This series of prints celebrates presses old and new, large and small. Old are the wooden letterpress type from the Wenatchee World used decades ago for job printing. New is my new etching/litho press made by Conrad Machine Company. This is the first print series done on the press. Large is the web-fed press that prints Wenatchee's newspaper in a former apple-packing warehouse. Small is my studio in the basement, sharing space with the wine cellar, where my press is installed. With each print I interpreted, combined and printed multi print media in a new way.

Ghosted letterpress type falls across the cylinders--the maw--of the newspaper's enormous offset printing press tower. Six foot rolls of paper populate the floor, waiting to be threaded into the press. Punctuation marks complete the conversation.  

 

Old Presses, and New #1. Multi print media. Image 13"x10" on 15"x12" paper. 2011.

I love my image of the first print. But like any printmaker, I wasn't quite satisfied. So I made another edition. 

 

Old Presses, and New #2. Multi print media. Image 13"x10" on 15"x12" paper. 2011.

I am intrigued by the shapes of letter press type. So I ghosted the image of the press and pushed the letters--an inversion of the old and the new! Ghostly drums of paper roll across them and we converse in red.

 

Old Presses, and New #3. Multi print media. Image 13"x10" on 15"x12" paper. 2011.

Grayscaled and rotated to abstract the four elements in a new way. And printed with silver Charbaneau ink that I had been looking at for a long time at Daniel Smith. 

 

Old Presses, and New #4. Multi print media. Image 13"x10" on 15"x12" paper. 2011.

And blow it out with color! But by now, the itaglio plate has been run through the press at least 100 times. So even though I could imagine many more combinations of multi print media, it's time to quit!

 

Old Presses, and New #5. Multi print media. Image 13"x10" on 15"x12" paper. 2011.