Multifold Iterations: Letterpress Printing as Critical Practice
In the Typography Lab, we move seamlessly back and forth between a wide range of media and methods: from printmaking to photography, from rubber-stamping to xerography, from antique magnesium dies to custom photopolymer plates. This is a tonic for students who find themselves spending most of their time thinking in pixels and RGB and not trusting the abilities of their own hands. Our texts may be taken from literary sources, self-authored, appropriated, overheard and/or remixed. In selecting substraits, typefaces and inks and deciding on scale, composition and format, students gain a sensitivity to the connotations of print and the book itself as a medium. The physical limitations of hand-compositing and lock-up yield dazzlingly innovative results. Students are empowered to infuse the book with a subjective aesthetic platform that supports--and perhaps interrogates--the text matter itself. Expectations for the role of the reader are quantified. Reading becomes less about the habit of scanning and more about associating, linking and mapping, making for a memorable reading experience.
Keywords: Letterpress Printing, Pedagogy, Critical Practice, Translation, Collaboration
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Prof. Megan O'Connell
Visiting Associate Professor, Art Department, University of Maine
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Produces limited edition books, broadsides, ephemera, tabletures and site-specific installations. Presswork is found in the collections of MoMA, Walker Art Center, The Ruth + Marvin Sackner Archive, Biblioteca Wittockiana [Brussels]. The press is currently producing a limited edition monograph by award-winning British author, Charles Nicholl, on Elizabethan poet Matthew Roydon. Megan O'Connell was a presenter at TypeCon2006 in Boston and has been invited to lecture and give a workshop at Die Graphische (Vienna), Fall 2007. She is a member of AIGA and ATypI and a founding member of Creative Material Group. Please visit www.deadskinpress.com for more information.
Ref: B06P0243