Category: Behind the Scenes

June 3, 2010

Yes, there is a manatee in it.

The next print in our series will be making its in-person debut on Tuesday—these few snippets might give you a clue as to our latest theme. Jessica and I will be doing our dog-and-pony show at the Gig Harbor branch of the Pierce County Library; if you’ve missed our previous lectures, come check it out! If you have seen seen it, you’ll already know our schtick, but you’ll still get to see the new piece first! As always, you can also get up to speed by reading about our process here.

Pressing Matters: local letterpress artists combine craft with history
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
7:00 p.m., free!
Gig Harbor Branch, Pierce County Library
4424 Point Fosdick Drive NW, Gig Harbor, WA

We’re a month late with the new broadside for a couple of reasons. The longest (4 months!) and most annoying delay came from the fact that we’ve had to switch to a different paper. I know that sounds silly, but the paper industry is very volatile, and if you’ve ever used a type of paper that you love, only to have it be discontinued (or worse, the company goes out of business), you’ll know how frustrating it can be to find a reasonable facsimile. I guess we should have seen this one coming—the paper we’ve been using is not only extremely unusual (made from recycled clothing!), but it’s also made by a tiny, independent paper company. It’s a long story, but the short version is that the paper is now perpetually on back-order, and we had begun to notice quality issues. So! We’ve finally found a very good, high-quality replacement, and while it doesn’t quite have the Cool Factor of the other stuff, we certainly have a lot less to worry about.

The broadside will appear online (both here and in the shop) on Wednesday, so stay tuned for more information. And in the meantime, in case you’re debating whether it’s worth the Sturdy Gertie bridge toll to attend the talk, you can say hello to the giant octopus* on the way!

*I just learned that one of the world’s largest species of octopus lives in the Tacoma Narrows, right under the bridge—a fact that completely made my week, and that I’ve obviously been dying to work in to a blog post.

April 28, 2010

A flat-out smashing time

Note: this is an excerpt of the Wayzgoose post over on Chandler’s studio blog. You can read the full post about the event here.

Inked up,

hand-pulled,

and voilà! Our second collaborative steamroller print, an “unofficial” Dead Feminist print, inspired by Cora Smith Eaton King, who in 1909 climbed Mt. Rainier with a party of Seattle Mountaineers and placed a “Votes for Women” banner at the summit.

This year’s Wayzgoose was the biggest bash yet! We had lots of helping hands—

our beloved ringleader,

and of course the steamroller (which I actually got to drive this year!).

Many thanks to the enormous crowd who turned up to cheer us on—you’re the reason we do this, and we can’t wait to see you next year!

January 30, 2010

We heart archivists

It’s just about that time again: Jessica and I are working hard on the next broadside. She’s poring through texts and historical facts, and I’m pencilling as fast as my tendonitis will let me. This time we’ll be unveiling the new piece at the Washington State Library near Olympia; the staff invited us to give a lecture about the series next month.

The library boasts the entire collection of letters and personal papers of Emma Smith DeVoe (pictured above, right), women’s rights activist and leader of the Washington suffragist movement. And since this year marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Washington, we figured Emma would be a perfect fit for the new piece.

So a couple of weeks ago, Jessica, my intern and I took a field trip to visit the archives and conduct a little research. When we arrived, we realized what they meant by “collection:” twelve enormous boxes packed full of letters, clippings and souvenirs. A “little” research obviously wasn’t going to happen.

Luckily, the incredibly knowledgeable and helpful library staff (thank you, Sean!) let us take as much time and as many photos as we needed. So we cozied up to a work station and dived in, one box at a time. Together we went through literally thousands of pieces of paper.

What we found was a fascinating collection of souvenirs, business cards, newspaper clippings,

leaflets and other propaganda,

fan letters (Emma had an impressive array of admirers),

telegrams, notes from sitting U.S. senators and presidential aides, and reams and reams of correspondance between the members of the Washington suffragist movement.

