POSTED!

There is a part of The Press at Colorado College called, just as matter-of-factly, the Poster Press. The Poster Press, as you may have guessed, prints posters. The Poster Press (the entity & the machine associated with it) is run by students—someone orders a poster, gives the student the text, and then they can design whatever they want, as long as it is at least 2 colors and a certain minimum size. And they get paid. And we get fantastic posters all around campus.





The walls of the studio have been hung with posters from over the years (as shown in the images above). Below is an image of the first poster that I made here in Colorado. It is for a reading by Aubrey Hirsch. The second one was for the Print Here Now event (linked because I apparently can't swipe it from Flickr). Both posters were made improvisationally, with found cuts and flat plates and wood and lead type. It had been awhile since I had set a substantial amount of type, and it’s been nice and educational to reconnect with that process. And to make things by winging it. Sometimes the direct approach is the way to go.

THESE THINGS ARE HUMAN THINGS

On Monday, 9/19, at 12 AM Cairo time, the Understanding Campaign new website and Kickstarter fundraiser was launched. These crazy kids trying to change the world with a grassroots, DIY campaign. The audacity of the thing. Courage and boldness in a world delirious with fear. The audacity of the thing. To see some human beings on their feet.

Earlier on this blog I posted some cryptic pictures of my “Arabic lessons.” The pictures were of paper bags and other scraps scrawled with an alien-looking writing that may or may not have been Arabic. All of that writing was from genuine, if informal, Arabic lessons, from my friend Kamal.

Kamal ran the deli/café down the street from Hello!Lucky, and it was convenient for me to stop there for coffee and breakfast in the morning (after my first place, which was, coincidentally, run by Kamal’s brother, closed). I am a creature of habit. I started going in there every day. I started going for lunch sometimes too. After awhile Kamal started to talk to me and give me things: donuts, fruit, pastries. At some point he decided that he was going to start teaching me a little bit of Arabic, and that was when our friendship really began. I went there twice a day, every day, mainly to see Kamal.

Kamal is a polyglot. He is from Jerusalem. He is fluent in (at least) Arabic, English, and Spanish. Most likely Hebrew too. And I also heard him speak, at various times, French, German, and Chinese. He loved to address his customers and friends in their native languages. And it made people happy, made them feel more comfortable in a strange, stressful city.

I learned a few words of Arabic, which I will not attempt to transliterate here. I learned about Arabic culture, about growing up in Jerusalem. I learned about Islam, I learned about San Francisco. & of course everything in the world always coalesces into a print project. When I became involved with the Al-Mutanabbi project (to which I was particularly attuned to because of my friendship with both Kamal and Justin Sirois, because of a family member serving in Iraq) it became very clear very quickly that we had to include some Arabic text, both on the broadside itself and in the colophon on the back. If these things were going to Baghdad (which they are) we had to be sure that the people there could read them. And so Kamal helped to make sure that our translation was good and didn’t have any typos. And believe me, when one is setting type, letter by letter with the glyphs palette, in an alphabet where the letters change forms depending on where they are in the word, in an alphabet where the meaning of words is subtly changed by the addition of marks around the letters, in an alphabet where I kept getting lost in the beauty of the shapes of the letters, there were typos. Plenty of them. I think that we went through 4 versions. But we got it. And for the first time, after 10 years of printing, I printed something in another language.

The Arabic language, Arabic culture, is not an abstract thing to read about, to see on TV. It is lived, every day, beautifully, generously. I understand that now, thanks to my friends, thanks to the audacity of kindness. & I am changed, & the world is changed. The boldness of the thing, to see human beings on their feet. Join the campaign here.

