Children's Hospital Broadside 2016

Now in its sixth year, this project is a partnership between letterpress printers from the School of Visual Concepts and the Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program. WITS poets work with pediatric patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital, helping the young patients write poetry that expresses their individual experiences.

Once a year a select group of poems are chosen to be part of this project. This year 23 poems were matched with letterpress printers who created broadsides then bound in a portfolio.

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London Centre for Book Arts

I had the chance to visit the London Centre for Book Arts (LCBA) in the fall of 2015. The center is run by artists Simon Goode and Ira Yonemura and is an open-access studio dedicated to book arts. LCBA provides workshops on everything from bookbinding to foil blocking to letterpress printing. One can take specific workshops or with experience get a studio pass and have access to the studio. I was greeted by center co-founder Simon who gave me the tour of their large and well appointed facilities.

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The Counter Press

The Counter Press is the east London letterpress studio of graphic designers David Marshall and Elizabeth Ellis. David kindly hosted me for an afternoon visit in the fall of 2015. We compared notes on the state of letterpress in the US and the UK, shared stories about hunting for equipment and type, and learned that we both have platen presses with a common lineage.

Tucked away in a former chocolate factory building, their light-filled and tidy studio is a dream workspace.

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Train Type

As part of my week-long class with Starshaped Press at the Wells Summer Institute, we worked on an assignment to create an architectural print out of type ornaments.  The architecture could be based on something real or imagined.  As a long time admirer of Starshaped Press' metal and wood type cityscapes I decided I would try my hand at one.  But to mix it up I would also include something else and I settled on a train.

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