Who We Are

Laura Bentley attended her first letterpress class in 2008 at SVC, and it was love at first print. She was delighted to learn that her obsession with details that helped her build a successful career in technology could be put to use creating art. Laura is now the proprietor of Pinwheel Press in Seattle, where she produces social stationery and limited-edition prints. Her passion is printing from handset type and learning about the history of the objects used in this craft. Laura’s superpower is creating order out of chaos, so with Partners in Print, she is as likely to be found organizing numbers in a spreadsheet as metal type in a composing stick.

Lucky for PiP and for the mechanically impaired letterpress printers everywhere, David Black artfully applies his skills from his former career as a trained mechanic to his latest obsession: letterpress equipment. He cares for and operates his own printing presses in an Everett home studio while scouting dusty basements, warehouses, and stacks of ephemera for more pieces of letterpress history and artful applications of printing skills.

I am a storyteller. My love of text, image, ink, paper, cloth, thread has drawn me to this form. I am enchanted with the relative ease of multiples, the ephemeral quality of printed matter and the potential for viewer participation and interaction with the storyteller that the touch of a book invites. For the artist, work is an event of confession, an act of avowal. The knives used in carving, the bones used to fold the paper, the lead type or block pressing into the paper’s surface, the needle and thread piercing and joining, the lines drawn, and the hand, the valuable hand, these are the things I believe in. These are the tools I use to follow my curiosity and tell my stories.

Ben Blount is a Detroit-born graphic designer and letterpress printer. He loves books, type, and putting ink on paper. A believer in the power of the printed word, Ben aims to create work that has impact beyond the printed page. He has spent the last few years traveling the country (and the internet) teaching and talking about letterpress. Ben learned a lot about design at Washington University in St. Louis, a lot about printing at Columbia College Chicago, and filled in the gaps with mentors and lots of practice. He prints out of MAKE, his storefront studio in Evanston, IL.

Mary Bruno is letterpress printer in St. Joseph, Minnesota, where she runs Bruno Press, a print shop started by her father, design professor, Don Bruno. As you might expect, Mary’s love for printing and skill for the craft came from her father, whose memory she honors every time she carves linoleum, handsets wood or lead type, or prints a broadside. Mary produces an irreverent line of greeting cards that are sold nationally (via Bruno Press), and she has also been involved in organizing traveling exhibitions of letterpress.

Rebecca Chamlee is a self-taught naturalist and book artist who has published letterpress printed, limited-edition fine press and artist’s books under the imprint of Pie In The Sky Press since 1986. Her award-winning work is in prominent special and private collections throughout the U.S. and has been exhibited widely. Rebecca is an associate professor at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles where she teaches bookbinding, letterpress printing and artists’ book classes and heads the Book Arts minor program. She also holds workshops at her studio and book arts centers throughout the country.

Chris Chandler is an artist, printmaker, living and working in Portland, Oregon. He is currently exploring the endless possibilities of large-scale, modular, letterpress printing. His work is exhibited throughout the United States. Chris is the proprietor of Neu Haus Press, which he founded in 1996.

Evan Christie is the owner and head printer of Evolution Press, Seattle’s most prominent commercial letterpress print shop. A self-professed gear head, Evan discovered a passion for creative mass production as a studio art major at WWU. After being exposed to letterpress at SVC, Evan turned his love for printing and design into an internship at Evolution Press in 2010. In November 2017 he finally bought the shop, where he’s still hellbent on making beautiful things, one print at a time.

Since 1999, Jennifer Farrell has operated Starshaped Press in Chicago, with a focus on designing & printing everything from business cards to posters, as well as custom commissions, wholesale ephemera and limited edition prints & books. All work in the studio is created with metal and wood type, making Starshaped one of the few presses in the country producing commercial work while preserving antique type and related print materials. Jennifer’s work has been repeatedly recognized in books, magazines and design blogs, and has appeared in poster shows throughout the USA and Europe.

Kate Fernandez is a visual artist and cultural entrepreneur who has been spreading the gospel of letterpress for nearly ten years. She teaches printing throughout the northwest and consults for the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, WI. Fernandez is also the founder of the Abactors’ Hideout, a print shop at Smoke Farm in Arlington, WA. She received a BA in Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington and studied typography and design at the School of Visual Concepts.