PRINT HERE NOW, TOMORROW

Just a little re-post, just a reminder that tomorrow, Saturday, 9/18, the Press at Colorado College will be hosting PRINT HERE NOW: Colorado College Broadside Bonanza. The official description:

PRINT HERE NOW: Colorado College Broadside Bonanza
Workshop & Open House
Saturday, September 18
1 PM – 7 PM
The Press at Colorado College, Taylor Hall
Free and open to the public

In the summer of 2010 Levi’s began a program of opening up temporary art studios devoted to different disciplines in cities across the US. The first one of those was in San Francisco, and that studio was focused on screenprinting and letterpress. The studio closed in August but the adventure is not over, because three of the intrepid letterpress printers that were involved with the workshop are now driving across the country to deliver a printing press to a community print studio in Braddock, PA, and they are stopping for a day here at Colorado College. They will be setting up shop in our letterpress studio, the Press at CC, to host a day of informal conversation about the trip, the experience of the Levi’s studio, and their personal experiences as young print artists in the Bay Area and beyond, as well as orchestrating an improvisational print project that anyone and everyone is invited to participate in. So come on over, meet Rocket Caleshu, Taylor Reid, and Tom Smith, see the Press at CC, and learn about letterpress printing by reaching in there and getting your hands dirty. The event will begin at 1 PM with a short presentation, and then will continue as an open studio until 7 PM.

And the links:
The official Colorado College page, with a map.
The blog of the Levi’s workshop.

I know that this event is going to be a lot of fun, and if you’re curious about the Press at CC and what we do here, and/or are wondering how you can be involved, this is an excellent opportunity to check things out, meet some other interested and interesting people, and, most importantly, to have a good time making a real thing.

SOME ROOM TO MOVE

I got my hands on a digital camera for a brief time yesterday, so I thought that I’d take some pictures of the new studio here in Colorado to share with everyone.

A view of the pressroom from one corner. You can see 4 of the 5 presses (not counting the proofing press) that we have. The one you can’t see is an 8” x 12” Chandler & Price platen press.


The bindery and classroom space.


The type room, which I will soon start calling the composing room, as soon as I clear out some space for composing to happen.


And now some close-ups. Back in the press room:
Galleys and furniture!


Ink!


In the bindery, copies and pieces of the current Press publication The Burden of the Beholder: Dave Armstrong and the Art of Collage, which will be released soon.



A broadside about our type collection.


And type, type, and more type. And there’s more too, not pictured here, because it’s not in this room yet.


& THESE MACHINES
And the presses:

The Vandercook 219 AB.



The Asbern, a smallish German made cylinder press. It has some really great features that I will detail in a later post.


The Vandercook Universal 3.



The (giant) Vandercook Universal 4.



It’s nice to be home.

PRINT HERE NOW, ON SATURDAY

I’m not sure if anyone in Colorado Springs is reading this blog yet, but if you are you should come to Colorado College on Saturday, 9/18 for PRINT HERE NOW: Colorado College Broadside Bonanza. The official description:

PRINT HERE NOW: Colorado College Broadside Bonanza
Workshop & Open House
Saturday, September 18
1 PM – 7 PM
The Press at Colorado College, Taylor Hall
Free and open to the public

In the summer of 2010 Levi’s began a program of opening up temporary art studios devoted to different disciplines in cities across the US. The first one of those was in San Francisco, and that studio was focused on screenprinting and letterpress. The studio closed in August but the adventure is not over, because three of the intrepid letterpress printers that were involved with the workshop are now driving across the country to deliver a printing press to a community print studio in Braddock, PA, and they are stopping for a day here at Colorado College. They will be setting up shop in our letterpress studio, the Press at CC, to host a day of informal conversation about the trip, the experience of the Levi’s studio, and their personal experiences as young print artists in the Bay Area and beyond, as well as orchestrating an improvisational print project that anyone and everyone is invited to participate in. So come on over, meet Rocket Caleshu, Taylor Reid, and Tom Smith, see the Press at CC, and learn about letterpress printing by reaching in there and getting your hands dirty. The event will begin at 1 PM with a short presentation, and then will continue as an open studio until 7 PM.

And the links:
The official Colorado College page, with a map.
The blog of the Levi’s workshop.

I know that this event is going to be a lot of fun, and if you’re curious about the Press at CC and what we do here, and/or are wondering how you can be involved, this is an excellent opportunity to check things out, meet some other interested and interesting people, and, most importantly, to have a good time making a real thing.