After catching the two printmaking exhibits currently on display in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, a statement by the artist Robert Motherwell seems apropos: "Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it."

"Southern Graphics Council Traveling Prints" and "Printer's Ink," both on display in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts through Dec. 4, abound with admirable examples of the printmaker's craft, illustrating the power that prints have to lift, enlarge, mystify, provoke and satisfy viewers.

Thirty years ago, the Southern Graphics Council — initially a small group of printmakers from Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama — began meeting to exchange information and plan annual conferences. Today, a much larger council sponsors a juried, traveling print exhibit every three years.

Last year Justin Diggle, assistant professor of art at the University of Utah (a member of the SGC and a superior printmaker in his own right), made Mary Francey, a curator at the UMFA, aware of the exhibit and the museum was able to pick up the show and combine it with "Printer's Ink," a selection of prints from the UMFA's collection.

Despite its size and continued growth, the SGC is still resolved to promote printmaking through interchange of ideas and discussion of new approaches to their work.

"The show," said Diggle, "illustrates the broad range of techniques and ideas that are of interest to contemporary printmakers."

In SGC's portion of the exhibit, viewers will engage a diversity of images produced by an astounding assortment of printmaking methods, involving a fusion of future and past, such as Mark Hosford's "Cubbyhole," an 11-by-14-inch work involving screen print, staining and inkjet.

"Peek-a-Boo" by Mariana Depetris, incorporates monotype, intaglio, linocut, paper lithography and paper stitching.

There are also combinations of etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, linocuts, photogravures, digital transfers, and on and on. The imagination of these artists knows no bounds.

"The show allows for comparisons between works," Diggle said, "so the visitor can see how each artist has manipulated their chosen medium as they visualize their ideas."

Visitors unfamiliar with the printmaking process should be sure to pick up and read the prepared museum handout, "What is an original print?" by Sandy Brunvand, artist, educator and co-owner of Saltgrass Printmakers. It is insightful and concise.

In "Printer's Ink," the pieces are historical precedents to the contemporary prints in SGC's traveling exhibition.

With works from the romanticists Theodore Gericault and Eugene Delacroix to impressionists Mary Cassatt and Camille Pissarro to modernists Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, "Printer's Ink" traces the evolution of printmaking from the 16th-century practice of printing from carved woodblocks to drawing with a crayon on metal plates.