First Letterpress Project

The first project for the letterpress class I'm taking this month is a one-color print involving type and image. I've been working on a lino cut, above, of a boat at sea, which will be combined with text for a New Year's card. On Monday, if I assemble and space the type pieces together correctly, I'll be ready to print before the end of class.

That is one project I've been focused on this week. The other project is preparing for the printmaking classes I'll teach beginning August 16th. My prep activity involves a final review of the updated syllabi, organizing handouts, and preparing the demos for the first class sessions. One of the first projects for the intaglio group is monoprinting. I love monoprints but haven't done any for a while. So, this weekend, I hope to refresh my memory by creating a few monoprints in my studio at home. That will remind me about the sequence of steps and any extra pointers to mention when I show the class how to do them. It is always better to do a good demo rather than a bumbly, unsuccessful one, as you can imagine. We teachers call those "demos from hell."

So, wish me luck for "demos from heaven" this fall!

Great Opportunity to See Art in the Making

Cai Guo-Qiang will be creating one of his huge gunpowder drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on October 5th and 6th. The public is invited to watch and tickets are free! Just register online at www.mfah.org starting September 20th. I hope to be there!

One of Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder works being created.

Cai Guo-Giang sits in front of one of his gunpowder drawings.

One of Cai Guo-Qiang's large gunpowder murals covers a full museum wall.

Wheel of Fortune

Speaking of Wheel of Fortune (see yesterday's post), I have a story to tell about my Mother: Years ago, my parents came to visit for a week and we all fell into watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune in the evenings after supper. One night, it struck us that trying out to be a contestant on one of the shows might be a good route to fame and fortune. As we began to discuss the possibilities, my mother turned to me (specifically, I might add) and said, "Go for Wheel of Fortune. It doesn't require intelligence."

Well!

I've never let her live that down.

Some Fascinating History of Letters, Especially J and U

Back in the mid 19th century, when Samuel Morse was inventing the Morse code, he wanted to give the simplest codes to the most frequently used letters. He realized he had to find out out the frequency of letter use, so guess what he did - he consulted letterpress printers! He visited a printshop to count the number of letters in a set of printers' type, because printers had quantities of letter type based exactly on how frequently they needed to use them to set up a page for printing. How about that as a good example of not having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak?!

This was the frequency of English alphabet letter use, according to Morse. (Thanks, Oxford Dictionary website.) So, the least used letters are actually J, X, and Z while the most used letter of the English alphabet, by far, is E. (This chart might come in handy for Wheel of Fortune contestants.) I wonder how the frequency might change if we distinguished between upper and lower case letters, too? And has it all changed over time? English is, after all, a living language. Ahhh... so much to learn, so little time.

So, anyway, I was in error when I wrote in my last post that J and U were placed in the end cubbies of the California Job Case because they were the least used letters. Since I've now finished the assigned reading for my class, I'm oh so much better informed! (Note to my screenprinting students: It DOES help to read the assignments.) The alphabet used by early printers did not include J's and U's. When J and U were added later, printers would have had to spend a lot of time shifting all the letters into different cubbies in the multitude of font cases in the printshop to maintain correct letter sequencing. Printers apparently said, "To hell with THAT!" and put the J and U type pieces in the end cubbies. And that system remains in use today.

First Day of A Great Letterpress Class

For a long time, I've wanted to learn how to do letterpress printing. It is the old fashioned process of arranging individual metal or wood letters and images by hand and then printing the resulting relief surface using a press made with moveable parts specifically for this process. Letterpress printing is enjoying a new popularity and you've probably seen cards and small posters made this way.

The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, about 45 minutes from where I live, offers Letterpress classes and I'm taking one that meets on each of the four Monday mornings in August. Denise Figueredo is our excellent teacher and we met for the first time today. Wow, there is a lot to learn!

Two rooms make up the letterpress area in the education wing of the Armory. Most of the walls of these two rooms are lined with old cabinets like these, filled with hundreds of individual letters in an amazing array of different typefaces.

Here is a sample drawer. This one is filled with spacers. There are many spacers in many sizes because exact spacing is required when putting together a plate.

Each drawer has multiple small cubby holes in which letters are kept in a specific order called the "California Job Case," diagramed above. The letters of the alphabet fall in the sequence we know, except for J and U, which are kept in the cubbyholes following Z. Why? Because J and U are the least used letters in the English language and it is more efficient to store them a bit out of the way.

Here is one of the two rooms of the letterpress area. This room may look crowded but that is because it is! It houses four presses, multiple letter cases, the ink cabinet and other storage cabinets, surfaces to work on, and a few stools. See the large mural hanging on the back wall? That came from the famous "Women's Building" in downtown Los Angeles. The Women's Building was the home of art workshops for women and space where women artists could work. It filled a real need, especially in the early days of the feminist movement. When the Women's Building closed in the mid-1980's most of the letterpress supplies came to the Armory, along with this wonderful mural. What a thrill it is to see it!

This is the favorite of the letterpresses there, called a Vandercook 4. Letterpresses are no longer made, so the ones in existence must be well cared for so they will last.

OK, enough for today! More to come in future posts...

Fashion Alert! This Just In!

Tutus are now available at our farmer's market!

While We Are At It...

Let's just turn this new series into a full blown two-dimensional design study review! Next up: repeat patterns. Who could improve on this clown's costume covered in multiple large poka-dots?!