City-Wide Open Studios

Paper Boat Studios was featured in this video documenting City-Wide Open Studios! Peek!

City-Wide Open Studios

 

Today was the City-Wide Open Studios event hosted by the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis! Paper Boat Studios had a lot of exciting new things to share with the the arts community, including letterpress paper boat origami packages, checkers and domino sets, and a myriad of coasters that we were giving away to visitors.

Amy was kind enough to let me show some of my own work in the space, which was awesome! I talked with a lot of wonderful people and saw some friends as well. I love how excited people get watching us print when they've never seen a Chandler & Price press before. City-Wide Open Studios is really a great event. So much art becomes inaccessible because of the distinct separation between the artist and the viewer. This weekend is allowing the public to see the artists create in their personal space, to ask questions and to cultivate an appreciation for process and environment. I'm already looking forward to next year!

Gocco Printing

Friday was my last day at Paper Boat Studios. For a little extra fun, Amy showed me how to use a Gocco! The Gocco is a tiny screenprinting system developed in Japan in 1977. You place an image and a screen inside of a little box and then fit a hood with two bulbs into the top of the box. When you press down on the lid, the bulbs flash and shatter, exposing your image onto the screen inside. Because the bulbs shatter, they can only be used once.

I drew a picture of some lilac seed pods for my screen. I'm going to try to search for my own Gocco this week. It's super cute and really accessible. In other news, prep week for art camp starts tomorrow! So now you can look forward to pictures of ridiculously cute and insanely funny projects by five year olds. Get pumped.

paper boat studios

 

Friday was a super busy day at Paper Boat Studios! We were getting ready for the National Stationary Show in New York next week. The day was full of printing, including new greeting cards and a checkers game set! The board was screen printed and the checkers were on the letterpress printed. Paper Boat Studios is planning on releasing a whole line of letterpress printed classical board games. I'm really excited about it!

SGC International Conference

 

 

 

This morning I returned from the SGC International Conference in St. Louis! Last night was a night of printmaking mayhem on Cherokee Street. I barely had enough time to squeeze in everything I wanted to see and say hello to a bunch of old friends.

My day started with some awesome coffee from The Mudhouse and installing paper origami boats in the window of Paper Boat Studios. Paper Boat Studios was part of the St. Louis Fair Trade project. Conference goers traveled up and down Cherokee Street collecting stamps from each of the printmaking shops and then redeemed a completed passbook for prints and tote bags. The window installation is ongoing. Visitors learned how to fold their own origami boat and could leave it for the window if they wished.

One thing that I was super psyched about was seeing artist Swoon give a talk and share images of her work. She talked a mile a minute and we left in awe of the guts it must have taken to commit to some of the projects she was a part of. Later that night we were pleasantly surprised to run into one of her pieces on Cherokee Street!

After studio and gallery hopping, we wrapped up the night at the FRESH print exhibit at ArtDimensions. Three of my pieces made it into the show, along with many other awesome works by some of my fellow printmakers from SIUE. Everything was beautiful and lively; kudos to Ash Forrest for pulling it all together and planning a truly wonderful show. The exhibit will be up until April 30 if you didn't have a chance to stop by last night.

in the shop

                          

I thought I'd upload a little video of what printing on a Chandler & Price press looks like. It's awesome.

Paper Boat Studios

Yesterday was my first day interning at Paper Boat Studios! I learned how to print on a gorgeous 1903 Chandler & Price press. It was unlike anything I've ever printed on before and most definitely my new favorite thing to do. We were printing business cards with ferns on them for one of Amy's friends who is a landscape architect. I also learned how to use the Chandler & Price Guillotine, which was a seriously intense piece of equipment.

Other highlights of the day included learning about photopolymer plates and two adorable Border Collies. I'm really looking forward to spending more time in the studio and getting involved in the Cherokee Street community.

Happy Weekend!

life in the new year

As of Saturday, I am now an intern at Paper Boat Studios in St. Louis! I am super excited to learn more about letterpress and be involved in their projects. I'll be making a weekly pilgrimage every Friday morning to Cherokee Street to spend the day in the studio. Hopefully I'll be able to document some of the days, which will mostly be spent working towards the booth at the National Stationary Show in New York City this May.

I've also decided that during the whole post-graduation-let's-figure-out-what-I'm-doing-in-life-and-find-a-job thing I'm going to be productive and continue to invest in the future. In this case, this means signing up for 3 graphic and web design classes at a community college here at home. Hopefully I'll learn some valuable new skills! Class starts tomorrow; wish me luck!

For graduation I got a beautiful, white drafting table. Needless to say, the past couple weeks have been filled with countless hours of room rearranging (of which included hanging a new inspiration board and shoving my dresser into my closet). Santa Claus, clever man that he is, brought me an adorable, tiny etching press (maximum plate is 7x12"), which I've named Geronimo. I'm making big plans to embark on a new project...but more on that later. No spoilers!

I'm also looking to make a few changes here in blogland. I'd like to start having more regular weekly features. Some of my ideas are "Workspace Wednesday", where I'd share what I'm working on in my new space. I'd also like to have a morning tea post and hopefully a peek into what is going on at Paper Boat Studios. These are my plans for now, but we'll see what works out!