The trouble was, most of these documents were utterly mundane—letter after letter simply acknowledged receipt of previous correspondance, or gave detailed instructions for planning events and delegating tasks. Worst of all, Emma rarely made carbon copies of her half of the correspondance, so there was very little in her own voice.

We spent nearly four hours poring over every folder and box, and the only potential Emma quotes we found were mined from this instructional card. Still, it didn’t feel like we had found our inspiration—just a few weeks from our talk, we had no quote and no social topic for the piece.

What we did have, however, was a much clearer picture of the women behind the fight for suffrage in our state (that’s May Arkwright Hutton above; she and Emma didn’t exactly get along), right down to addresses of homes and buildings still standing in Tacoma (the headquarters of the movement).

From the documents themselves to the individual script hands of each letter writer, we had an incredible window into political life from a hundred years ago.

And we found a good lead. Just as interesting as Emma (and more forthcoming with their own voices) were Cora Smith Eaton King, M.D. (pictured above, right)—correspondent, fellow leader of the movement, and one of the first women to scale Mt. Rainier!—and Bernice Sapp—friend, activist, and the one who compiled this collection of documents and donated it to the library.

Bernice’s letters were full of quirky character and wit. We loved how she called Emma “the General,” and referred to herself and other suffragists by male titles: “Brother King,” “Mr. Hutton,” or simply “him.”

Cora, on the other hand, was a real firecracker. Her letters (often scribbled on scraps of paper, even her own prescription pad!) revealed an eloquent intelligence and a sizzling sense of humor. We fell head-over-heels for Cora, and began to doubt that Emma was the right voice for the broadside—still, though, we had no quote from any of these women.

A few days later, Jessica hit up the astounding Northwest Room at the Tacoma Public Library, and hit the jackpot. She discovered a document that linked all of these women together, which decided us on a slightly different approach to quoting historical feminists. That’s all I’ll say for now, except that the new broadside may or may not depict a certain quivering, questionable “food” substance:

If you want to be one of the first to see what the heck I’m talking about, I invite you to come check out our talk at the Washington State Library. Here are the details:

Pressing Matters: an evening with Chandler O’Leary and Jessica Spring
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
6:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:00), free!
Washington State Library
6880 Capitol Boulevard, Tumwater, WA

Libraries and archives face a tough reality in the current economy—especially here in Washington, where a regressive tax system has left the State Library with a 30% staff reduction and major cuts to its operating and acquisitions budgets. The 2003 earthquake damaged their building on the historic capital campus in Olympia, and forced them to relocate “temporarily” to a suburban office park a few miles south in Tumwater. Even when the economy recovers, it is unlikely the library’s funding will return to the levels it enjoyed in more prosperous eras, so the move to Tumwater is looking increasingly permanent. Despite these setbacks, the State Library continues to acquire new items (including our artwork!) for the collection and provide an essential service in preserving our state’s history. So please come and show your support for the library—a good turnout will help them provide more public events in the future, and might just go a long way toward saving them from another visit to the chopping block.

May 16, 2009

Behind the scenes, part two

When it comes to letterpress printing, process is everything. And since that process is not always evident in the final product, I thought I’d share the technical aspects of the Dead Feminists series. Now, as I said in the last post, letterpress printing is traditionally done using metal or wooden type—or in the case of the photo above, relief images cut into type-high (.918 inches in the US and UK, in case you wondered) blocks. What Jessica and I have been doing, however, ain’t your grandpa’s letterpress. Thanks to a fairly new technology called photopolymer, we’re able to create our own relief plates right in the studio, without having to carve a block by hand or etch a plate with nasty chemicals. Photopolymer has also created a bridge between the traditional print shop and the modern digital world—as you’ll see in a moment. As far as the Dead Feminists go, Jessica and I still have both feet firmly planted in the traditional world—we just dip a toe into the digital realm now and again. Here, let me explain.

