THE CURIE CURE Original letterpress poster

"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals."  Marie Curie

Jessica Spring, Springtide Press and Chandler O'Leary, Anagram Press just released their latest print. Get it while you can, they always sell out!!  You can purchase the poster on etsy.

It is hot off the press! This BRAND NEW, hand-pulled letterpress print is printed from hand-lettered original typography and hand-drawn illustrations and patterns (in fact, everything was done by hand, the hard way!). This piece is a collaboration between Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press and Jessica Spring of Springtide Press, inspired by efforts nationwide to obtain equal, affordable health care for all.

The illustration is inspired by laboratory equipment, molecule diagrams and the Periodic Table of the Elements. To symbolize Curie's revolutionary work with radioactivity, "The Curie Cure" is printed in glowing, atomic colors.

The poster was printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press. Each piece is printed on archival, 100% rag, recycled paper, and signed by both artists.

Edition size: 138

Paper size: 10 x 18 inches

Artist Kate Timmerman at Modified Arts

The very talented Kate Timmerman has a solo exhibition titled Then and Now (1998-2009) that opens at  Modified Arts in Phoenix on Friday November 20th, 2009 at 6 p.m. Kate is a mixed media artist who has created an impressive body of work over the years. I cannot wait to see this show!  The closing reception Friday December 4, 2009 at 6 p.m.

Here' the amazing thing--you can win a painting! Visitors to the exhibition who make a donation of pet food will be entered into a lottery to win a painting. All food collected will be donated to Poverty's Pets a downtown Phoenix group that rescues, neuters and places animals.

Modified Arts Phoenix

407 E. Roosevelt St.

Phoenix, AZ 85004

602-462-5516

Wayzgoose Fun!

 photo by Rhonda Lewis

We were thrilled with the turn out of the first AZ Wayzgoose!  The fun thing is that it seemed like everyone did a little bit of everything! Lisa described it as a 7-ring circus and she was right! It was so much fun, that none of us even remembered to eat lunch.

We started off with magnetic poetry. Jeryl and Lisa did a great job helping folks lock up words in the little proofing press. The favorite line of the day was: She said go loosey goosey be silly cheese and Be a dingbat slug letterpress printer.

Photo by Rhonda Lewis

Letterpress was buzzing with coaster and bookmark printing.Mike was on the go most of the day.

 Photographer Rhonda Lewis made my favorite bookmark of the day and she also took this fab photo of the press!

Donna kept things humming in the papermaking studio where everyone made handmade recycled paper.

Gary led the making your own envelope session. Notice the festive Halloween Hat!

The hit of the day was the tee shirt printing. (see Gary's shirt above) Below, Lisa helps the Labyrinth guy with his design.

We concluded the day's activities with a little pochoir on letterpress.

It was really a fun filled day! A great chance to connect with old friends and meet new ones as well.

We'll definitely do the Wayzgoose next year so stay tuned!photo by Rhonda Lewis

You can see more photos of the wayzgoose on our flickr sites: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisatakata/sets/72157622581803607/  and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepaperstudio/

STREB: BRAVE

If STREB tours in your area, go and see their show! They were in Phoenix last week and we decided to catch their show on the spur of the moment. Thank goodness we made it to the Friday show because with all the tweets and texts about the event, it  sold out on Saturday. I didn't think we'd be able to take photos but we were allowed to. The photos are blurry but the show was an amazing combination of performance, sound and video.

STREB is a little hard to put into words. It is a company based in NY that is a combination of dance, gymnastics and sheer athletisicm. Elizabeth Streb, the Action Architect and Choreographer received a MacArthur Genius Award so that gives you an idea of what an innovator she is. In the falling piece, the dancers litterally fell off beam that went all the way up to the top of the horizontal structures. It was heart stopping!

In this piece, the video projection is the moon and the dancers (those blurry orange spots) are suspended horizontally. It was breathtaking!

Botanicals & Butterflies

We are finally out of our record heat so it was lovely to stroll around the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. We don't see many butterflies in AZ so I wanted to post photos of the Monarch butterflies and other botanicals at the garden.

Cactus in bloom.

Wildflower garden.

Lovely lantana.

Dia De Los Muertos Exhibtion

Here are some photos of our alter in the Dia De Los Muertos exhibition.This was a collaborative effort with Lisa T, Marshall S, Gary and me to create the intial piece. The community was invited to contribute thier own memorial cubes.

Marhsall did lovely pieces with patterns, cards and photos. This one honors his dad and his grandmother.

This one is a tribute to Eartha Kit, oh that origninal Cat Woman!

Ode to the most recent building imploded in Phoenix.

This year All Saints Day was especially meaningful because we attended a funeral that day for a friend of ours who was full of life and he died way too soon.

PHX Design Week & Handset Type

This week kicked off the inaugural Phoenix Design Week. The designers we talked with are so excited to have this event in the valley. We had fun letterpressing hundreds of envelopes and coasters for the event.

We wanted to use some of the banged up wood type we acquired to print the envelope. I'm not sure what I was thinking because using all the different faces that had slight variations in heights made the make-ready on 600+ envelopes really insane. We love wood type and typically use the faces that are in great condition. But it was fun to cobble together a bunch of different faces, shapes and sizes. Of course it would have been easier to make a polymer plate and get the layout and kerning perfect but we figure there is enough perfection out there--bring on the banged-up, wood type! The flower is a wood type ornament (in pristine condition) and then we handset the envelope flap with gorgeous metal type.

Here's a photo of one of our boxes of mixed wood type. Look at the "t" that is at the middle top of the photo. I think someone bit in to it! Ouch!

