📚 press kit + visual poetry + bedtime reading
Three things I am making, loving + thinking about this week
01 | making
PROVISIONAL PRESS
This week Chris and I assembled the Provisional Press – a DIY kit with all of the parts and laser cut pieces to make a tabletop press. Our good friend David (and talented artist, see below) gifted us this press almost a year ago and we finally got around to putting it together. Over the course of three days, thanks to some elbow grease (and maybe a little swearing), we can now add relief printing press to our equipment list in the Print Shop, along with a Sizzix die cutting machine that masquerades as a small etching press, and various sizes of gel print plates.
Our little Print Shop is shaping up! Over the next few weeks I will be experimenting with some polymer plate samples from Boxcar Press to see how they print on the Provisional Press and if I can use them to blind emboss on the Sizzix. I am currently working my way through a monotype printing course using gel plates taught by Sally Hirst and in the fall I want to take her Complete Creative Collagraphy course and learn how to use the Sizzix to create collagraph prints. Sally is one of the best online teachers I have come across. She has been teaching for many years and her deep printmaking and classroom experience is evident in her well-produced, engaging, and informative online courses.
➡️ If you’re interested in a Provisional Press »
(pre-orders are posted on the 1st of every month)
➡️ If you want to take a printmaking course with Sally Hirst »
Pictured above: unassembled Provisional Press Kit; our assembled press shown with the steel bed plate and a Showcard Press arrow.
02 | loving
DAVID WOLSKE
Speaking of amazing printers and teachers… David Wolske is a designer, artist, and educator. We met David almost 20 years ago at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
He creates beautifully designed, meticulously printed works of art using “a combination of contemporary and historical processes to transfigure letters, numbers, and punctuation into visual poetry.” Click through to read his full artist statement, but I think the work speaks for itself:
➡️ Check out more of David’s work »
03 | thinking
“I also read cookbooks for pleasure. They demand nothing of the reader, and every page has the promise of a happy ending.” — Ari Shapiro
I had never thought of it this way, but when I read that quote I thought “Yes—exactly!” That’s why cookbooks make such good bedtime reading.