Dear Printmakers and Artists,

Welcome to Issue 7. For readers living in the northern hemisphere, no doubt you will be experiencing some wild, windy and wet precipitation.

This leads me to our first author, Tara Chittenden, who explored rain as a medium in her printmaking. In her article Printing the Weather, Chittenden undertakes a phenomenological exploration of process and materials as a temporal and sensory experience between space and time, understanding a pointillist pattern and colour and translating between textiles and printmaking.

Anders Aarvik considers the print medium between space and time and the artist's practice as the printmaking matrix beyond the expanded field. In the same way painters are returning to painting, he questions why printmakers are returning to traditional tools, considering how to define crafts for the future, specifically, printmaking as a techno-cultural system.

Ruth Pelzer-Montada reflects on the particularly striking installation "No Man is an Island" - a collaborative work by Uni Arts Helsinki Printmakers and presented at Impact 10 in Santander, Spain (2018). The installation is inspired by John Donne's prose text of this title. Donne explored the theme of interconnectedness and the shared experience of humanity. Likewise, in her article, Pelzer-Montada presents a critical discussion on interdependence through the associated value of collaboration.

The fourth article, co-authored by Aiu Kitayama Yamazaki, Yu Shimizu, and Tadashi Ogasawara, recounts the creative development of Japanese artist Kanae Yamamoto (1882-1946), the influence of the British Arts and Crafts and The Studio magazine in which he is introduced to a wide range of movements that led to his founding of The Free Drawing Education Movement and the Peasant Art Movement in Japan, and which led to greater creative freedom for new generations of artists.

We also welcome a series of short reflective articles curated by IMPACT Journal Intern Zie Smith, who recently completed the MA in Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking at UWE. I thank Zie, Fiona, Chloe, Megan and Claudia for sharing their printmaking practices and experiences during their MA study.

Last but not least, my sincere thanks to the external reviewers for their time in providing thoughtful feedback. 

Victoria Browne,

Angie Butler,

Killian Dunne,

Richard Harding,

David Lopes,

Krystie Ng.

Carinna Parraman,

Zie Smith.

Despite the northern hemisphere's outdoor chill, we wish you a very warm and productive 2024.

Carinna Parraman and Zie Smith

Centre for Print Research, University of the West of England, Bristol.