Printing in Tacoma at Springtide Press

For the first time, I focused my work trip to the Pacific NW to do only 1. what I had to do (certain things attached to my museum exhibit) and 2. what I wanted to do. Most of it was work, but it was work I chose. The key was letting go of the feeling that I "should" teach. I blocked myself from sabotaging my trip by asking Jessica right away if I could do a mini residency at Springtide Press.

Jessica Spring is the proprietor of Springtide Press and as another friend said, "Jessica is Queen. Full stop." She and I are not fans of the word "master" (I don't want to call her a "master printer" even though that is the easiest shorthand) but she has been steeped in letterpress printing for decades, from the midwest to the west and way beyond. She has a deep well of experience that people coming up now would never be able to get, because of how tech has transformed media. She has seen huge changes in the landscape of her field, while being in its vanguard. Years ago, she coined Daredevil Typesetting and created furniture that makes it possible to set and lock up type on curves and diagonals.

Jessica also had a long-standing collaboration with the late, great, Chandler O'Leary called Dead Feminists. It was a series of broadsides about feminists throughout history (even if they didn't call themselves that). A related project was a beautiful trade book about the project that is a fantastic teaching tool. I hadn't been able to sit down with Jessica since Chandler's death to process it, so this visit was valuable for that alone.

Jessica also makes artists' books that fully involve her impressive printing skills and collection of type and ornament. I am shocked by how affordable they are given the level of craft, which extends to her studio, her home, everything she touches.

It has been almost 10 years since my last visit to Jessica's shop, and my first time meeting Chase. She and I just missed each other in Chicago because she finished grad school at the same program I started a few months later. But we have friends in common and it was affirming to share stories and lament the loss of our program, because a big point of grad school is access to a network, and structure within an institution. We've made the best of it without that, but were reminded why it would have been easier with it intact.

Thanks to Shereen, her 36" standing kutrimmer, I could trim all of the hanji that I brought, with ease and speed. I am excited about what I get to do with these offcuts, which is the legacy of hanji: all the things Koreans figured out to do with scraps! Jessica is the best collaborator you could dream up. Extremely skilled and talented, super smart and hilarious, a whiz with type and language, with an effervescent grasp of design, color, all of it. She's one of a kind, and has committed to community building and activism through print and impeccable craft. She is a remarkable teacher and gave Pacific Lutheran College 16 years of teaching, and continues to teach in other capacities. I was in such good hands.

Here I am pretending that I locked up properly. Jessica said things to me that reminded me exactly of what I say to my students. In my head, I'm thinking, "You forgot?? How many times do I have to remind you??" and then realized that her approach makes you not feel like a total dumdum for forgetting. Because....why would someone who doesn't do this all the time or hasn't done it for years remember every last detail? Maybe if I wasn't chatting so much while printing I would have remembered (again, something else I see my students do, and now I get it).

Here is Jessica locking up properly. Everything I did privately in a letterpress shop, I could not hide from her (like not measuring anything and instead walking back and forth from the press to the furniture, guessing what I needed instead of measuring, doing the math, and taking ONE walk. It's not that I wasn't taught how, I was stubbornly making my life harder because I don't like measuring and doing arithmetic in my head. And then pretended it was about getting exercise).

She had rollers on the press that have a worm gear that enables tight bands of color in a rainbow roll that will never blend out like regular rollers eventually would. I had given her a game plan before I arrived, ditched the idea while packing the night before my flight, and didn't tell her until I got to the shop. A pro can roll with all of that. We spent the first afternoon/evening talking over ideas, deciding what to use (in this case, wood type, rule, and ornament), and setting everything up in the bed of the press.

We printed the next two days. When I arrived Sunday morning, I watched her in the middle of printing a collaborative suite: use scrubs in a bucket! They looked like a magic secret and now I know.

I decided to mostly cut my hanji in half lengthwise (a few are cut the other way), so I needed help at the press to get it off the drum because it's longer than the circumference. We figured it out eventually and insisted that her husband Tim document it. Here we are laughing because I said we had to get a shot of both of our hands on the paper at once, which happens only for a second.

After one run, we'd turn the sheets around and print the other side. I'm so glad she was there to figure out all of the math. It looks very simple but it's not to my brain, which is why this kind of work is not my main jam.

Day two of printing, we switched up ink colors and she insisted on documenting my pants with the new color combo, which was her brainchild.

The resulting prints will eventually turn into new dresses for my next solo museum show that opens this August. This was the main reason that I could not make other visits or book teaching gigs: no time! I was so impressed by what we were able to get done in such a short amount of time given how zonked I was, without a clear directive besides, Let's print onto hanji and later I'll cut it up to sew back together.

Tim kept us fed throughout, and this was one of our lunches. Gabby also visited our first full printing day, which was great fun. Congrats to her for a big recent grant!

Again, like my BIMA visit, there was so much more but it's still processing. It's a gift to get to spend meaningful time working and playing with kin. To the very end, Tim was there to transport all of my heavy stuff (getting my suitcase upstairs upon arrival, and then down the stairs and then more stairs to the car that would whisk me to the airport). Since my return, I've been in that liminal post-travel space where everything is up in the air, but it's settling down as the reality of home, car, and body repairs remind me of everything I left behind. But the photos remain!