I love travelling though I can't do it often because of cost!
I have always loved paper - it started when I was a little kid. My grandmother would give me origami paper and washi products that she would bring back from Japan.
I studied printmaking as a fine art at what was at the time called the Ontario College of Art.
I received two grants in 1995 to attend the International Paper Symposium in Kyoto, Japan. It was AMAZING! Artists, scientists, conservators, historians... all of us in love with all things about paper.
I moved to Japan in 1998 to apprentice with Richard Flavin in Ogawa-machi. I stayed there for three years and studied making traditional washi papers (what some like to call 'rice' paper) as well as helping with hand book binding, relief printing and washi treatments.
I started letterpress printing when I was in the Relief Printmaking class at O.C.A. about 20 years ago.
We mainly used the presses for printing wood cuts, engravings and lino cuts. I continued with different methods of printmaking without presses after graduation until I apprenticed in Japan where I used a small flatbed letterpress and a gelatine roller for printing 2 000 sake labels on handmade washi for my sensei.
Now I teach a lot of book arts and letterpress workshops at my studio in downtown Toronto. I focus on the craft of letterpress printing. I have three presses. A Vandercook SP 15 (precision flatbed press), a Caftsman 5"x7" platen press and a tabletop flatbed press. I also have three book presses for hand binding. I have used photopolymer plates but I love collecting and using vintage type, cuts and engravings. I would rather carve lino or engrave endgrain to create an image if I need one.
In the basement I have my paper making beaters (the hollander style beater is a movie star! It was rented from me to appear in the movie The Time Traveller's Wife!) and my paper making set up; moulds, deckles, felts, press, vats, su and ketas as well as some screen printing space.
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| Form made from bent leading with with odds and ends of metal type (sorts) inside. |
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| Trying to lock it all up nice and snug in a chase so that I can bring it to the press. |
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| Success! The end result printed on my Vandercook SP15. |