Glenn Fleishman reports on technology, space, and design from his home in Seattle. A journalist for nearly three decades, Fleishman started his work life as a typesetter and graphic designer, and has worked for Kodak and Amazon. He appears regularly in the Economist, American History Magazine, Fast Company, and Macworld. He was the 2017 Designer in Residence at the School of Visual Concepts. 

Steve Garst is an artist, educator, and designer/owner of the Provisional Press project. He has been working in letterpress, printmaking, and book arts for the last 15 years and teaching for the last ten years at universities across the midwest. In response to the pandemic he developed a printing press kit that has been built by hundreds of people and is used by over 50 universities as a solution for students to print at home.

Jennifer Graves is a letterpress printer, book artist, and instructor based in Los Angeles. Since taking her first letterpress class in 2010 Jennifer has spent years growing, refining her own skills and learning from others. Jennifer chooses to primarily use wood and metal type, occasionally incorporating linoleum, pressure printing, and wood cuts. Much of her work addresses life and social issues through a lens of love and hope. Through type and vibrant, appropriate color, Jennifer’s messages resonate and invite audiences to be encouraged, ponder life and the life around them. In the summer she teaches an Introduction to Letterpress course through Extension at Otis College of Art and Design.

Jami Heinricher is the owner/operator of The Sherwood Press in Olympia, Washington, an historic letterpress print shop founded in 1940 by Jocelyn A. Dohm. In 1989, while studying at The Evergreen State College (’91), Jami began a fourteen-year apprenticeship under Jocelyn, inheriting the lovely old shop after her mentor’s death in 2003. The press has evolved into a full-service print shop centered around a fleet of beautiful Heidelberg presses Jami takes particular interest and joy in using and understanding along with her very mechanically-inclined and supportive husband Terry. Jami is also a graphic designer focusing on small business branding and packaging as well as stationery products. In 2016 she established WIND•EYE Handmade Paper, and has taught letterpress and paper making both privately and through Arbutus Folk School.

Michael Hepher is an interdisciplinary artist working as a printmaker, letterpress printer, illustrator, and oil painter. He founded Clawhammer Press in 2011 as an escape from website design, and has been printing since 2003 when a Chandler & Price platen accidentally landed in his garage. A versatile artist with a broad knowledge of the creative process, Michael has to his credit a wide variety of successful exhibitions, public art projects, and private commissions. Notable recents include work shown in the New Impressions exhibit at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum (2019 and 2017), and a feature profile in Uppercase Magazine’s PRINT/MAKER edition of the Encyclopedia of Inspiration. Recently he painted “All Kinds of Beauty,” a 16’ x 96’ mural inspired by his printmaking style (2019) and “Backroads BC,” a travelogue of oil paintings shown at the Fernie Museum Gallery (2018) and Smithers Art Gallery (2019). Currently, he’s touring a solo exhibition of prints and paintings titled “In This Together: an exploration of Canadian Rockies geography, lifestyle, and culture.” An elected member of the Society of Canadian Artists, Michael continues his diverse work from his home-based studio in Fernie, BC. Canada.

Anne Hilton is a vice president at GMMB, a communications and advocacy firm that supports nonprofits, philanthropic organizations, and progressive causes. She brings more than 15 years of strategic communications experience and strong opinions about the Oxford comma to her clients, drawing upon her work at global, education, and nonprofit organizations. Anne got her start in letterpress after taking a typography class at SVC way back when, and she never left!

Andrew Huot is a book artist, bookbinder, printer, and conservator in Atlanta, Georgia, where he operates Big River Bindery, a studio for bookmaking, letterpress printing, and book conservation. He holds a Masters in Book Arts from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a BS in Printmaking from Portland State University. His artists’ books use photographs, linoleum cuts, and text to share the humorous side of everyday life around us. His artists’ books are in collections across the country, from the Art Institute of Chicago to Yale University. Andrew teaches online and in his own studio, at the University of Illinois School of Information, and workshops across the country at the John C Campbell Folk School, BookArtsLA, the International Preservation Studies Center, and the Guild of Book Workers, among others.

Demian Johnston is a printer, designer, and illustrator. He spent many years as the Designer and Pressman at Annie’s Art & Press, in Seattle. He first attended SVC in 2010, and has taught several letterpress classes at SVC. His design and illustration work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, City Arts and Beer Advocate. He is also the founder of the art and music label Dead Accents.

