Featured in Print It! — Contemporary Print Publication
- Ben Sheppee
- Jan 26, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: 15 hours ago
My work was included in Print It! — a UK publication dedicated to contemporary printmaking and print-based art practices. The feature placed the typographic work within the broader landscape of artists expanding what print can be.
Expanding the Definition
Print It! is valuable precisely because it takes an expansive view of the medium. Traditional printmaking — etching, lithography, screen printing — sits alongside digital print, generative processes, and hybrid approaches. My giclée editions, produced from generative software systems, represent one end of that spectrum: prints that couldn't exist without digital technology, yet which result in physical objects with all the material presence of any traditional print.
The publication's audience includes printmakers, collectors, and institutions with a specific interest in the medium. Being featured in that context positioned the work within a community I value — people who think seriously about the relationship between process and output, between the digital tools that generate the image and the paper and ink that give it physical form.
Process and Output
What distinguishes my prints from straightforward digital reproduction is the generative element. Each Polyglot print, for instance, is derived from a unique temporal state within a rule-based system. The system deploys characters from over 300 global writing systems at timed intervals — no two moments are identical. The print captures one of those moments. It's not a copy of a digital file; it's a record of an unrepeatable event.
That distinction matters in the print world, where questions of originality, edition, and reproducibility are central to how work is valued and understood. Print It! gave space to explore those questions in a context where readers are already thinking about them.
