Directangle Press Artist Residency
Printing up a storm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire
I recently completed my fourth in person artist residency at Directangle Press. I drove from Indianpolis, Indiana to Bethlehem, New Hampshire. (That’s almost a quarter of the country!) The drive was very beautiful and I visited family along the way. I chose to drive so that I could bring my bike and lots of art supplies.
This artist residency tempted me to travel so far because it included access to specialized and very expensive printing equipment. Namely, Vandercook and Risograph machines.
My time in New Hampshire involved only five full days to get busy and make prints. Strap in for a wild ride!
First up: Vandercook
The last time I operated a Vandercook was in 2016 at Hatch Show Print in Nashville, Tennessee. Back then I did a two week internship. Before that, I learned the ins and outs of letterpress at All Along Press in St Louis setting type for ILSSA (Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts). Suffice to say my experience with letterpress has meandered over many years, but has never been overly substantial.
Vandercooks still intimidate me so thankfully the owner/director of Directangle Press was on site to help me with the press.
Now, I am not a traditional puzzler, but I do enjoy the puzzle aspect of letterpress posters (aka broadsides). Working with the limited number of typefaces is a creative constraint that makes the process a fun challenge.
I had a phrase in my head and I played around with the available type faces to see what would work well composition-wise. In 24 hours I arranged (set) the type, locked it into the press bed, and printed almost 200 posters in three different ink colors. Once the type is locked and loaded, it’s easy to go a bit overboard with printing. Prints record a passing moment in time. These pieces of wood and metal will never be arranged like this again. I could print the same words in a different place with totally different outcome. So when it comes time to print, I tend to “letter rip.”
Inspiration
The words of this poster are from a podcast called A Temple Wild. Mira Karakitsou is an artist and herbalist in Greece. “[Her] work explores the sensual landscapes of Nature and the body — how soil, stone, water, and wildlife shape our bodies and our cultures.” (from her website.) Mira uses plants of Mediterranean Greece to contextualize Greek mythology. I was surprised to hear such poetic words around grief in a podcast about plants of the underworld. The words really stayed with me. I transcribed the passage and shared it with people experiencing grief around me. Here is the snippet that resonated deeply with me:
The nature of being human means we are in a constant dance with death.
Every passing second is the death of the present moment.
Grief is the art of attending both life and death, of loving what is and what was, of standing vigil and bearing witness to that which is no more. It’s an act of devotion, of remembrance; it’s an act of love.
I reached out to Mira asking permission to transform her mellifluous language into a poster. She gave me her blessing on the condition that I donate a portion of sales to a nonprofit. I sent her a few options of non profits I support personally. Mira chose Wild Ones since her work is all about helping people connect to their natural environment through plants.
Mira’s words about grief have echoed in my mind for over six months and they travelled with me to New Hampshire. The grief poster seemed like the perfect subject matter for my brief access to letterpress equipment. I shortened the copy to be:
Grief is the art of attending both life and death, of standing vigil and bearing witness to that which is no more. It’s an act of devotion, of remembrance; it’s an act of love.
I printed on three different color papers: navy blue, kraft, and speckled off-white. The poster is 12”x16” and editioned on the back. After completing this poster entitled Grief is Love I felt complete in my letterpress tinkering.
Next up: Risograph
Risograph is a Japanese machine that looks a lot like a Xerox machine. Commonly called Riso (ree-zoh), there are cylinders of colored ink that you load into the machine. Directangle Press had over a dozen inks available. Riso ink is translucent so when inks are layered, the overlap creates an additional color.
Before arriving at Directangle Press, I took one riso workshop in Indianapolis and got to experiment for a few hours. The nuance of riso can lead to artful finesse and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out how to make the machine sing. I really enjoyed playing with different ink combinations and types of imagery such as pencil sketch, linoleum carving, and digital files.
My first foray into riso was translating an existing digital illustration into a two color riso print. I used Photoshop to separate the foreground and background into separate files. Then I loaded hunter green and sunflower ink drums into the riso machine. Here is the result of that test:
Luscious Linoleum
Next, I pivoted to carving two linoleum blocks. I arrived at the residency with imagery ready to transfer and carve for an Indianapolis-inspired illustration.
I carved two 12”x12” blocks, printed them in black in, scanned the prints into my computer, then sent the digitized prints thorugh the riso machine for a two color print.
For this print, I used fluorescent pink and mint as the ink colors. Where they overlap you can see a lovely purple, which is what I was hoping for. Pink + green = purple ??? In riso-land, yes.
The same ink combination looks very different on kraft paper:
The Indianapolis riso print went way better than I could have predicted. Beginner’s luck perhaps? Either way my list of project ideas had been completed so I had almost two days to try whatever I wanted.
I decided to play with riso more so I created a two color zine using imagery from my sketch books. It took me one day to design the layout and one day to print and collate the zines. So I managed to maximize my residency with print-mania. Phew!
Reflection
Was it crazy to drive 18 hours each way for a five day artist residency? I don’t think I’ll be repeating that anytime soon. It was a very challenging endeavor that pushed me to my limits. My normal studio practice involves 6 hours of deep creative work per day. But my very first day at Directangle Press I worked 10 hours in the studio. So…the next day I was not in great shape energy-wise and I had to take a very long break to recover. The rhythm I found was to start in the studio before 8 am, work for a few hours, take a 2 hour midday break walking around the town and being outside, then work for a few more hours before breaking for dinner.
New Hampshire is very beautiful, but I did not get a chance to experience its exterior grandeur. I felt quite tied to the studio and wanted to make my limited amount of time really worth it. I now know that one week is not an ideal length of time for me to experience a place and dig deep into creative work. I appreciate the experience at Directangle Press and am glad I met my goal for one residency per year. I wonder where I’ll end up for next year’s residency…I’ve already started applying!
