Whimsical movements: Sally French's 'Untitled (Yellow Bunny)' monotype at Gallery 414.   Print Research Institute of North Texas: Selections from the Permanent Collection Thru Jan 11 at Gallery 414, 414 Templeton Dr, FW. 817-336-6595.

Nearly every print now hanging in Gallery 414 serves as a defense of printmaking as a serious, expressive contemporary visual art form. The technique in each piece is coolly marvelous. The entire show actually comes pretty close to perfection. The original imagery that the printmaking technique flatters in every work shines through; all sorts of lines between art, photography, and graphic design overlap; and the opportunity for viewers to just kick back and enjoy pure, potent, eclectic visual energy presents itself handsomely.

The prints have been provided by P.R.I.N.T., the Print Research Institute of North Texas. A fine art press and print collection affiliated with the University of North Texas School of Visual Arts, P.R.I.N.T. is kind of like a full-service art commune: Among other things, it's a studio for both visiting and local printmakers/artists and a living, breathing advertising campaign aimed at promoting the myriad attributes of printmaking. Part of building support for appreciating printmaking, of course, involves exhibiting. Hence, Selections from the Collection.

A polemical if not entirely unreasonable idea informs the show. Guest curator and local art all-star Sara-Jayne Parsons apparently believes that printmaking -- like watercolors and photography -- has slowly, over the past 50 years or so, become a second-class citizen. Its place as art's tekkie child has been usurped by video cameras and computers. Printmaking, as a stand-alone art form, is no longer the only medium for exploring formal machine-age innovations or responding to concepts born of progress. As printmaking was once the busy intersection of art, photography, and design, it's now commonly thought of as a ghost town, gathering silent eyes like tumbleweeds.

By exhibiting quality material, Parsons and P.R.I.N.T. lay out the ostensible objective to turn this negative into a positive, transforming printmaking's antiquity into retro appeal. Think about it: A winking postmodernist looking for the precise way to articulate her irony could find lots to love in a good ol' press. Printmaking's cool now because it's so, you know, uncool. You might say that making a print these days is basically like driving a VW bus, covering your head in a daisy chain, and grooving to Jefferson Airplane. What's not to love, man?

A print can take just about any form, from a reproduction of an ancient oil masterpiece to an original woodcut (which is essentially like the impression a stamp makes). At 414, various styles -- collage, abstract expressionism, pure text -- assume print form here. Each artist is masterful. There are the local stalwarts: Anitra Blayton, whose sonorous Inferno-esque tableau really sings, with its tiny silhouettes of human figures swirling beneath huge multicolored raindrops; and Michael C. Miller, who patiently explores mass-produced Day-Glo shapes within smallish frames. And there are the national stars: Lynda Benglis, who, according to press information, takes about 100 different steps to bring her sparse Zuni hunting-fetish abstractions to life; and Jack Pierson, whose minimalist transformations of the everyday achieve the economic beauty of haiku. "Blue Horizon," one of two Pierson pieces on exhibit here, is essentially a monochromatic square of sky blue, interrupted briefly in the top right-hand corner by brilliantly white clouds and along the bottom by the titular blue line. It's a work that can be appreciated from two feet away or two inches.

Some other works here also deserve praise. Terry Allen's two spooky etchings, both anchored solely by a black man's expressionless face, haunt the entire gallery. In "And Later," inches of desolate beige frame the small, perfectly centered image. A thick grayish black smear, as wide as the face, extends to the right, suggesting rapid movement (similar to how walls of lines sweeping in one direction behind a super-speedy comic book hero impart swiftness). Allen's other work, "Meanwhile," finds the face frozen, trapped beneath soft reddish horizontal bars of empty sheet music. The overall effect of both works inspires terribly melancholic, terribly pessimistic visions of race and art and where the twain meet. This intermingling of race and art also takes shape in the work of Jaune Quick-to-see Smith, who blends collage, text, and painting into absurdist narratives. The artist, unfortunately, thrusts heavy-handed, socially responsible didacticisms upon her lighter-than-air work, nearly grounding her flights of fancy.

The gallery really burns in the back space, where Sally French's monotype, "Untitled (Yellow Bunny)," reigns over the rest of the room like a power-drunk yet fun-loving monarch. The "yellow" in the title actually refers to the piece's glorious background. And the "bunny" -- a flat black blob whose very few curves we viewers seem to will into the shape of a hare, at the title's suggestion. From the bunny's open mouth spews a thick red swoosh for a tongue and a vomitous spray of splattered black ink, littered with barely visible minutiae, like bumblebees, Casper the Friendly Ghost trinkets, and toy ducks. These fantastic details lift the piece from humble graphic design to Art.

Selections, however, isn't just about printmakers and their prints. It's about several real artists who've chosen the press as the medium through which they can express specific, sometimes print-specific, ideas. We should celebrate the fact that artists with North Texas connections continue inventing new visual languages built on surrealism, graphic design, ab-ex painting, photography, minimalism, portraiture, collage, and everything else, including printmaking techniques like etching, woodcutting, and engraving. Many moons have passed since Fort Worth has seen printwork this adventurous, exhibited so attractively. Selections, plainly, is a well-conceived, well-executed treat.