The Printmakers Left makes art.

The Printmakers Left make art.

Neither of the sentences above contains a typo. This shift between the singular and the plural—simply adding or subtracting the letter ‘s’—is a deliberate provocation. The Printmakers Left is an artists’ collective, an organization, and as such it can act and be received. But that collective is composed of individual artists, each with a singular voice and the ability to make course-altering decisions. Therein lies the tension that binds the Printmakers Left together and makes the Printmakers Left what it is. Which is to say that one aim of this collective and its participants is to promote a process of engagement with a complex world. While most gallery shows (and the art industry at large) directs viewers to the products of the creative process, The Printmakers Left seeks and seek to highlight the labor behind every beautiful object. At the same time, The Printmakers Left questions and question previous frameworks for understanding artmaking and addressing problems beyond the gallery space. Whether or not any one creative person is a heroic genius or gifted with divine inspiration that strikes like a lightning bolt, none are alone. We are individuals, together, in suffering and reward. This realization underpins the work of The Printmakers Left and provides relief to its members as they encounter problems big and small. What should you do with a blank page or a white wall? And why should you do it when faced with environmental collapse, political corruption, unjust wars, and other calamities? The Printmakers Left find out by trying, by wandering new worlds and hinterlands, by charting labyrinths. With a sense of irony and sincerest intentions, The Printmakers Left advances and recedes, insists on its life (and life itself) like a fugitive species. What surrounds you is a catalog of this perennial effort, ongoing for over twenty years. Please peruse its green shoots of invention and its dead ends. And consider the hope in its laments: all cloths are blankets as well as burial shrouds.