The words Hatch Show Print bring to mind a distinctive style of poster art: Weathered type and ornament, wrangled onto the press as if they were a bunch of rabble-rousing rockers annoyed to be awake so early in the day, coming together in an awesome ensemble just as the ink hits the paper.
A workshop with Jim Sherraden of Hatch is not for learning how to print a rock poster. Instead, Jim will endeavor to get you to let go and play, see what comes of it, and work some more to really make something that, well, rocks.
A great group of designers, printers and artistic types met up in snowy Two Rivers, Wisconsin, at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in mid-December to get their hands inky and have some fun in the Museum’s print shop (which is a great shop, if you’re interested in renting time there – enough presses, ink, and wood type to keep you going for months, at least!) with the folks from Hatch Show Print and Hamilton’s Jim Moran. It was awesome! Everyone really printed with some amazing work.
We were also fortunate enough to be able to use a selection of blocks from both Hatch and Hamilton’s Globe Collection (see my write up on Hamilton’s Wayzgoose Weekend for more on this collection), a real treat.
This workshop is quite a printerly experience, and I think I got a lot out of it by not worrying about lock up and make ready. I did not use a press the entire weekend. I found that by letting go of the technical aspects of getting the ink onto the paper in a pre-measured spot, that portion of my brain was freed up to be re-focused, to really look at the paper and the ink going on it and the blocks being used to carry that out and worry less about the exactness of the end result and instead enjoy the building of layer upon layer of color and shape . . . . Yep, that’s a hard one. Don’t plan! Just go! And if you just go long enough, you can work with enough blocks and ink and paper to work out some tricks and methods that add dimension to your printing.
Of course, some of the other printers were using presses and making some beautiful stuff as well (which you can see at the Museum in a group show and on their flickr page). I am just a slow learner, so I try to stay focused.
All the while, Jim and his assistants – we were fortunate enough to have Mary Sullivan, Hatch’s production manager, and Katie Collins, a former intern – are there to encourage, talk you into leaping into the fray of ink and rollers and paper and blocks, and to help you see when something’s really working well. And there was quite a bit of that happening!
In addition to paper, printing on cloth, tee-shirts mainly though there was some beautifully colorful printing being done on canvas in this workshop, is covered with very specific and invaluable tips for inking, lining it up and pressing.
The techniques we learned? Blending . . . coloring . . . stenciling . . . puttin’ a damn border on it . . . . The stuff of kindergarten, it might seem, but to see how well it works, you really ought to get in on one of these workshops – and I hear there might be another one at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum sooner rather than later!
There's a group show of the posters created by the printers now on display at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. For more photos visit Hamilton's flickr page!
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