Maker’s Medium: Art student explores precision, permanence through printmaking

January 31, 2021

Fourth-year art student Chereen Tam uses the human body as well as personal experiences in her work, which includes drypoint etching and relief block printing. Tam began printmaking last spring in Art 140: Advanced Printmaking and was featured in the Daily Bruin column "Maker's Medium."

Fourth-year art student Chereen Tam started off as a sculptor but is now a printmaker. She prefers the medium for its ability to produces many identical copies of one piece. (Ariana Fadel/Daily Bruin)

"Chereen Tam is putting in the hours to reap printmaking’s reward: replicability.

A fourth-year art student, Tam began printmaking last spring. Despite making sculptures since her sophomore year of high school, she said she wanted to explore printmaking but had to wait until the class opened up. Art 140: “Advanced Printmaking” is solely taught by continuing lecturer Jacob Samuel, who said some students appreciate that printmaking is a more traditional medium with little use of digital technology.

“The process itself that we do – etching and aquatint – are 600 years old,” Samuel said. “There are so many steps to every single process that we do and every step requires very precise attention to detail.”

"— David Egan, Jan. 31, 2021

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.

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