. Themes address political, social, and personal challenges, which took on new urgency and meaning in 2020. These images act as tributes to friendship and family, reflect on the contemporary landscape, and imagine places beyond our current constraints.

San Francisco State University’s School of Art is an inclusive learning environment that promotes creativity and scholarship, and mirrors the wide range of cultural, artistic and scholarly interests in the San Francisco Bay Area. The School of Art provides students with intellectually informed instruction in the histories and practices of the visual arts and museum studies within the context of a liberal arts university. The guiding principle of its curricula and instruction is the belief that art and its institutions are an important means to interpret human experience, and a fundamental mechanism by which a society evolves, understands, and reflects upon itself.

[images left to right]
Untitled  2020
Vanessa Lozito
monoprint, ink on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Susan Belau, San Francisco State University
L2020.2601.022

Toward Amour-Propre  2020
Gwen Romer
monoprint, ink on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Susan Belau, San Francisco State University
L2020.2601.029

Untitled  2020
Jade Nouchi
monoprint, ink on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Susan Belau, San Francisco State University
L2020.2601.008

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