I Am Still Alive

Hard Time by Chuck Agro

We printed Hard Time by Chuck Agro over the weekend on the Vandercook.

It’s a signed open edition printed on Speckletone Madero measuring 11 by 13 inches and available for purchase in the store.

I am really enjoying working with artists on these prints for the store. Hit me up if you are interested in collaborating on a print.

Gravity's Rainbow by Dan Funderburgh

We printed Gravity’s Rainbow by Dan Funderburgh this past Friday on the Vandercook. It’s a three color print that we ran in two editions (one limited and the other open).

You can pick one of the prints up in the store if you are so inclined.

We’ve putting several other prints up for sale in the next few days, so check back soon or subscribe to either our newsletter or to our sitewide RSS feed.

New prints Monday

We’ve been busy printing editions with some other folks these past few weeks. We’ll start selling several of the new prints in a couple days and will likely be releasing a new print each Monday through the rest of the summer.

→ Letterpress videos from Boxcar Press

Booklyn

Founded in 1999, Booklyn is an artist-run, nonprofit organization headquartered in Brooklyn, New York (Greenpoint). According to their mission statement, their purpose “is to promote artist books as an art form and educational resource; to provide educational institutions and the public with programming involving contemporary artist books; and to assist artists in exhibiting, distributing, and publishing innovative bookwork.”

In addition to producing books, Booklyn offers open studios with an instructor in their space on Tuesday evenings (call for details).

Back in stock

Thanks to Hunt we have another run of We are so good together prints in stock. If you’ve been waiting to grab one, now is I suppose as good a time as any.

Most efficiently describing the universe

Over the weekend, we printed an edition with Noah Rauch and Jody Avirgan. You can pick one up in the store if you like.

Jody describes the concept this way:

Two semesters of intensive introductory astronomy distilled into seven handy rules.

It’s a two-color run of 100 handset woodtype prints measuring 13 by 20 inches and part of our summer collaborations.

Center for Book Arts

The Center for Book Arts is dedicated to preserving the traditional artistic practices of book-making, as well as exploring and encouraging contemporary interpretations of the book as an art object. Founded in 1974, it was the first not-for-profit organization of its kind in the nation, and has since become a model for others around the world.

New in the store

We have ten of Cannonball Press’ We Can Burn That Bridge When We Come To It woodcut/letterpress prints now available in the store. They measure 18”x24” inches and were handtooled, hand-inked and printed by Martin Mazzora here in Brooklyn.

Ugly Duckling Presse

Ugly Duckling Presse is a nonprofit art & publishing collective producing small to mid-size editions of new poetry, translations, lost works, and artist’s books. The Presse favors emerging, international, and “forgotten” writers with well-defined formal or conceptual projects that are difficult to place at other presses.

UDP’s full-length books, chapbooks, artist’s books, broadsides, magazine and newspaper all contain handmade elements, calling attention to the labor and history of bookmaking.

Purgatory Pie Press

Dikko Faust started Purgatory Pie Press at the University of Wisconsin, Madison when he spilled (or pied) an overfilled case of 8 pt century oldstyle his first day at Walter Hamady’s letterpress class.

Esther K Smith entered Purgatory when they made their wedding invitation in 1980.

The Press has had exhibitions at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harper Collins Gallery, Harvard University and Smith College.

The press has collaborated with 100 artists and handsets real type, not this newfangled virtual eyewash. Faust and Smith teach bookarts, graphic design and letterpress at Center for Book Arts, Cooper Union & City University of New York.

→ plantable seed paper

Underground Organics by Trip Print Press

Another great print from Nicholas

We Can Burn That Bridge @Cannonball Press

18” x 24” woodocut and letterpress on paper by Martin Mazorra. There’s lots of good stuff coming off presses at Cannonball here in Brooklyn and they’ve got quite a few awesome prints for sale on their site.

Selling the Vandercook 14 Proof Press

I’d like to make a little room here in the studio (in Brooklyn, NY) so I am selling the 14 Proof Press. It’s a beautiful hand-inked cylinder press with an enormous press bed (17 5/8” x 25 1/2”) for the footprint (2’7” x 3’9”) and weight (750lbs.). It can print on sheets of paper up to 17 3/8” x 25”.

It’s on skids and in great shape. I can get it to street level for you, but you’ll have to take it from there. $1200 OBO.

More after the jump

The Arm NYC

The Arm NYC is an artist run space at 281 North 7th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The space consists of a gallery/performance space, a public access letterpress studio and a smaller separate print studio for artists in residence.

The Arm has hosted events for The Max Levine Ensemble, Ingrid, Sharon Cheslow, Totally Michael, Prizzy Prizzy Please, Greg Henderson, Conrad Carlson, Sadu, JPL 907, Ghost Mice, Evan Greer, Brook Pridemore, Griffin & The True Believers, Dark Dark Dark, Tiny Masters Of Today, Ben Frost, Penny Rimbaud (Crass), Necking, Matthias Wermke, Love Is All, Dead Combo, Free Blood, Wowch, Japanther, Puppet Kabob, Texta Queen, XXXChange, Velasco, High Places, Benji Cossa and Joshua Ploeg.

The Arm’s public access letterpress studio hosts printing workshops and rents press time to artists and designers interested in printing in letterpress. This space has five Vandercook proof presses and two Chandler and Price Pilot presses. The artist in residence studio at The Arm has two Vandercook Universal III presses, a Chandler & Price Old Series 8×12 platen press, and an antique Challenge paper guillotine. This space also houses The Arm’s collection of twentieth century metal and wood type.

The Arm NYC exists to support a DIY community and provide a venue for creation, inspiration and positive socialization.

I Am Still Alive

I Am Still Alive is a design practice located in Brooklyn, NY.

Three days worth of weather

We’ve got another print in the store. It’s a 4-color letterpress poster.

I am also looking for local Brooklyn/New York folks who want to collaborate on posters this summer. If you’re interested, holler @me.

Simple Precision 15

Here’s an overwhelmingly boring video overview of the steps involved printing on the new SP15. In the video, I am making the first test print on the press; it’s a kind of bastardized synesthesia I overheard not too long ago (more accurately described as a cross-sensory metaphor, I reckon).

Observant viewers will notice I accidentally printed onto the tympan paper (d’oh).

Noticeably absent from the video are any shots of cleanup or typesetting (both as necessary for printing as the printing itself, I’d say). Maybe if we are all lucky, I will make another equally engaging video focusing solely on cleanup (and somehow try to communicate in that video the peculiar joys of California Wash – the extraordinarily noxious solvent used to remove the ink).

The music here comes courtesy Van Dyke Parks – if you haven’t, it’d behoove you to listen to Song Cycle.

Printing on the C&P

Here is a video of me operating the C&P in the mess that was the studio about a year ago. I am printing one color of one side of a postcard. And as you can tell from certain possibly NSFW segments, treadle-operated platen presses are potentially the most erotic of printmaking apparatuses.

Edit: It’s not the size of the press, but the motion of the pressman.