Amos Kennedy, Jr. was a successful computer programmer for AT&T when he saw a printing press at colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and stopped in his tracks. At age 40, he decided that his corporate life was over. He had found his calling, he says, as a printer and provocateur. He now runs a highly regarded letterpress poster shop in Detroit, Michigan (Kennedy Prints), and is a vibrant example of the revival of handmade crafts. Amos is unafraid of asking uncomfortable questions about race and artistic pretension. His trademark blue overalls (with a pink dress shirt) are meant to reaffirm his self-described identity as “a humble Negro printer.” This is more than a bit disingenuous, but Mr. Kennedy, thankfully, likes to provoke.

Dafi Kühne is a Swiss designer, letterpress printer and graphic design educator. In his studio, babyinktwice, he uses a wild mix of analog and digital tools to produce posters for music, art, architecture, theatre and film projects, and also for products. With one main rule in his studio— “No PDF ever leaves the studio as a final product”— he prints all his posters with letterpress printing presses. His mostly typographic posters have won international awards and been in exhibitions all around the globe. Since 2016 Dafi has been running his own intense summer program in Switzerland. His designer monograph True Print was published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2016. Dafi is known for his non-traditional yet precise approaches to letterpress printing using unconventional materials, which are entertainingly documented in his educational video series, The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™.

Dafi studied in the Visual Communication Department at Zürich University of the Arts and also holds a Masters of Research degree in Typeface Design from the University of Reading, UK.

Annabelle is a professional unicorn skilled with managing people-centric projects. She’s coordinated several public printing events, (such as The Women’s March & Ending Family Detention). Annabelle is passionate about the ACLU & social justice issues, and reflecting it in her printing. She also loves experimenting on the press and breaking the rules. She runs her own tiny letterpress shop, Noted! Press, from equipment acquired from the wonderful community of printers in the Seattle area.

Ellie Mathews is a partner with her husband in The North Press in Port Townsend. She spends much of her time designing and printing poetry broadsides, sometimes for Copper Canyon Press, and is herself a published poet. But there is much more to the Ellie Mathews story than poetry. She holds a degree in geography from the University of Washington, worked in design and software development, and is the author of four books. She has also won cooking and writing awards including the Milkweed Prize, a grant from the Seattle Artists Program, a Fishtrap Fellowship, and the Pillsbury Bake-Off grand prize (luck seasoned with a pinch of creativity).

Ryan Molloy is a freelance designer, artist, and professor of graphic design at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Prior to teaching at Eastern he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin’s Design Division where he also received his MFA in Design. He is an educator and inter-disciplinary designer having practiced in fields of architecture and graphic design. His creative work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has received several awards including an Art Directors Club Young Guns award. In 2012 Ryan Molloy and Leslie Atzmon received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works grant for the Open Book Workshop, held at the Jean Noble Parsons Center, and the book The Open Book Project. Ryan Molloy and Leslie Atzmon also received a Sappi Ideas that Matter grant in 2017 for the redesign of Ypsilanti’s Riverside Arts Center visual identity and environmental graphics. His work exploring letterpress wood type has been featured in the Hamilton New Impressions exhibitions. 

Carl Montford is the proprietor of Montford Press in West Seattle, one of the few limited edition handpress shops in the Northwest. His area of expertise is wood engraving, which he has been perfecting since about 1970. Along with hand engraving, Carl is also regarded as an expert on the iron handpress having produced both broadsides and limited edition chapbooks. His most cherished possession in his shop is a Wm. A. Field Reliance handpress, an antique and an object of great artistic beauty in its own right.

Sukhie Patel is a printmaker, educator, community organizer, and sole proprietrix of Saparia Press. Drawing from her family’s legacy of running politically dissident and anti-colonial print shops, she has an affinity for handset type, wood engraving, collographs and wood cuts. Sukhie is a letterpress teacher and is passionate about public art and literacy education, especially amongst marginalized communities. She believes printing–with its roots in labour and industry– should always be an accessible tool of the people. Born in India, and raised between East Africa, the Pacific Northwest, and the UK, Sukhie calls upon her diasporic South Asian experience to inspire possibilities for intersectional, collective movement.

