Protest in Practice: Print & Production From Rage to Page

In this 10 week letterpress course, students will focus on slogan writing and transforming outrage into a dynamic, concise, legible protest object. Skills demonstrated in this course will include language development, visual communication, color theory, text hierarchy, type setting, two color print registration, ink manipulation (blend rolls, splatter effects, flocking) and paper consideration. Students will leave this course with the knowledge and understanding to safely operate our machines. 

Throughout the class students will develop the technical skills needed to continue print independently at Spudnik Press and a variety of historical and contemporary approaches to the artform.

This class will not meet on November 27th. 

End Grain, Hard Wood: That’s my Type

In this 8 week letterpress course, students will focus on using wood type to create typographically expressive forms through layering, repeated runs through the press, work & turn, visual puns, ink manipulation (transparency, blend rolls, hand brayered type) and paper selection. Students will produce print objects that demonstrate knowledge of color theory, scale consideration, and hypertext. Students will leave this course with the knowledge and understanding to safely operate our machines. 

Throughout the class students will develop the technical skills needed to continue print independently at Spudnik Press and a variety of historical and contemporary approaches to the artform.

Books are Portals

Books are portable, durable, and universal objects that travel with us through very public and historical realms as well as personal and intimate ones. As a widely accepted traditional form of reflection and information dissemination, what can we learn from making our own books today? This is a one-day intensive workshop focused on the book as a site for creative experimentation, self-determined archives, and personal narratives. Students will learn 3 basic bookbinding techniques and be able to bind their own blank sketchbooks and journals.

Monotype Explorations

Monoprinting is an exciting form of printmaking that favors organic, gestural, textural, and ephemeral marks and imagery. This process is an incredibly immediate, intuitive, and playful way of exploring printmaking. It is well suited to people new to printmaking and artists who typically work with paint, mixed media, or drawing.

In this 6 week workshop, students will be introduced to fundamental water and oil-based monotype techniques. Students will learn a variety of methods to create layers of shapes, colors, and textures such as chine colle, pochoir, and offset stencils. By tapping into intuitive and experimental making, students will work with a variety of colors and textures to make painterly and expressive prints.

Experimental Screenprinting

This fast-paced, hands-on intro level screen class will teach students the fundamentals of screenprinting on paper, from prepping and creating stencils in screens to printing and screen reclamation. In addition to more traditional digital methods of creating screen imagery, students will be encouraged to experiment with more tactile and direct methods of mark making, such as rubbings, drawing fluid, and screen monotypes.

A variety of projects will offer an exploration of ways to create screenprints from drawings, digital designs, and found or photographic imagery. Students will become familiarize with the full process from selecting the right screen for the job, to dark room exposure, to mixing inks, to printing, to reclaiming the screens. With support from an experienced printer, students will practice printing and (equally important) troubleshooting. By the end of this class, students will know their way around the print shop and be authorized to continue printing independently at Spudnik Press Cooperative through our Open Studio program.

This class will not meet on October 23rd and November 27th. 

Box Making Workshop

Clamshell boxes are ideal for housing a portfolio of prints, photos, artist books, memorabilia, or tools. This style of box features a durable tray that safely holds the contents in place with a drop spine and hinged lid that allows the box open like a book and lay flat. This sturdy little box can be scaled to accommodate just about any content.

During this workshop students will construct a 6″x8″ box and build comfort and confidence in a variety of bookbinding skills: measuring and cutting book board, using a glue brush, wrapping boards with paper and book cloth, and planning for hinges that allow the box to easily open and close.

Patching & Mending

Patching our clothes can serve as a pathway to connect and mend our relationship to the Earth. We’ll cover methods of bringing life back into our belongings through personalization, mending, patching and altering clothing. Bring some things to mend and fabric scraps.

Visual Narratives

This 8 week class will use the form of zines / comics to teach introductory risography and basic bookmaking techniques. Examples of different approaches to visual narratives will be shown and discussed in class, and using the techniques they have learned each student will make one (or more) zines, comics or broadsides reflecting their own concerns and unique approach to a visual storytelling.

UTOPIAZINE: Making zines for the world you want to see

This 4 week workshop will be a space for collective dreaming, treating the zine as a small space for radical daydreaming. Through discussions, reading, and tapping into intuitive making activities, we will create guides for ourselves to fall back to when we feel lost, discouraged, and uninspired. Through experimenting with basic zine formats and discussions, we’ll envision new possibilities and futures for the worlds we want to see.

Bookmaking Foundations

This 6 week class welcomes students into the art and craft of bookbinding.

Through the introduction to bookmaking, students will learn universal vocabulary and develop practical hand skills applicable across types of book projects. By creating a collection of sample books, students will be able to identify and produce many of the fundamental styles of hand bound books, use the vocabulary around binding, and work with popular tools like awls, bone folders, and Olfa knives.

This class will not meet on November 24th. 

Screenprinting for Apparel

This 8 week foundational class introduces all the basic fabric printing skills needed to get someone new to the process of screenprinting up and running. With a focus on printing shirts and other apparel, this class is ideal for people interested in producing their own t-shirt designs, creating merchandise for bands, or other commercial printing endeavors. By the end of the course, students will be able to create their own designs, make screens, print their creations and reclaim screens independent of instructor assistance. 

Beginning with an overview of the full process, students will learn how to use our darkroom to transfer their design onto a screen, mix ink, print, and clean and reclaim screens. As the class continues, students will explore how to best design for printing on fabric, how to consider ink and fabric color interactions, and tips for efficiently producing high-quality prints.

Students will leave this class knowing their way around the print shop and be authorized to continue printing independently at Spudnik Press Cooperative through our Open Studio program.

This class will not meet on November 23rd. 

Rumination: The Remix

Have old prints or works on paper that you can’t throw away? Give them a second life as a handmade holiday gift! Join us for a workshop to jump start the holiday season and work on handmade gifts to subvert the compulsive consumption that reaches a fever pitch around this time of year.

Repurpose prints from previous press runs through various cutting and folding techniques. An old holiday card or calendar is reborn as a gift box; Letterforms sourced from printed material become a visual poem; Test prints become a set of envelopes. Have a stack of nice paper with misprinted or incompleted images on it? Fold them all in half and sew them into a journal with an exposed spine using contrasting or decorative thread.

Participants bring old prints, or test sheets or commercially printed objects looking to be repurposed. Transform your misprints into sketchbooks, a handmade stationary or even poems. Bring a stack of printed material from past print projects or even old books or magazines and transform material into functional paper objects.  This meditative practice of sifting through paper objects is also a great end of the year ritual. Come ruminate on all your past prints and push them back out into the public sphere as tokens of affection.