Printmakers
Build a market for work that exists in multiples.
Common challenges
- — Collector misconceptions about prints being 'less valuable' than unique works
- — Edition sizing, pricing, and documentation
- — Reaching collectors who understand and value the medium
- — Positioning prints in a gallery context alongside unique works
What Praxis members gain
- ✓ Educate collectors on the value and history of printmaking
- ✓ Structure editions strategically to maximize value over time
- ✓ Find galleries and fairs that take prints seriously
- ✓ Write about your process in ways that communicate its rigor and depth
Printmaking has one of the richest traditions in Western art history — and one of the most misunderstood markets. Collectors who wouldn’t hesitate to spend on a painting often balk at prints, misunderstanding editions as cheap reproduction rather than deliberate, labor-intensive original work. Printmakers in the Praxis community have developed strategies for closing that gap.
What printmakers in the Praxis community are working on
Educating without lecturing. The most effective printmakers in the community have learned how to fold the education into the story of the work — so that by the time a collector is considering a purchase, they understand what they’re looking at without having been given a lesson. Members share the language they use and help each other develop it.
Edition strategy. How many works in an edition? How to price across the edition? When to close an edition early? These decisions have long-term market implications, and printmakers in the community make them with the benefit of each other’s hard-won experience.
Print fairs and the institutional path. Print fairs have their own economy and their own gatekeepers. The Praxis community includes members who have exhibited at major print fairs and institutions, and they share what those experiences actually looked like from the inside.
Process as narrative. Intaglio, relief, lithography, screen printing, monotype — the processes of printmaking are part of what makes the work compelling. Praxis members have developed ways of writing about process that add to the meaning of the work rather than reducing it to a technical explanation.
A community that values the medium
In the Praxis community, printmakers are not afterthoughts. The community includes collectors, curators, and fellow artists who understand the depth of the medium and engage with it seriously.
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