Many of the labor intensive mediums of print have been pushed to the wayside with the large scale production of contemporary technology, but a handful of artists still maintain these passed down traditions. This is a not new trend, but in the wake of AI, and the consequent mass theft of artists’ hard made work for the sole benefit of the wealthy, it is more important than ever to return to real material processes. These processes maintain the love of the act of creation, no matter how long that act takes. They revitalize the romance of working with your hands, of mixing the ink yourself and discovering color, of carving the image in physical material with the intentional push of every stroke through every point of a line. What a work is meant to be is discovered through presence in making, through acting and reflecting in every step of its manifestation. This is how art is made.

It is critical that mediums like Printmaking survive. It is essential that we support artists who keep these processes alive. The greatest protest of monopolized production and the monetization of time is to slow down; to be intentional with the little time we have. It is ours after all.

Cult Member Prints is a small, one person print shop based in the Philadelphia area started by Matthew Torchiana Hoban.