Joanne Price has over 25 years of printmaking experience including teaching at University of KY, Augsburg College, University of MN, and Penland School of Crafts. Price is the founder and owner of Starpointe Studio, specializing in printmaking and book arts. She is also the President of the Wood Engravers’ Network, as well as an elected member of the Society of Wood Engravers. In addition to participating in national and international exhibitions, Price was a recent recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and has been an artist-in-residence at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Western NY Book Arts Center. Her work is included in the collections of the Guangdong Museum of Art, China; Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, WI; Yale University, New Haven, CT; University of Colorado, Boulder, CO; University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN and many more public and private collections.

Jules Remedios Faye is an invaluable asset to our Seattle area printing community who has mentored many printers. With husband Christopher Stern she established Stern & Faye Printers. After four decades of letterpress printing and fine-press publishing, Faye currently focuses on hand-bookbinding, working with book artists, poets, writers, designers, photographers, book lovers, & all manner of good folk, offering clients & students over 30 years of experience in custom binding, guidance & assistance in book-related creative work, & private instruction. 

Founded in 1999, Springtide Press is located in Tacoma, Washington. We design, print and bind artist books, broadsides and ephemera incorporating letterpress printing and handmade paper. Small finely-crafted editions and one-of-a-kind books explore historical topics, popular culture and typography from a unique perspective. Our shop motto, “where we always print damp” recognizes the Pacific Northwest as a fine place to print, where the damp climate helps make a good impression.

Bonnie Thompson Norman has been proprietor of The Windowpane Press, a letterpress printing and book arts studio in Seattle, Washington, since 1978. She worked as a hand bookbinder in a commercial bindery, Puget bindery, for nearly twenty years. Evenings and weekends, she teaches classes in printing and bookmaking. Bonnie has been a huge asset and mentor with bookbinding for our Words of Courage portfolios.

Kristína Uhráková is a graphic designer and self-taught letterpress printer. In 2016 she founded Pressink studio, the first functional workshop dedicated to analog printing in Slovakia. Kristína works with a limited collection of metal and wood type and two German printing presses: a FAG Standard AP 510 and a Korrex Hannover. Apart from making use of traditional printing techniques, she also takes advantage of new technologies like laser cutting to create custom, limited-edition works of art.

A designer, artist, educator and letterpress printer, Brad began his letterpress career with the legendary show poster shop Hatch Show Print in Nashville. Throughout his eight-year tenure at Hatch, Brad printed over 500 unique gig posters for big name bands, worked with ad agencies around the world on larger scale design projects, helped teach workshops throughout the country, all while training printers at Hatch Show Print’s growing internship program. Brad left Hatch in 2012 to start his own letterpress and design studio in Louisville (Brad Vetter Design). Bouncing between 19th and 21st century technology and techniques, he continues to hand print rock-and-roll posters for the likes of everyone from Gregg Allman to Yo La Tengo.

Jenny Wilkson is a letterpress educator and artist. She holds an MA in Design from UC Berkeley, and is fortunate to be one of the few of her generation to have undergone a traditional letterpress apprenticeship. For 19 years, she oversaw the operations, curriculum and community outreach of the letterpress department at the School of Visual Concepts, Seattle, as its founder and director. In response to the impacts of COVID-19, she helped to evolve that program into Partners in Print.

David Wolske is a typo/graphic designer, artist, and educator. His hybrid practice combines the traditions of letterpress and printmaking with digital tools and design thinking. Wolske’s work is exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. He is a 2020 LHM Educator Fellow at the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography at ArtCenter College of Design; the College Book Art Association 2018 Emerging Educator; 2016 Visiting Artist at Hatch Show Print; and a 2014 Utah Visual Arts Fellow. Wolske is currently an Assistant Professor in the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas. DavidWolske.com.

Born and raised in Tokyo, Yoshiko Yamamoto first studied sculpture at Tama Art University in Japan. After moving to California, she studied classical music and modern Japanese history at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, she founded The Arts & Crafts Press with her husband, Bruce Smith, and taught herself the crafts of letterpress and block printing. For her limited edition linoleum block prints, Yoshiko uses the flora and fauna she finds either in America or Japan – anything from fir trees to heron, or koi fish to crickets, and creates them using up to 20 blocks, each with a different color. She has her printing studio in Tacoma.

