Surprise show!

Top postcard by me. Bottom postcard by my friends at Pomegranite Press in Oakville.

You may remember that I contributed to a letterpress postcard swap in the spring of 2010 entitled "Greetings from...". Well, i've just found at that the collection of postcards is part of an art show entitled "Fine and Dirty: Contemporary Letterpress Art" at the Minnesota Centre for Book Arts. It will be up until Oct. 16th, 2011. If you are going out that way please check it out! Apparently it will also be travelling to a few other states... but probably not Canada. Too bad.

Letterpress workshop projects.

Works done by participants in the spring letterpress workshops.  I won't be doing any summer workshops. This summer is going to be busy with trips and visitors for me... and it's way too stinking hot!! The two colour prints are from the Letterpress 1 workshops and the one colour prints are from the Intro. workshops.

These half tones look awesome inked in gray!

Hand inking on the "new" old flatbed.

These pictures were taken in March on our way home from a vacation. We were at the Buffalo International Airport on our way to pick up our luggage and there in front of us was a display of letterpress broadsides! I made my family take a detour from getting our luggage so that I could have a look. The Western New York Book Arts Centre were given a small retail space to set up a display promoting the Centre. Cool! It made me think that Buffalo was a pretty cool place to have this in their airport! A few weeks later, at Wayzgoose, I talked to some of the people representing the Centre and they assured me that Buffalo was not a cool place - except for the WNYBAC. The work coming out of there is pretty amazing and it looks like they have a great resource of type to use. Hopefully I'll get to go there someday soon. By the way, Richard Kegler who is affiliated with the WNYBAC, has a documentary film called "Making Faces: Metal Type in the 21st Century". It documents the work of Canadian graphic designer, Jim Rimmer, who was also a type designer, caster, and letterpress craftsman.

I bought a copy of Richard's documentary at Wayzgoose but I haven't watched it yet as I want to watch it in the right company - meaning not with our daughter!

Toronto Mini Maker Faire This Weekend!

This weekend is the first Toronto Mini Maker Faire. It started in the U.S. in 2006. It is now held all over the U.S., Britain, Africa and now Canada. The Toronto Mini Maker Faire is being held this Saturday and Sunday at the Evergreen Brickworks on Bayview Ave.

"Makers" are people at any level who are dedicated to the act of creating in that DIY style. The Faires are a chance to bring "makers" and the public together to share ideas, create collaborations, create new projects, come up with new ideas as well as compare notes. It's not just Artists and crafters! It's scientists, hackers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, architects, engineers, etc.

I'll be there demonstrating letterpress printing (old fashion DIY!) and I'm hoping that I'll have time to look around. There are going to be 3-D printers, snowflake cameras (?), and robots! It's a family event and it looks like there will be some really cool, mind expanding things for children to try.

Check out the website for participants, directions and other cool info: http://makerfairetoronto.ca/about/

Happy people printing!

I've been a bit sloppy in remembering to post photos that I've taken during workshops. Sorry to all my students who have not seen their photos here!

I find it amazing and really wonderful what participants come up with in a very short time for letterpress projects! No photopolymers. Just old school cuts, engravings, wood type and metal type. Take a look...

Erin printing a small edition book cover.

Artistic Printing

Wow. It's been a while since I last posted. Sorry.
I have a lot of catching up to do!

In March my family took a two week vacation in Florida. Good weather, nice beaches and some downtime. While we were there we met up with Don and Ruth Black for an afternoon and dinner. Don showed us a bunch of new books on letterpress type that he had acquired. For me it was like looking at a book with pictures of all kinds of delicious tempting candy. Beautiful wood type and metal type fonts page after page! I had also brought a book called "The Handy Book of Artistic Printing" to show Don. He had never seen it. It's a paperback whose pages are filled with images of beautiful, densely printed ephemera letterpress done in the late 1800's in a style that was called Artistic Printing. Here is a peek.

The artistically printed style cover.

I'd love to see and try out one of these curving machines for rules!
They created all sorts of images by custom bending rules for clients. Plants, swirls even portraits!!

Look at all the individual pieces used to create this one corner of the image!!!

Love this book!

Lat year I picked up the Volume 2 of the Taschen Edition book on typefaces and graphic styles. It was beautiful. Absolute eye candy for people who love type! Last week for my birthday my husband bought me Volume 1!  Such amazing letterforms, samples of printing, etc. There is even a page that has images of a hunky young letterpress guy without a shirt printing using a hand press! I'll have to try and scan that one to show you!

Workshops

In all my years of teaching adults it is interesting for me to notice that usually females make up the majority of workshop participants. In Letterpress it's a different scene. The balance of male and female students are about equal. I'm not sure why. I just find it interesting...

I taught Julian and Robleh a couple of weeks ago. I really liked their projects. Julian was extra ambitious setting a quote in 12 point metal type with an image! It turned out beautifully. Robleh's positive message broadside also turned out well. I was able to get him to print on some chocolate brown stock that I had ... he was skeptical ... and loved the results! Yay! Too bad I was so excited that I forgot to take a picture of the print on the brown.

Julian at the Platen press printing his hand set type quote.

Robleh's broadside printed an the Vandercook with some of our  wood type.

Robleh pulling a print on the Vandercook  (yes, that is his arm...he was shy).

Julian's hand set quote with vintage "Bathinette" cut.

Hearts, Love and all things pink and red!

For about five years now I have been making gift cards for Soma Chocolatemaker. I've spent the last few days at the studio making their Valentine's Day gift cards. Hearts. Pink. Red. I have never been in love with the whole scheme of Valentine's Day scheme being red, white, pink with hearts and cupids! I'm so thankful that at Soma they like the brown card stock I use for their cards!!  I don't know if I could stand to print Valentine's cards if they all had to be on white or pastel colours. For me, the brown stock makes the subject and colour a little less... ummmmm... dislikable? Perhaps it''s because I like to think of the brown card stock as wonderful chocolate! They could probably even pay me in chocolate...

I tried printing on the Craftsman for the first time. Since these cards are gift card size it's a good size to try out on the Craftsman. The press is not working as smoothly as I think it should be, but it is printing well. One thing I don't have are the pins to hold the paper in place for printing! Oops! I had to fashion some out of layered cardboard. I was impressed! They worked pretty well. I was able to register the red hearts in line with the pink type using them! I won't be keeping my cardboard pins though. On Friday I'll go to see Craig Black at Don Black Linecasting to pick up some brass pins for the press and see if he has any suggestions for getting the press to work a little more smoothly.

Top: The Craftsman press with a locked up heart.
Bottom: My makeshift pins!
Right: Really nice wood type font in quarter cases.

Printed with metal type.

X's and O's printed with metal type.

A bit too much pressure with the small type.

The Rockwell metal type prints so nicely!