Press Notes--She Has Neither

The first run and the various red swatches. Below, the rollers
being inked for the run.

Boxcar Press, the printer who is made the photopolymer plate and printed She Has Neither is in Syracuse, NY.  I went there to be on press a few days before my artist talk at Ft Tilden.

Prior, they had sent a few samples of the different reds they have available, with their PMS equivalents, as well as papers they have that would work well with my piece.

You might ask why I went to Syracuse when there are so many presses--letterpress is so hot right now--in NYC--especially in Brooklyn. The reason is that for my piece has a very large plate that has to be run on a cylinder press, not a platten press. I also needed a press that would be accustomed to run a small edition, so Boxcar, which prints thousands of wedding invitations for clients around the country, was the perfect fit.

The bus ride takes you through Pennsylvania, and you get to see all the factory towns hard hit by unemployment. Syracuse is built up since it's a university town with several medical schools and their surrounding medical centers. Remnants of their manufacturing history remains as freight trains and trestles are ubiquitous.

Boxcar is a large operation with many presses, as I wrote in a previous post. Yet, the place has a homey style to it, and while in New York State, the feel is definitely kind and polite, like being in the Mid-West.

My pressrun was quick; I was picky about the registration since the shapes of the image and the type are critical to one another. After a tour of the place, I was on the bus home, with my cardboard package under my arm.

By All Means

Got the prints back last week, I wanted to post but was getting ready for another press run and I was invited to give an artist talk at Ft. Tilden.

When I got to the press in Greenpoint, the office associate patiently opened the meticulously packed edition and I went through them, one by one.

I could see the difficulties; they worked really hard on it. I also requested and got five proofs they had done on other clients' makeready, which I'll look over; the blast of color is a departure. A completely different piece.

Here's some video. I love the sound of the ink burping as it's squeezed from the ketchup bottles; I always found applying ink to a screen immensely satisfying.

How seductive....like spreading colored
peanut butter....
Top: ink application for By Any 
Means. They applied two blacks and two
grey for the X; after a few prints, the screen
needs to be cleaned since the inks run into
one another.

You can also see the master printer working with an automated squeegee. Totally love the art; I'll be pulling the next series myself, though I don't know when.

On the last day of the show at Ft. Tilden, I   brought this and another print I'll write about in another post. The reception was good; there's something very seductive about a silk screen with a blend, or any other print with a blend for that matter.

On his website, Andrew Keir describes the process beautifully, with images of the process across offset, letterpress and silk screen printing. In offset printing it's called split fountain printing, and in the image you can see the pressman applying the two colors to the roller. Here's the link, definitely worth a visit:

http://www.andrewkeir.com/split-fountain-printing/