Ellie Mathews and Carl Youngmann are partners in The North Press. They acquired their first press on a whim early in their marriage. Carl had been a printer’s devil during high school, and Ellie had been working as a designer. Their backgrounds are in cartography and graphic software development. Ellie currently focuses on producing poetry broadsides. Carl keeps the presses running while adapting contemporary techniques of image making to letterpress. 

Laura Bentley attended her first letterpress class in 2008 at SVC, and it was love at first print. She was delighted to learn that her obsession with details that helped her build a successful career in technology could be put to use creating art. Laura is now the proprietor of Pinwheel Press in Seattle, where she produces social stationery and limited-edition prints. Her passion is printing from handset type and learning about the history of the objects used in this craft. Laura’s superpower is creating order out of chaos, so with Partners in Print, she is as likely to be found organizing numbers in a spreadsheet as metal type in a composing stick.

Annabelle is a professional unicorn skilled with managing people-centric projects. She’s coordinated several public printing events, (such as The Women’s March & Ending Family Detention). Annabelle is passionate about the ACLU & social justice issues, and reflecting it in her printing. She also loves experimenting on the press and breaking the rules. She runs her own tiny letterpress shop, Noted! Press, from equipment acquired from the wonderful community of printers in the Seattle area.

Sukhie Patel is a printmaker, educator, community organizer, and sole proprietrix of Saparia Press. Drawing from her family’s legacy of running politically dissident and anti-colonial print shops, she has an affinity for handset type, wood engraving, collographs and wood cuts. Sukhie is a letterpress teacher and is passionate about public art and literacy education, especially amongst marginalized communities. She believes printing–with its roots in labour and industry– should always be an accessible tool of the people. Born in India, and raised between East Africa, the Pacific Northwest, and the UK, Sukhie calls upon her diasporic South Asian experience to inspire possibilities for intersectional, collective movement.

Jenny Wilkson is a letterpress educator and artist. She holds an MA in Design from UC Berkeley, and is fortunate to be one of the few of her generation to have undergone a traditional letterpress apprenticeship. For 19 years, she oversaw the operations, curriculum and community outreach of the letterpress department at the School of Visual Concepts, Seattle, as its founder and director. In response to the impacts of COVID-19, she helped to evolve that program into Partners in Print.

Larry Asher is a creative director who’s a copywriter who’s a problem solver who’s an author who’s a teacher of creativity and writing. He does the former as principal of Worker Bees, Inc., a marketing communications firm serving the healthcare industry. He does the latter as director of the School of Visual Concepts, a professional development center for the design and marketing community. SVC was, in many ways, the birthplace of Partners in Print, as the school was the home of a thriving letterpress program under the direction of Jenny Wilkson until 2021. That’s when the shop and its equipment were donated to PiP, as SVC became an all-online school. Larry remains an ardent fan of letterpress, and is particularly smitten by the word, “manicule.”

Erin Beckloff is a letterpress printer, designer, educator, and filmmaker who preserves anecdotal and technical knowledge of printing history and culture. Her research explores the letterpress community’s expansiveness through time and how the letterpress printing process will survive through educating others in the craft. She is the co-director and writer of “Pressing On: The Letterpress Film,” a documentary about the survival of letterpress and the remarkable printers who preserve the history and knowledge of the craft.

Ben Blount is a Detroit-born graphic designer and letterpress printer. He loves books, type, and putting ink on paper. A believer in the power of the printed word, Ben aims to create work that has impact beyond the printed page. He has spent the last few years traveling the country (and the internet) teaching and talking about letterpress. Ben learned a lot about design at Washington University in St. Louis, a lot about printing at Columbia College Chicago, and filled in the gaps with mentors and lots of practice. He prints out of MAKE, his storefront studio in Evanston, IL.

Stephanie Carpenter is a letterpress printer, educator, and graphic designer living in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Since 2011 she has been the Assistant Director of Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin where she helps maintain the world’s largest collection of 1.5 million pieces of wood type. At the museum she leads programs including New Impressions an international, juried exhibition; coordinates the annual Wayzgoose conference; and teaches workshops. As a representative of Hamilton she has been involved with TypeCon 2012 Milwaukee; HOW Design 2016 Atlanta and 2013 San Francisco; and the Type Directors Club in New York City for Century: 100 Years of Type in Design. StephanieRCarpenter.com. 

