First time on a printing press

For being as infatuated as I am with hand-printed posters, I can't believe it took me until almost halfway through my junior year to print one for myself.

Today, with the instruction of my good friend and teacher Don Kilpatrick, I printed an edition of 50 posters from a linoleum cut design I made.  The posters are for the punk rock band I play in, The Directive, and are going to be shipped out with the first 50 orders of our new EP.

I printed on Vandercook press and after the first couple prints fell in love with using this machine. There is something very relaxing and meditative about the repetitious process of printing. The (roughly) 2 hours I spent alone in the printshop didn't drag on or seem lonely at all.  The sound Frank Turner playing from my phone, the rain falling outside, and the mechanical noises produced by the press with each print I would complete made for a great soundtrack to the experience.

Today really reinforced my idea that a print made by hand is not just the image on the paper, but an embodiment of the entire experience of printing that went into creating it.  Today's session was the first in what will hopefully be a lifetime of afternoons spent printing.