Printing on Paper...

my print drawer at Justseeds World Distro HQ (Pittsburgh)

 I've actually been able to squeeze in some time to make print and design work since this winter. This is especially exciting for me since I make prints significantly less often than most of the other folks in Justseeds. I blame this on two things: running the background mechanics of Justseeds' online store, and the reality that I don't conceive of many of my projects in terms of what could be illustrated on paper. But those are largely just excuses, so here's a few of the prints I've finished up!

This one was my latest addition to Josh MacPhee's Celebrate People's History poster series. I chose to focus on the Luddites, and wrote a fairly extensive post about the process and research behind the print here. Deftly rendered in two-color offset by the masters at Stumptown Printers in Portland, Oregon, you can get copies of this poster here.

This one is actually printed from an older linoleum block I cut back in 2008, while teaching a summer youth printshop called RUST with Heather White and Justseeds' Mary Tremonte and Pete Railand. I never finished carving the block in the midst of teaching, lost it for a few years, found it in last year's move, and finally finished and printed it this past month with the expert help of Justseeds cohort (and office pal) Bec Young. Printed on a press at Pittsburgh's utterly incredible and indispensable Artists Image Resource. You can get copies of this print (and read a little more about it) here.

This was one of the fastest designs I've completed in a while. I came up with the concept and then handcut it from Rubylith in less than a week, which felt great: I'd love to work some faster design-to-print methodology into my practice in the next couple years. This print was specifically created for Justseed's newest portfolio, the teaching/education-themed Liberating Learning, which you can get here. The prints are targeted for classroom walls, the concept bloomed from the mind of Bec Young, and Mary Tremonte ran all of the prints on a now-arcane Risograph machine at OCAD in Toronto, Ontario. You can get a version of this print on a thin poster paper (the portfolio version is on a heavier stock) right here.

I have a couple other designs up my sleeve for this autumn, once we get the screenprinting set-up working in the new studio...