Island Press gives students the opportunity to be part of the conceptual and technical development of a project by a professional artist. Artists work with a master printer and alongside students and faculty who work as assistant printers and papermakers.

Emeritus Professor Peter Marcus founded the Washington University Collaborative Printmaking Workshop in 1978, hoping to create a collaborative learning environment with an emphasis on creative freedom over marketing and sales. The Printmaking Workshop was renamed Island Press in his honor in 1997, named after the first large-scale etching press he had designed and built in the early 70s, which was capable of printing an image five feet by ten feet.

Joan Hall is the Director of Island Press. She is the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art at Washington University in St. Louis and an accomplished artist with a reputation for inventive papermaking, painting, and printing techniques that have crossed traditional boundaries. Her artwork can be found in prestigious collections around the world.

Tom Reed is the master printer at Island Press, and comes from Landfall Press in Chicago where he served as an intaglio printer with Jack Lemon. A practicing artist, his work has been the focal point of several solo and group exhibitions. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa.

Featured artists at Island Press have included Chris Duncan, Chakaia Booker, Shimon Okshteyn, Tom Friedman, and James Barsness.