At Montserrat, the printmaker is encouraged to utilize traditional printmaking processes along with a variety of media in order to discover the combination of textures, techniques and images that best communicate the developing artist's personal vision.

Printmaking has always been a means of analyzing, transforming and replicating information. The sources that are available for the artist to draw upon — visual, textual and otherwise — are as varied as those that we encounter in our culture on a daily basis. The final printed work, whether it be an edition, multiple or one-of-a-kind image, may be informed by traditional image-making strategies, but is often supplemented by digital and photographic technology. Traditional methods of silk-screen, etching, relief-printing, mono-printing and lithography provide the gateways to engaging the larger ideas of multiplicity, repetition, commodification and individual expression that intermingle at the core of the printmaking experience.

In upper-level electives, students focus on experimentation and further expansion of technical skills while investigating various visual themes and developing coherent bodies of work. The concerns of the printmaker encompass design, drawing/painting, as well as book arts, letterpress, video and often sculpture and installation.

The Printmaking Department houses a lithography studio with four presses for stone and plate, a relief and intaglio studio with nitric baths for etching zinc and ferric chloride for etching copper and two etching presses, a water-based screen printing facility with a photo-exposure unit, and a letterpress facility with two Vandercook presses and two rollover proof presses. Other facilities include digital workstations with scanners, Internet access, image-editing and time-based applications, and output to both a black-and-white laser printer and large-format inkjet printer; a photocopier with acetate printing capability to create film positives; and access to a complete black-and-white darkroom with alternative photoprocess chemistry. In addition, students can access a variety of power hand tools (jigsaw, palm sander, electric engravers, dremels, drill, etc.,), a vacuum-exposure platemaker, plate shear, light table, studio storage for print majors, critique space and individual studios for senior seminar students.