This is how it begins for each print: a pencil drawing, at full size. This is the stage where I not only design and illustrate the piece, but also start thinking about color choices: what the colors will be, what element will be which color, where the colors will overlap, how to make things work logistically. Now, this pencil layout isn’t enough to make a plate; for the photopolymer process to work properly, I have to translate the sketch into a solid black-and-white ink drawing.

After everything is pencilled in, I lay a sheet of vellum over the drawing and trace everything in ink.

Since each broadside is printed in two colors, each color means a separate run through the press. So as a result, I had to trace each color separately—being careful to stay as true as possible to the original drawing, since the colors had to line up exactly on press. If you were to line these two color separations up, on top of one another, you’d see how the colors will interact in the final piece.

Here’s what I mean. You can see the separation that will become the grey color in Tugboat Thea here, laid directly over the inked octopus below. This is definitely the old-fashioned way of doing things; there are plenty of digital methods of color separation. I guess I just prefer the physical connection between the pen and the hand—even despite the greater risk of screw-ups (as you can see if you look closely at the word “to” above).

Here’s where I dip that toe into digital waters. Once I’m finished inking, I scan the finished line drawings at a super-high resolution and load them into Photoshop. This is where I clean up any mistakes (ahem) and convert the drawings into bitmap (pure black and white, with no grey) files. Jessica sends me her written colophon, and I set the text digitally. Then I export everything to the proper file type, and send the files to a local service bureau to have film negatives made. So now we’ve gone from analog to digital and back again.

Here are the negatives for Tugboat Thea; grey separation on the top half of each one, teal on the bottom. As you can see, there aren’t any right angles in the bottom half (octopus) of the teal separation, so if you look closely you can see the little tick marks I added (above and to the right of the starfish) to aid with color registration. Those marks line up with a grid etched on the metal base we use to lock up the plates on press; once we had the plates exactly where we wanted them, I simply shaved those little tick marks off with an Xacto knife, so they’d no longer print. Real slick.

Anyway, photopolymer is a light-sensitive plastic that works just like making a contact exposure in a darkroom does. First I take a negative, place it face-down on an unexposed plate, and load both pieces onto the exposure tray of Jessica’s platemaker (which looks remarkably like an Easy-Bake Oven).

The negative is held flush with the plate by a layer of plastic and a vacuum system; the plate is exposed with UV light (some DIY enthusiasts also accomplish this using glass and a bright, sunny day, but photopolymer is awfully expensive to use in sketchy experiments in the cloudy Northwest).

Next I place the exposed plate in the wash-out unit, where it is scrubbed gently with soft bristle brushes in a tank of cool water. Everything that is exposed is hardened enough to resist scrubbing, while everything else dissolves away. (And turns the water a sickly shade of yellow. Mmmm….plastic byproducts. Still, it’s less toxic than many other printmaking techniques.)

What we’re left with is a raised plate ideal for relief printing. The real benefit of photopolymer is that it can reproduce nearly any image, and can hold an incredible amount of detail. I can transfer my drawings directly to the plate, without adding the laborious step of carving the image into wood or linoleum (backwards!), or etching copper with acid, for example. It’s not exactly an economical option for letterpress printing, but the results can be exquisite, and the possibilities are nearly endless.

Here’s our new octopus plate on press, all inked up and ready to print—it’s stuck to that gridded base with removable adhesive. The thickness of the plate and base together add up to exactly .918 inches. Ah, precision feels good.

And here’s how it looks on paper.

Here you can see the registration between the colors. This is the hard part—I’m sure that despite my best separation efforts and useful tick marks, Jessica is ready to tear her hair out whenever she sees what insane registration issues I’ve thrown at her this time. She’s not a master printer for nothing, though—tiny, 9-point colophon type? Large, solid color blocks? Exacting registration with no margin of error? She can handle anything.

Actually printing these broadsides is where all our careful planning and preparation goes right out the window. We can sketch and plot as much as we like, but many of our artistic decisions end up being made on the fly, right on press. Here Jessica is mixing ink for Prop Cake, according to some choices I suggested in our handy-dandy color recipe book.

