Touch is the forthcoming book project from the folks at the Vista Sans Wood Type Project.
Using new wood type that was CNC router cut with a modern typeface, 20 artists, printers, and studios produced print editions. The work and the printing processes that led to them have been collected for the publication. The variety of methods and techniques used in the portfolio of work is amazing, and the opportunity to have them collected into one book is really enticing.
We’ve been involved with this project for a while now, first creating an artist edition, and again in making a limited broadside as one of the kickstarter rewards.
The project is pretty interesting, and does a lot to address the gap between traditional hand-set letterpress printing and contemporary digital printing. In addition to a documentation of the work, there are some new essays from a number of amazing authors.
We’re really proud of the work we’ve done with these, and would love to see the book portion of this project come together. Please consider backing the project - maybe you’ll get a BPS print out of it!
I know a while ago I posted a link to a Kickstarter to fund the Vista Sans book. Well that never got funded but they’re trying again! So please consider helping out Tricia Treacy and all the other artists (like BPS!) involved in this great project.
Mediumistic Apparition, 1885
James Tissot (French)
mezzotint on chine applique on wove paper, 71.7 x 54.5 cm
Gift of Allan and Sondra Gotlieb, 1994
Vija Celmins
“Ocean Surface Woodcut”
Woodcut
1992
Vuyile Voyiya
Shadows in Suburbs of my Brain I 13/20
93 x 114 cm
Linocut
Went to “Print by Print” at the BMA today and got all into the emboss on this Lichtenstein print. (First photo is not by me)
10 Common Words You Had No Idea Were Onomatopoeias
Blimp blimp blimp!
I love this so much.
“#10. Cliche
What it means:
A trite and overused phrase. Like “A dark and stormy night” or “Time heals all wounds” or “Did you drink all my nail polisher remover?”
What the hell is it supposed to sound like?
The forging of a metal printing press plate.
Huh?
The word “cliche” doesn’t derive from any Latin word or even any prior French word. Actually, as legend has it, a group of printers back in 1800s France got the idea to save time by forging common phrases onto a single plate instead of writing out every line of text word-by-word. In English, these plates are referred to as stereotypes.
So when you utter a cliche, you’re saying something that is so unoriginal that there’s actually a prepared mold to represent it. And when you unjustly “stereotype” a person or race, what you’re really doing is “forging them onto a French printing press plate.” You monster.”
I’m kinda surprised nobody has told me this before.
“Eighteenth-century printers, it turns out, used urine on the leather tools that spread the ink on their hand-operated presses. Soaking them in urine kept the leather supple after the printers had washed off the ink.” (NYTimes.com)
The Mount Royal Tavern is right next to the print shop at MICA. Maybe we can get its patrons to help us out.
“Color has washed from his hair and eyes like cheap ink. A straight man, who has measured his life with the pica-stick and locked the forms tight, he has returned in the morning and found the type scrambled.”
John Updike, from Rabbit, Run
I love when I find printmaking jargon in places I don’t expect it.