For the coasters, we found a really old cut of a bird and metal cut of leaves. If you come to the wayzgoose, you can print your own coaster. It will most likely be a different design.

Gary handset the metal type on the back of the coaster. The one nice thing about using old metal type is that lots of the fonts are not digitized--the only way you can use them is if you have the actual typeface. Plus the old foundry type is really hard metal that can withstand the test of time and most types of paper. Printing these two pieces alone were over 3500 passes on our press that we hand-fed. Gotta love our C and P press from the 1890's-- it is a workhorse.

Wayzgoose - Oct 31, 2009!

The first annual Arizona Wayzgoose - a celebration of letterpress! We've been working like mad getting ready for this very fun event. Come and join us!

The term Wayzgoose originally referred to a late summer feast hosted by master printers for their apprentices. Since Oct 31st should be near the end of our Arizona summer (we hope!), we decided to have the first ever (that we know of) Arizona wayzgoose! The day will be chock full of fun!

If you have letterpress equipment that you would like to sell at the event from 11 am-1 pm, contact us letterpress@paperstudio.com so we can reserve a spot for you.

October 31, 2009--11 am - 4 pm
The Paper Studio 520 E. Southern Ave., Tempe

11 - 1--Letterpress Equipment Swap Meet--Chat with Letterpress Printers and buy some printing type & equipment!

11 - 1--Ginormous Letterpress Magnetic Poetry--we are making a huge magnetic poetry board with letterpress words--come join us!

12 - 2--Coaster Printing--we're inking up a couple of presses so you can see what it is like to print your own swanky and functional coaster!

1 - 2--Papermaking--we are always up to our elbows in pulp, now you too can experience wet pulp with without making a mess in your kitchen!

1 - 2--Envelope Making--experience one the most popular YouTube videos we ever made and make your own envelope with your very own hands!

1 - 2--Bookmark That--we are setting plates for a bookmark so that you will have the joy or printing it yourself as well as have fond memories of this event every time you are reading your favorite book!

2 - 4--Tee Shirt Printing--This isn't topless event so please be sure to wear a shirt and bring one on which to print. Make your own statement by printing your shirt with some wood type!

3.- 4--Pochoir on Letterpress--bet you wonder what that is. Well come, see and do this fabulous French technique! (ooh la,la, the intrigue!)

Fun Posters

My friend Steve told me there were some cool vintage-looking posters in the window a forthcoming restaurant in Tempe. He was right, these are fun posters! New restaurant coming called Suckerpunch Sally's. The funniest one is the vintage contraption advertising free WIFI. It was hard to get good photos since windows are very dusty window and the sun was glaring right behind me!

Snake in the Fireplace!

Living next to a desert wash brings the most interesting critters our way. Unfortunately, sometimes they make it into the house.

Sounds that roust you out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night are never a good thing. Our two cats were clattering about on the rocks in our fireplace around 2:00 am--something they never do since they hate walking on the rocks. I thought maybe they found a pesky scorpion. I never would have thought in a million years it would be a snake. Gary got them to drop it and then the snake slithered back into the rocks. Two half-asleep people trying to get a very fast snake out of the fireplace with an assortment of tongs, oven mits, jars and sticks I'm sure looked quite amusing.

It was a baby snake--looked like a long worm.( I think the type point size in the orange is 24 pt to give you size perspective.) We were able to wrangle it into the special little animal habitat that I have just this type of occasion. I always have to have a good look at whatever comes our way. I looked online and it appears to be a desert night snake. Only slightly venomous--SLIGHTLY? Not supposed to be dangerous to humans at all. I read you should release animals where you find them but I decided to release it down the a few blocks down in the desert rather than back in the fireplace

Here's the dynamic duo on the lookout for their next catch.

Wood Type Letterpress

Lately, it's all about the wood type.
I was actually a little nervous using this very large "W" as a background piece given how widely it was used during the past presidential administration...if you know what I mean! ;) With revamping our letterpress studio, we are finally been getting all our wood type out of their boxes an into cases. My in laws have been amazing in helping me clean some very dusty wood type. Old wood type gets an almost charcoal like dust on it--probably from sitting in somebody's old barn or warehouse for 50 years! Here's our most recent poster in process. We are used 3 different wood typefaces.
Gotta love the vandercook! I just got new paper guides--sweet! Nothing like new shiny guides to make your life happy!

Class Pics

Meandering books class Heres some pics from recent classes. We are so bad at taking photos during classes--mostly becasue we are teaching! It feels good to get back into the teaching groove!

Here's a couple of photos from Star's pendant class. She is really a terrific artist and instructor!

Collage A Day - Artist Randel Plowman

One of my favorite mediums to work in is collage. I've got at least 20 different collages on canvas in process and I just need to sit down and finish them! So let's talk about someone who does finish their collages.

For the longest time, I've been meaning to blog about a fabulous collage artist, Randel Plowman. Randel is an artist living and working in Northern Kentucky. A Collage a Day is an ongoing project that involves creating and posting a new 4" x 4" collage to this site every day. Each collage is offered for sale and cost $25.00, which includes: 8" x 8" archival gallery matting, documentation and free shipping.

He's gotten quite the following for his Collage A Day Blog. Go and buy his very reasonably priced original artwork! Goodness knows The Paper Studio could have an exhibition just of his work that we have purchased. These are some of his new images that are available at the time of this post. Randel was featured in the June issue of Artists Magazine. I love reading about other artists and how they work. This is a nice article where he talks about his process and creating daily collages.

You can even have his daily collages sent to your mailbox. What a visual treat to get in your inbox! Subscribe on his site today.