FIRST, A LIST OF LEAD GRAFFITI WORKSHOPS & RELATED EVENTS over the next few weeks. Get your hands inky.
Saturday, Jan 25 - Creative Letterpress : H.N. Werkman workshop - $70. Bring your child for 1/2 price.
Sunday, Jan 26 - Creative Letterpress : VALENTINES HOLIDAY CARD WORKSHOP - $120
Tuesdays, Feb 4, 11, 18 - Bookmaking : 1 Book, 3 Evenings - through The Art Studio
Friday, Feb 7 - Lead Graffiti “Printed Slowly & Patiently via Letterpress” exhibition ends
Saturday, Feb 8 - Technical Letterpress : Vandercook workshop
Saturday, Feb 8 - Bookmaking : Paste Paper workshop
Wednesday, Feb 19 - Upper Chesapeake Book Arts Group monthly meeting
Saturday, Feb 22 - Bookmaking : Coptic Stitch workshop
Saturday, Mar 7 - Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair
We hope to encourage your letterpress interest with a look back at our TOP TEN Lead Graffiti moments from 2019.
#1 : Building a YouTube channel
We are pretty late coming to YouTube, but maybe later than never. Ray taught a video editing class for more than a decade and loved it. We often would see good movies twice in the theater; once for the movie and once for the editing.
So, we are trying to put movement and sound to a few of our experiences. As we write this we are up to 14 YouTube videos with 125+ subscribers, almost 4,000 views and 260 hours of viewing time, some short and sweet about favorite objects in our collection, and longer ones about major projects and informative ones about specific processes we use. CHECK OUT A FEW OF THEM.
#2 : .918 Building
Ray is on the Board of the .918 CLUB, headquartered in LANCASTER, PA, a group committed to “keeping the letterpress craft alive.” For several years they’ve been working to rehab a building given to them by the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. The 3,000 square foot space facility at 51 PARKSIDE AVENUE in Lancaster IS DONE.
#3 : Zoe’s book
This project was a typographic powerhouse by Jill, produced as a journal for one of our granddaughters. The original book is hand drawn, but that typography is starting to turn into other projects that are going to be fun. Check out the video page-through.
#4 : DCAD Retrospective Exhibition / 7 DCAD lectures
Lead Graffiti is currently in the second month of a major RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION at the DELAWARE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN. The exhibition includes about 125 pieces of work covering 17 years of “printing slowly and patiently via letterpress,” starting in 2002 with Raven Press at the University of Delaware in 2002 through 2019. The work includes our favorite posters from our widely known Tour de Lead Graffiti from each stage of the Tour de France from 2011 to 2015 , along with books, wedding invitations, certificates, cards, results of workshops, and beyond. The exhibition will run through Friday, February 7.
#5 : Winterthur / Philadelphia Free Library
#6 : Codex VII
We set up our work along with 220 letterpress printers and bookmakers from across the planet. It is an amazing experience, sometimes humbling when you can compare your best work with many others. While not exactly the financial success we were hoping for we felt good about the work we were doing and the paths we are carving with it.
#7 : Manhattan Book Fair / LoC
As with the listing above, participating with other members of the Fine Press Book Association at their Manhattan book fair gave us the chance to highlight our 4 newest books—Electric Fire from the Clouds, How Ink Writes Poetry, Abededaritype, and Chesapeake Meander. We also completed collections of our work at Rare Books at the Library of Congress and Special Collections at the University of Delaware Library. Great fun with an ever enlarging group of fine press friends.
#8 : WHYY / Waldorf School of Philadelphia
Since 2013 Lead Graffiti has been printing the 8th-grade graduating class diplomas for the Waldorf School of Philadelphia. This is our favorite project we do with a client. AT 4:07 INTO THE FILM YOU CAN SEE THE LOOK we dream for from the students.
In 2014 WHYY-TV, the public TV station in Philadelphia, did an episode on Lead Graffiti which ended up being in their top 10 for that year. This year they came back to us saying they wanted to do a new one. We were just scheduling the printing of the Waldorf School of Philadelphia diplomas so we set up a day and you can see the result above.
#9 : Lindsay Schmittle move to Pittsburgh
A cjamc
#10 : APHA press for LoC
#11: New type from Denker / Hoover
#12 : NextFab
A chance encounter at a Delaware College of Art and Design social event lead us to a discussion with a representative of NextFab, a MAKER STUDIO in Wilmington, DE. Ray took all of the courses in laser cutting, CNC software and ShopBot router, and the general wood shop courses. And now we are ready and armed to start our long dreamed of work, developing new wood type and images for letterpress printing. Photo shows a laser-cut jig for trimming corners when covering hard-cover books.
#11: New type from Denker / Hoover