You can see our original draw-down (color test) in the upper left corner. So far, so good.

The orange turned out exactly as we’d hoped, but when we started printing the pink separation, we hated the result. What looked so good in the draw-down lost all its contrast in the print. It was awful, trust me.

So Jessica changed the color right on press, until we were happy with it.

Here’s the finished product, all lined up in the drying rack.

If lining up the color areas is the hardest part of printing, keeping an eye on the ink consistency was probably the most fiddly. We’re using a very unusual paper for these prints—one made from recycled clothing—that is extremely “thirsty.” Not only are there inconsistencies in the paper that can throw off the overall quality of color; but we had to add ink to the press after every fourth or fifth print. As you can see, this is a pretty organic process—lots of variables, small corrections and compromises along the way. (And a whole lot of cursing and starting over.)

All of this is par for the course for a letterpress project—it’s an exacting, sometimes frustrating process, but that’s what we love about it. And the finished product … well, it’s like nothing else. Ah, letterpress, how we love thee.

May 14, 2009

Behind the scenes, part one

Holy cannoli, everyone! I’ve only just now come up for air—I’ve been buried under invoices, subscription forms, kraft mailers, and email print-outs, and Thea’s face is repeated all around me as reserved copies are spread all over the studio. Since I posted her here on Tuesday night the orders have just poured in, and over three-quarters of the edition is spoken for already. And Prop Cake is disappearing fast, too; we’re down to our last handful. Wow—just…wow. Thank you all so, so much.

Since Jessica and I talked about our process at the Tacoma Art Museum the other day, we thought it made sense to share that process with you, as well. But since there’s rather a lot to say on the subject, I’ve decided to break it into two posts.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Before I get into the technical details behind our series, I should probably share a little background information on letterpress and the art of the broadside. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the process, letterpress printing refers to a type of relief printing, where pressure is applied to a piece of paper placed over a raised form that is covered with a thin layer of ink. This pressure transfers the inked image onto the paper, and can be repeated to create a batch, or edition, of prints. The form can be a carved block of wood or linoleum; a raised plate made of magnesium, photopolymer (plastic) or other materials; or as the term letterpress implies, movable type made from metal or wood.

The innovation of printing words from individual letter blocks that can be rearranged and reused was actually invented by the ancient Chinese (seriously, what wasn’t originally invented in China? We owe those folks a whole heap), but the process that evolved into modern letterpress was most famously perfected over 500 years ago by Johann Gutenberg, of Gutenberg Bible fame. By the first half of the twentieth century, when more modern commercial printing came along, it was still common for printers to perfect their layouts using movable type and relief-cut images on a proof press (such as Jessica’s Vandercook below). They’d then use the resulting print to make more sophisticated plates for their more efficient and advanced commercial presses.

As commercial printing became more streamlined, the cylinder and platen proof presses (see photo of Jessica printing above) fell out of vogue, and eventually were no longer manufactured. Artists quickly saw their potential, however, and have adopted letterpress printing as an art form—using, refurbishing and maintaining this antique equipment to create original works of art.

Hand-in-hand with letterpress printing, the art of the broadside has also survived and evolved into a modern format. The term broadside means any single sheet used to convey information, often of a political kind—the great-grandpappy of the modern poster. While today the words broadside and poster are sometimes used interchangeably, the broadside has remained a favorite of the letterpress community because of its emphasis on typography and content (hey, we need an excuse to use all that gorgeous metal type!).

Jessica and I had this history in mind when we began the Dead Feminists series. As I said before, we never dreamed of starting down the path we’re on now; we just wanted to make a political and artistic contribution to the election. And to pay homage to the history of the broadside and the era in which each of our feminists lived, I designed each piece with historic broadsides and posters in mind. And to keep the series consistent, Jessica and I came up with a few rules of engagement:

1. Each poster has to feature a quote by a feminist. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a woman, but there are already plenty of posters highlighting the words of dudes, so we figured that one was covered already.

