Faculty Advisor for  The Palmetto Press and Associate Professor of printmaking
Ernest Milsted helps a student print a T-shirt with Sarah Amackron’s design on it. The Palmetto Press is the university’s print club within the art department.
Austin Cradic/The Lion's Roar

This past week the university’s Print Club, The Palmetto Press, hosted a T-shirt printing party called Print Jam.

Print Jam was hosted this past Thursday from 5-9 p.m. in the lobby and print lab on the second floor of Clark Hall and featured a music performance from the university’s own Ameal Cameron, a senior art student with a concentration in graphic design.

“This is the first time for live music and this is the first time we’ve advertised to other departments besides the art department,” said Cally Edwards, a senior art major with a concentration in printmaking. “Before, we’ve only advertised to our department and friends.”

At the event, students were able to choose from various designs to print onto T-shirts for $10 or $5 if they brought their own shirt. Sarah Amackron, a senior art major with a concentration in graphic design, was the artist behind one of the main designs. Her design included a list of all the different concentrations within the Visual Art Department.

“Since I am graduating, my design is about my memories here,” said Amackron. “So there’s a profile of a head with all of these departments that represent these great memories that I’ve had. I pretty much hand drew and illustrated each concentration digitally.”

The Palmetto Press started in 2007 by a group of printmaking students who wanted to raise money in order to go to various printmaking conferences around the country.

“Palmetto Press has successfully raised money to go to conferences in Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New Orleans,” said Ernest Milsted, Associate Professor of printmaking who teaches all levels of printmaking and the faculty advisor for the Palmetto Press. “We’ve recently started a collaborative conference with Nicholson State, University of Lafayette, McNeese and we have an annual undergraduate printmaking conference called, ‘This Print Thing’ we’re doing and it started here at Southeastern. It’s been at Nichols, it’s been at UL and now this semester it’s going to be at McNeese, and now we’re raising money here to go towards our trip to McNeese.”

Palmetto Press usually had their T-shirt printing party during Art Night hosted by the Visual Art Society and all other departmental organizations in the art department, but since VAS stopped hosting the event last year, Palmetto Press decided to continue the tradition of their shirt printing nights. They made their own event and labeled it Print Jam with this year being their 2nd year hosting the event.

The Palmetto Press raised $310 beating the $300 that was raised last year.

The Palmetto Pres hosted a T-shirt printing party called Print Jam.
Austin Cradic/The Lion's Roar