Thom Caraway is the designer and publisher for Rock & Sling and Sage Hill Press. He has designed over 50 books and magazines, and teaches courses in editing, book design, and publishing at Whitworth University. He has been working in letterpress printing since 2016, and is a founder of Millwood Print Works. He served as Spokane’s first poet laureate, from 2013-2015, and his most recent poetry collection is What the Sky Lacks (Korrektiv Press, 2019).

Claudia Castro Luna’s roles include Washington State Poet Laureate (2018–2021), Seattle’s Civic Poet (2015–2017), educator, activist, and award-winning author. She is also the creator of the acclaimed Seattle Poetic Grid and was the Designer in Residence at the School of Visual Concepts for two years. Born in El Salvador, she came to the United States in 1981. 

Allison Fisher is a designer and letterpress printer from Baltimore, Maryland. She is the manager of the Globe Collection and Press at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art). Allison manages all things related to Globe at MICA from the production of Globe’s new projects for clients like Hello Kitty, Smithsonian Institutions and Stax Records, to wrangling Globe interns, overseeing archiving, working on community-oriented projects and more.

Glenn Fleishman reports on technology, space, and design from his home in Seattle. A journalist for nearly three decades, Fleishman started his work life as a typesetter and graphic designer, and has worked for Kodak and Amazon. He appears regularly in the Economist, American History Magazine, Fast Company, and Macworld. He was the 2017 Designer in Residence at the School of Visual Concepts. 

Rebecca has presented workshops and short lectures on letterpress printing, community-based business operations, typecasting and zine publishing at various educational institutions and info centers in the United States. She has been involved in founding and growing two small arts-based non-profit organizations in Portland, the Independent Publishing Resource Center (a community publishing workspace) and the C.C. Stern Type Foundry (a working museum dedicated to the art and industry of print); and is a Board Member of Marfa Community Print (an emerging community print space in Marfa, Texas).

Rick Griffith is a graphic designer and master letterpress printer. His work is an erudite exploration of language, history, politics, science, music, and ethics—typographically-focused and relevant. He is known as a passionate advocate for design. Rick was born and raised in Southeast London and immigrated to the U.S. in the late ‘80s. It was his early jobs at Washington D.C. record stores that turned him on to graphic design. It was a (short) freelance career on Madison Avenue which funded his first practice, RGD (Rick Griffith Design), and it is his love of design (and his partner Debra Johnson) which sustains the design practice MATTER, which, over the last two decades, has grown into an ambidextrous design consultancy, print shop, workshop, and retail bookstore.

Anne Hilton is a vice president at GMMB, a communications and advocacy firm that supports nonprofits, philanthropic organizations, and progressive causes. She brings more than 15 years of strategic communications experience and strong opinions about the Oxford comma to her clients, drawing upon her work at global, education, and nonprofit organizations. Anne got her start in letterpress after taking a typography class at SVC way back when, and she never left!

Linda has been involved with the School of Visual Concepts since 1985, when she joined the school as assistant director to its extraordinary co-founder, Cherry Brown. Linda’s dedication to applied art eduction has never waned. She continues to be a committed and enthusiastic steward of SVC’s philosophy. She is thrilled that Partners in Print is breathing new life into the greater letterpress community and is taking over where SVC’s program left off, by offering even more exciting and mindful new classes and projects. She sees great things on PiP’s horizon and is greatly honored to be involved.

Amos Kennedy, Jr. was a successful computer programmer for AT&T when he saw a printing press at colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and stopped in his tracks. At age 40, he decided that his corporate life was over. He had found his calling, he says, as a printer and provocateur. He now runs a highly regarded letterpress poster shop in Detroit, Michigan (Kennedy Prints), and is a vibrant example of the revival of handmade crafts. Amos is unafraid of asking uncomfortable questions about race and artistic pretension. His trademark blue overalls (with a pink dress shirt) are meant to reaffirm his self-described identity as “a humble Negro printer.” This is more than a bit disingenuous, but Mr. Kennedy, thankfully, likes to provoke.

