“years of harmonious coexistence with everyone instilled a unitary vision of the nation in me, I discovered how diverse we were and what we were good for, and I learned and I never forgot that an entire country was in fact the sum total of each one of us.”
 
This passage from the autobiography of renowned writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s , Living To Tell The Tale,  his story of growing up in a milieu of diverse artistic and political culture in Columbia, resonates  with poignant description how this varied group of artists  selected by Stephanie Standish defines the title of her book, American Printmakers.  These artists represent a great mirror reflecting the talent of the times in which we live. It is inevitable and escapable their matrices are the vehicle by which we pass through these reflections.
 
Never has there been a better time to make prints! Despite the atrophy of academic, state and federal budgets, and despite the impediment how printmakers are often defined by archaic and ignorant standards of the art world at large, artists who make prints are thriving!  This breed of artist, the printmaker, is actually sustained by its traditions and its willingness to easily embrace new innovations in technology. It has made us stronger, more flexible, and we are inherently more agile and unrestrained. We are a visionary tribe, connected to our past and present. We are itinerant, mobile, agile, unrestrained by size or place. We are resistant to come and go trends, as technique and tradition demands a mastery of craftsmanship. We have not made the mistake of discarding reverence of skill for the flimsy fads of the self-aggrandizement and ego. The strength of good making is driving the creative process.
 
Themes are abundant and varied in this rich anthology. Rural and urban landscapes of reconstruction, decay, razed buildings, excavation sites, abandoned dark alleys dare to tell a story of a place, where no-one is present, but for the viewer, who is silent witness to the remnants of a human presence. Momentary retreats from a recognizable, desolate and lonely world can be seen in highly imaginative romantic and fantasized worlds of these artists. Emblematic, magical, mechanical, found objects, woven and sewn, political, symbolic, and abstract forms occupy spaces inside and out. Engulfed by printed images, whether inside galleries, illuminated and tumbling from the ceiling to the floor, or outside floating on a dock or in a river, installations employing three dimensional printed matter command majesty and attention. Escape into these magical sculptural worlds of the print is for but a moment, for the viewer can ostensibly be found drowning. 
 
Gazing at incomprehensible printed vessels, one sees a curiously self-sustaining world of agricultural utopia atop a noxious gaseous steamship.  It seems in these stranded and strained inhuman worlds, we are living  on and our destination is uncharted. Like explorers we are searching for new places, new species. What will we find? Genetically modified animals? Supersized anti-heroes? A boat to nowhere? These artists are prescience in their vision and response. They are rescuing a vision and preserving culture, all the while powering through to the next place. See how diverse we are? See what we were good for, and learn and never forgot that an entire country is in fact the sum total of each one of us.