2. Said feminist must be deceased. (Hence the name.) You’d be surprised how many challenges that’s created for us.

3. Each quote is tied into a current sociopolitical issue or event. This is usually Jessica’s job, as she’s got a particular knack for finding relevant quotes.

4. The whole piece (except the colophon at the bottom, of course) is hand-drawn.

5. We try to stay away from well-worn tropes like “women can do anything men can do!” in favor of broader topics and concepts.

Who knows how long people will be interested in these things, or how many broadsides there’ll be in the series—all we can say is that we’re grateful for the response people have had, and we’re having way too much fun to quit now. The fun of art-making and the joy of the public response aside, the best part of creating this series has been exploring the lives and work of so many inspirational people. “Feminism” has become somewhat of a dirty word these days—mostly because of misconceptions. To us it’s a positive thing, and creating this series is our way of celebrating those who championed far more than just gender equality. Besides, we’d like to make our own contribution to our social history—and using the “power of the press” in the literal sense is the best way we know how.

Coming in part two: the nitty gritty details behind our process.

April 7, 2009

Hot off the Steamroller

This big gal is an unofficial member of our series because of her sheer size, and let me tell you, she is huge. (Four feet tall!)

And why is she so enormous? Why, she was printed with a steamroller, of course!

Yes, you read that right. The folks at King’s Books asked us to be a part of their fifth annual Wayzgoose* celebration on the first of March, and steamroller printing was the main event. Thanks to a grant from the Tacoma Arts Commission (seriously, thank you!), each artist or artist-team was given a four-foot slab of linoleum to carve as they saw fit. Jessica and I decided to pay tribute to Tacoma’s own Thea Foss—business pioneer, Waterway namesake, feminist extraordinaire, and inspiration for the Tugboat Annie stories and films.

The trouble was, our Feminist Broadside format relies on a quote by the subject, and we were having an awful time finding anything attributed to Thea herself. Luckily we discovered Finding Thea, the excellent documentary film by Nancy Bourne Haley and Lucy Ostrander—which, by the way, also provided great reference material for sketches.

This should give a rough idea of the scale we were working with. To transfer our image onto the linoleum (backwards, so it’ll print correctly), we photocopied my design drawing at 600% size, placed the copy face-down onto the linoleum, sprinkled it with mineral spirits, and ran a hot iron over the wet paper. The heated solvent transferred the copy toner onto the linoleum exactly the way we wanted it. Then we just had to spend a week carving it!

Here’s the finished block, all inked up and ready to print.

And here’s the print, hot off the press. Nancy, the director of the documentary, even jumped in to help!

Despite weather that absolutely refused to cooperate and ink turned soupy by the rain, the Wayzgoose was a huge success. We had over 500 people in attendance, and every steamroller artist knocked out at least a few prints.

Since the prints are so unwieldy, and since we can only print a handful of them at an event like Wayzgoose, we’ve decided to retool the design of Tugboat Thea. We’ll print a (smaller!) letterpress edition as the next in our “official” series. Look for it here soon!

I have to say, though, I’m grateful we were able to find a genuine Thea quote—it was either that or this nugget from the old Tugboat Annie stories:

“O.K., ye ol’ gafoozler,” she replied quietly and stood up.

Alright, I admit it: anything using the word “gafoozler” is going to be a major temptation.

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* Wayzgoose (origin obscure): a celebration given by a master printer to his workmen each year to mark the traditional end of summer and usher in the season of working by candlelight. Generally held as an annual celebration of letterpress and the book arts today.

February 9, 2009

Prop Cake

Jessica Spring and I have been having a high ol’ time with our series thus far, celebrating positive changes happening around the country with the first two prints we created. At the same time, we were shocked and dismayed to learn that in the recent election, Proposition 8 had passed in California. We wanted to express our thoughts on the matter, so Prop Cake was born. The quote we chose made the issue seem like…well, a piece of cake:

There is nothing complicated about ordinary equality. —Alice Paul

The initial idea for this piece came almost immediately; Jessica looked over at me on a drive home from Seattle one day and said, “How about a big, pink wedding cake?” I grinned from ear to ear, and started sketching as soon as I got home. The design didn’t come together so easily, however. Everything I came up with looked more like an ad for Modern Bride than a political poster. Frustrated, I pushed my sketches aside and took a few days off to think.