Fiona McGuigan is an artist and a UX Designer working at the intersection of art, UX design, and people. In 2012 she co-created the Duwamish River Artist Residency. Each year, with 13 other artists, she spends 8 intense days working alongside the river, exploring places, finding new visual sources and learning about Seattle’s history, industry, and geography. The artists strive to connect with the communities along the river and to bring awareness to one of the most polluted rivers in the US. Fiona also serves as Program/Instructor Manager at the School of Visual Concepts since, well, let’s just say, .. a while.

Marie is a maker, collector, and teacher holding a BFA from the University of Kansas in Textile Design and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Fiber. Her understanding of pattern, printing, and weaving combined with her passion for artifacts led her to the art of letterpress printmaking. With an extensive background in non-profit arts and event management, Marie is committed to preserving and promoting letterpress printmaking through education, public programs, and restoration. Marie is executive director at Central Print.

Yuka Petz is an artist and designer. Working in media typically associated with text on paper, her creative practice centers around language and letters. Her work has been exhibited internationally and across the U.S., and her artist’s books are in numerous special and private collections. Yuka is a regular guest host for Artist’s Books Unshelved and teaches book arts workshops around the country. Before leaving New Orleans for the Pacific Northwest, she was an artist member of Antenna Gallery and a principal organizer of the Artist Book Collection at Paper Machine. Yuka is committed to collaborative and community-oriented projects that increase the accessibility of print and book arts.
yukapetz.com

Kristen T Ramirez was raised in Northern California where her father, the son of a Mexican immigrant, nurtured a Spanish/English bilingual and bicultural home. Ramirez’s art practices were intertwined and criss-crossed. She was both a studio artist who made discrete works and a public artist who toggled between commissions and socially engaged practices. Her work with Partners in Print dates back to 2004, in our days as the letterpress program at the School of Visual Concepts — where as Designer in Residence (2020) she helped PiP grow in to the community-building arts organization we are today.

Ramirez held a professional career in education and arts administration, championing aspiring artists and established artists alike. Ramirez taught in San Francisco’s public schools before moving to Seattle, where she taught at the University of Washington, Edmonds Community College, Pratt Fine Arts Center, Path with Art, and Cornish College of the Arts. She also managed public art projects for the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle’s Department of Transportation (SDOT). Ramirez received numerous awards throughout her career, including Individual Artist Awards from 4Culture, two Artist Trust GAP grants, and two Public Art Network Year-in-Review Awards.

ABOVE: Artist-activist Kristen T Ramirez in front of a wall of vibrant posters printed by fellow letterpress artists for Partners in Print, a collaborative project created during the 2020 Seattle Design Festival to amplify community voices amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown.

Founded in 1999, Springtide Press is located in Tacoma, Washington. We design, print and bind artist books, broadsides and ephemera incorporating letterpress printing and handmade paper. Small finely-crafted editions and one-of-a-kind books explore historical topics, popular culture and typography from a unique perspective. Our shop motto, “where we always print damp” recognizes the Pacific Northwest as a fine place to print, where the damp climate helps make a good impression.

Bethany Taylor, owner/operator of Interpunct-Press, Spokane’s own custom letterpress shop.  She has been a letterpress printer, designer, and press mechanic since 2006.  She first learned poster printing at the legendary Hatch Show Print in Nashville, and is a founder of Millwood Print Works. She also works in a variety of other print media and bookbinding and has been doing so since 2000.

Kseniya Thomas opened Thomas-Printers in 2005. She was trained as an intern at the print shop of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. She is the co-founder of Ladies of Letterpress, a professional organization that provides a community where both brand-new and experienced printers can learn from one another, share resources and ideas, and help keep letterpress a thriving, exciting, and multifaceted art and craft.

David Wolske is a typo/graphic designer, artist, and educator. His hybrid practice combines the traditions of letterpress and printmaking with digital tools and design thinking. Wolske’s work is exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. He is a 2020 LHM Educator Fellow at the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography at ArtCenter College of Design; the College Book Art Association 2018 Emerging Educator; 2016 Visiting Artist at Hatch Show Print; and a 2014 Utah Visual Arts Fellow. Wolske is currently an Assistant Professor in the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas. DavidWolske.com.

Eric got his start as a designer in Kansas City and New York, and moved to St. Louis to take a job in an advertising firm. He’s worked for book publishers, newspapers, and studios large and small. He is the owner and founder of The Firecracker Press and can be found there most of the time.