Jim Steg is widely recognized as the most influential printmaker based in New Orleans in the twentieth century. Steg’s artistic career lasted more than a half-century, spanning a multitude of media and styles from the humanistic graphite portraits made during his time as a WWII soldier to the radically inventive collage intaglio prints he produced from the 1970s onward. In addition to his artistic work, Steg was a beloved teacher and mentor for hundreds of students during his 43-year tenure as the head of the graphics department at Newcomb College, many of whom championed his work as staunchly as he supported theirs. A restless innovator, Steg mastered nearly every known printmaking technique – including photoresist etchings, serigraphs, woodcuts, and ink toner drawings – and invented some of his own. Steg was a pioneer of the collagraph, or collage intaglio process, which he used to create ambitious compositions that were part figurative and part abstract, and was one of the first to explore the artistic potential of the photocopier.