And then I went to San Francisco.

It was my first trip there, and my first thought as I passed through the residential neighborhoods, with rows and rows of candy-colored stucco houses, was “Wow, these things look like big frosted cakes!” And the lightbulb turned on, at last. I spent three days walking, driving, and riding around the neighborhoods, camera and sketchbook in hand. I made pages and pages of notes on architectural detailing.

When I arrived home, I got right to work. This time, finally, it all came together.

Alice was right—it really was a piece of cake.

Prop Cake: No. 3 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 108
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Alice Stokes Paul (1885 – 1977) continued the work of the suffragists, and helped form the National Woman’s Party to demand equal rights. The NWP engaged in militant demonstrations and the first picketing of the White House; these “Silent Sentinels” were mobbed and imprisoned, then force-fed while attempting a hunger strike. Public and media support for their cause grew and by 1920, women secured the vote. Alice Paul continued to work on their behalf, writing the original Equal Rights Amendment in 1923.

UPDATE: poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the shop!

October 15, 2008

Come, Come

We should probably start this blog with where this whole thing began. You see, we never meant the Dead Feminists to be a series at all. Just as the 2008 Presidential election was heating up, Jessica asked me if I wanted to collaborate on a political broadside together. We both felt like it was an important moment in history, and we wanted to make some sort of contribution to the artistic record. Jessica said she had a historical quote that would be fun to typeset, and asked if I could do a quick illustration of a pair of spectacles to go with it. She thought it’d be fun to make the glasses look like the famous eyewear of a certain Alaskan VP candidate (who can see Russia from her house!)—her plan was to use her impressive collection of wood and metal type to hand-set the quote into the design.

Well, she probably shouldn’t have left me alone with my pencils, because I got a little carried away, and drew not just the glasses, but the whole quote around them, too:

Come, come my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles and see the world is moving. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I did this because I wanted the piece to be something more than simply a jab at a political personality. I wanted it to be beautiful in its own right, something that might do justice to Stanton’s words, and that would be longer-lasting than a momentary visual pun. Besides, Stanton put up one of the most important fights in American history: women’s suffrage. In this country with with a voter turnout rate of less than two-thirds, I wanted to do my small part to get women everywhere, regardless of political stripe, to the polls. And then, as it always does, my fingers started itching to draw my own letterforms. After all, for as much as I love hand-setting type, one of the reasons I’m a letterer is because I’m continually frustrated by the finite number of typefaces available in wood and metal. Not that I’m happy with choosing among the thousands and thousands of digital font families out there, either. Let’s just say I’m picky. So I made up my mind to letter the whole thing by hand, and not to tell Jessica until the sketch was done.

Bless her heart, she went along with the idea. We scrapped the idea of setting vintage type and printed the image using a modern material called photopolymer plates (more on that on our process page). And then we put the broadside into our online shop, and sent out an email to our little mailing list to let them know we’d made something new.

Three days later, the entire edition of prints was sold out. We were floored! Neither of us had ever experienced this kind of clamoring for our work before—we’d both sold out editions before, but not this quickly. People started emailing us and asking if we were going to do more posters. After reading that, we kind of looked at each other and said, “Why not?”

And all of a sudden, we had ourselves a series.

Come, Come: No. 1 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 44 prints
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 – 1902) spent her life in pursuit of women’s rights. She wrote many speeches delivered by Susan B. Anthony, who said Stanton “forged the thunderbolts” that she delivered as they worked together for women’s suffrage. Stanton raised seven children and organized the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848 but died without ever casting her vote before the 19th Amendment passed in 1920.

Poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the shop!