Printmaking has traditionally accepted and even embraced the concept of the hybrid, with printmakers often incorporating multiple processes into the making of a single print. Today printmaking continues to earn its reputation as a "democratic medium," integrating traditional techniques like etching, woodcut, lithography and silkscreen with photo-based media and emerging digital applications. At the crossroads where traditional and digital processes intersect, new hybrids are energizing the practice, and even redefining our understanding of the "original print."

Constantly evolving digital technologies are transforming the realm of contemporary printmaking. The Internet provides a vast array of images and information available instantaneously. Raster- and vector-based graphics editing programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator enable artists to create and manipulate images. Large format archival pigment printers allow them to push the limits of scale and production. Consequently, this expanding field is inspiring traditional printmakers and attracting artists from outside the print world - painters, photographers and sculptors - fostering an atmosphere of cross-pollination that is provocative and enlivening.

As the boundaries of printmaking, photography and digital art increasingly blur, more and more artists are challenging those boundaries, producing hybrid works that resist categorization. The eighteen artists in this exhibition all work at a critical intersection, freely drawing from the past as well as the present. Their works incorporate traditional methods and cutting edge technology - the handmade and the computer-generated. Many move with a facility back and forth between digital and traditional methods, and it is this mixture and movement that helps generate a new hybrid energy.

Catherine Bebout and Mary Birmingham, Curators

Kiki Smith, My Blue Lake, 1995 Photogravure, a la poupée inking and lithograph on mold-made en tout cas paper Printed and published by Universal Limited Art Editions Edition of 41 Lent by Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc. Benjamin Edwards, Automatic City, 2006 Lithograph 22" x 45" AP, Edition of 40 Courtesy of the artist
		Jane Hammond Insight, 2001 Patience, 2001 Faith, 2001 Iris print, relief, collage, wood veneer, silver foil, hand-coloring Printed by Pace Editions Ink Published by Pace Editions, Inc. Edition of 15 Lent by Pace Editions, Inc.