In the studio... (One Night Only!)

As I've mentioned before, Steve and Gretchen have been working on a poster for a Levon Helm show at The Fillmore. Tonight's the night of the show so I thought I'd post some great photos that Steve took throughout the process of making this fantastic 5-color poster!




In case you noticed that the posters read "Thur Oct .3" -- a nearly disastrous mistake! Luckily Steve caught this typo in time to make the swap to "Mon" before printing the entire run!

In the studio...

Steve and Gretchen have been working on putting together a poster for The Fillmore, a new music venue in Silver Spring. Some photos (all taken by Steve):

Here are some photos from their third round of proofing:

The lockup:

The color:

Inking:

Inked:

And the proofs:

Looks great! Can't wait to see the finished poster!

Photos from BookWorks!

This past weekend, I went down to Asheville, NC for the Ladies of Letterpress Conference. Half the conference events took place at BookWorks, a print and book arts center.  I was blown away. Everything was so clean and organized and the space had a great open layout. Here are a bunch of photos!

Here's me, with a whole lot of book presses:

Gretchen and Steve chatting in the letterpress area:

Another view of those great Hatch Show Prints on display (with fancy track lighting!):

Steve was drooling over the awesome inventory of wood type:

And here's a shot of Gretchen taking a peek inside the nice little gallery area (with conference organizers Kseniya Thomas and Jessica White in the foreground):

Some more shots of the studio space, equipment and materials:


A some photos of the gallery and the work on display (work by various members of Ladies of Letterpress):


I'm feeling really inspired to make some improvements to our studio!

Photos from Artscape

Just wanted to share a couple photos from our Pyramid Letterpress booth at Artscape this weekend (taken by Steve)!

Here's a shot of the whole crew (minus Steve). From left to right is Amelia, me, Melanie, Moira and Sarah:

Here's Moira, Amelia and me, as we're hustling to finish our booth set up:

And here's our lattice display, featuring selected works:

Can't wait til next year!

Artscape!

This weekend, a gaggle of Pyramid Letterpressers will be selling their work at Artscape's DIY section in Baltimore! Amelia, Moira, Melanie, Sarah, Steve (who printed our sign above) and I will be taking turns manning the booth over the 3-day fair. Come visit (Booth C15) and see what's kept the studio so busy lately.

Festival Hours:

Friday July 15, noon - 10pm
Saturday July 16, noon - 10pm
Sunday July 17, noon - 8pm

Hope to see you there!

In the studio...

I took this photo a while ago but forgot to post it. Another awesome wood type poster by Steve:

I especially love the overlapped letters!

Happy Hour 4.18.11

Some photos of last week's fun happy hour!

Here's a shot of everyone plugging away at their various projects:

Steve experimented with hand inking some wood type:

Kathryn printed more of her awesome business cards:

And Jim re-set the Robert Graves poem he'd printed during the Intro to Tabletop class earlier this month. He printed it onto some wonderful handmade paper:

And unfortunately, I forgot to get photos of what Melanie and I were working on! Hope to see you next time!

In the studio...

Steve just sent me this photo of his latest poster that he printed with Pyramid's wood type:



Love it. Check out his other posters and prints over at his Flickr!

Birthday Party!

Some photos of our fun birthday party this weekend!

For our studio activity, we had the Universal all set up so that guests could come print their own bookmarks. Leslie and I took turns helping people crank out bookmarks with the type that Leslie'd set:

Meanwhile, Bridget manned our Letterpress Birthday Card table:

(And yes, I'm currently working on setting up a place on the Pyramid site where you can buy these sets.... Stay tuned!)

There were tons of people and tons of things to do. Here was our view of the Screenprint Studio, where guests were screenprinting a 3-color poster designed by Marty:

And Steve was kind enough to share his photos of the other demos that were happening in the other studios:

Happy Hour 3.16.11

Hello there friends!

Better late than never.... I've finally gotten around to posting pics from last week's Happy Hour! The card above was printed by Miranda on the tabletop. Here's really cute action shot:

The yellow "hi" was printed using some wood type here at Pyramid. The "hello there friend" was a bit of type that Miranda added to a photopolymer order that was going to Boxcar.

Steve and Morgan came to work on some typesetting projects. Can't wait to see what each of them cooks up!

And lastly, Melanie and I spent most of time prepping for printing.... Mel worked on an inventory of all the various papers she has and I worked on cutting my 22" x 30" paper into 4.5" x 6.25" sheets. We're both preparing for our upcoming Grey Moggie/Orange Tabby joint ventures!

Birthday Card Fundraiser Preview #1

In conjunction with Pyramid's 30's Birthday Open House celebration on April 9, we will be selling sets of letterpress birthday cards designed and printed by various members of our PA letterpress community. All proceeds from the sales will go to fund Pyramid's awesome programs and facilities! 

This weekend kicked off the busy printing period for this project. We now have two (and a half) designs printed!

Steve's metal and wood type card, with a nod to the Beatles' "Birthday" song (Steve - I was thiiiis close to doing something with the song myself!):

 

Drying rack shot of the front of my own card design, also set in lead type:

And the inside:

Put them together:

And the first side of Marty's design:

I can't wait to unveil the complete sets at the Birthday Open House! Hope to see you there!

Happy Hour 2.16.11

We had lot going on yesterday at Happy Hour!

Steve and Miranda working with type side-by-side (it was Miranda's first Happy Hour!):

Tess came by to practice setting up on the C&P. Here she is locking up her chase:

And here's her test print (without ink):

And lastly, here's Sarah (another first time Happy Hour-er) contemplating some spacing issues:

Erin also stopped by to help me cut some paper, but I'd already put the camera away!

Hope to see you in 2 weeks!

Maintenance Day photos!

Huge thanks to all the volunteers that braved the 20 degree weather and came out to our maintenance day:

Beth Schaible, Steve Cole, Aly Hurt, Beck Levy, Bob Cmarik, Jamillah Abdullah, Angelica Temoche, Bea Jackson, Robin Childers, Elizabeth Levenson, Marty Ittner, Daniel Zadorozhnny and Morgan Ward. 

Apologies for the poor photo quality... I forgot my camera and was stuck taking pictures with my phone!

Here's Aly and Elizabeth working at cleaning the bed and bearings of the Universal 1:

Look at the gunk they scraped off:

Here's Steve and Beck cleaning the 4T's lockbar's disassembled parts:

Nice and shiny! Wish I'd taken a "before" shot...

Former Letterpress Associate Beth Schaible working with Bob and Jamillah on the 4T:

Screenprinting Associate Marty Ittner swept and mopped the floor between and behind the presses:

Thanks, Marty!!

It's hard to believe that with all the hours and elbow grease we put in today, the presses could still use a lot more! We hope to have another maintenance day in six months or so to really get these guys in tip-top shape. Melanie, Leslie and I hope to see you at the next one!