I am excited to say that I am already making four presses for future donations. I was honestly shocked with the excitement and sales of my presses from around Canada and the world.īecause of this, I expanded and decided that for every 10 presses sold I would donate one to a creative community in need. What started as a few posts on Instagram of the project turned into a high level of interest. I wanted to figure out if there was a better, more efficient and cost-effective way of producing a tabletop printmaking press for our students during the university lockdown.Ī lot has happened since then, and our efforts are changing things quite a bit for the Canadian arts community. I began the project as a way to refocus my studio practice to get my mind off the surreal world we were living in at the time. ‘I was shocked with the level of interest’ The result is a far cheaper, smaller, lighter, more efficient and easy-to-make press than is commercially available - the only one available with its specs in Canada. I set out to redesign the press from the ground up using my studio and my grandfather’s metal lathe that I had shipped from Chicago. I redirected my research and used my historical knowledge of printmaking, presswork, mechanical engineering and background in manual machining and woodworking to conceive of a press design that would solve three basic problems with modern presses: they are big and heavy and cost a lot to ship they are labour-intensive to make and they are extremely expensive. Faculty and students were emailing me with questions about how print could exist outside of a community shop. Despite being practically difficult due to the lack of facilities, pre-prep and knowledge of engineering, technical machining and function, I decided to try.Īt the time, I was not feeling 100 per cent with my own practice knowing everything else going on in the world. Out of curiosity and a bit of fear of the upcoming year with Zoom learning, I suggested fabricating small portable presses for students. We asked, what was the future of printmaking without a shared community space? Out of this, the greatest issue was the lack of access to presses, fundamentals and physical knowledge of the core tool in any print shop, after the artist. The idea started when through email I joined faculty from various institutions to create a research group loosely called GraphicThinkTank. By the end of the winter 2020 term, students and instructors were exhausted - and still are - but we kept pushing forward. Lithography and intaglio are the most difficult without presses, as relief and silkscreen are more easily converted to at-home printing. Students were thrust into a world of printing at home in their kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms using nothing but their hands and feet to transfer an image onto paper. Why? As educators, we were faced with the inability to teach printmaking practices efficiently. When the COVID-19 pandemic started last year and universities began to lock down, I found myself fabricating handmade printmaking presses for artists in and outside of Concordia. Mitch Mitchell is an interdisciplinary artist and associate professor of print media in the Department of Studio Arts
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