Title: Home Life (2017) by Michael Macy
Artist: Amy Redmond
Size: 14 x 11 inches
Created as part of the 2017 Seattle Children’s Hospital Broadside Project, this print was designed & letterpress printed using photopolymer plates. The poem, written by Seattle Children’s Hospital patient Michael Macy, inspired the landscape that grows from the words like blood coursing through veins.
I prefer to print from handset type, but a busy travel schedule kept me away from my studio and granted me the opportunity to develop this idea digitally in a way that is distinctly different from how I work using non-computer-generated imagery.
It was printed in an edition of 110 from photolymer plates, one sheet at a time, using a Colt’s Armory platen press. It took a total of 7 passes through the press to complete (the seventh being the colophon, whose tiny type required a different amount of ink than the gray text of the poem).
This collaboration between the School of Visual Concepts and Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools program at Seattle Children’s Hospital yields some of the most moving and meaningful work to come out of the SVC letterpress studio. Terminally ill and long-term patients write from the heart under the guidance of poets from Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools program. SVC’s team of letterpress artists turns each of them into stunning broadsides, and work together to build the portfolio cases that house the prints.
Eight volumes of poetry portfolios have been created as of 2017, thanks to invaluable donations from Neenah Paper, Puget Bindery, Ecological Fibers, and Boxcar Press.
Project Update
In late 2020 the letterpress program at the School of Visual projects evolved into Partners in Print (PiP), an independent non-profit arts organization. At the same time, this annual poetry broadside collaboration celebrated its 10th anniversary and was renamed Words of Courage, and is a cornerstone of PiP’s community letterpress programming. View the portfolio archive at wordsofcourage.org.
Amada Press is the private letterpress studio of Seattle visual artist and designer Amy Redmond. The main focus of her work is on handset typography using metal and wood type. Amy offers letterpress classes for beginning and advanced students through Partners in Print and teaches typography at the School of Visual Concepts. Her professional design work can be viewed on AmyRedmond.com.