Austin Book Arts Center’s printshop
DIY Polymer Plates
Letterpress - handmade negatives using ephemera and transparent plastics; scrap polymer; printed using a variety of presses at the Book Arts Center
Meredith Miller of Punchpress led an incredible workshop exploring how to inexpensively expose scrap polymer from hand assembled negatives.
Since then, I’ve had a field day exposing, printing, and recreating negatives from a variety of materials.
Austin Book Arts Center’s printshop
Rings - Thank You Cards
Letterpress - manually exposed polymer plates & handset type. Printed using a Challenger cylinder press.
I created these thank you cards to send to guests of my wedding. I experimented with many different designs for the two interconnecting rings (you can see some rejects on the image of the drying rack above). To create the final rings, I created negatives, glueing cut paper, twisted string, stencils, and hand-drawn circles with china marker. I used polymer scraps from Boxcar press, exposed one polymer plate, ran it through the press on transparencies to create a new negative and (finally) exposed new polymer to create the final plates in an inverse image.
I prowled through the Book Arts Center’s collections of metal type and hidden drawers of old cuts and embellishments to create the message on the back. Sadly, my selected typeface had no apostrophes, only commas…
Wonders & Worries
I Wonder What It’s Like When a Parent Has Cancer: Max’s Story
by Jacquelyn Rebecek, MS, CCLS book design by Kristin Shoffner, project management by Emily McDaniel, MA, CCLS, RWWP
In 2022, I worked with a team of child life specialists at Wonders & Worries to illustrate their first picture book about Max, a young child who’s dad is diagnosed with cancer. The end product will hopefully help child life specialists and guardians who work with children who are experiencing a situation similar to Max’s.
This was a very rewarding project and had unique challenges, such as drawing an accurate radiation machine, or teaching tools used by specialists teaching children about cancer ports.
Austin Book Arts Center’s printshop
Beachcombers
Letterpress - pen & ink illustrations transferred into line art for polymer (from Koch printing). Printed on a variety of presses at the printshop.
This is my first attempt at illustrating, writing, printing, and finally binding my own short story. I’m only about 1/4 of the way through. Each illustrated page requires two passes through the press for the blue and black ink. Text blocks have their own run on the facing page.
Each illustration is first sketched and hand-inked before being scanned and uploaded into a vector program before being professionally turned into a polymer plate (Austin’s local Koch Printing).
The final book will have five full illustrated pages, five corresponding text blocks, plus a cover, title page and collograph. Phew!
Kitchen Litho
Bugs
Cola, china marker, red ink and foil
I’m a big fangirl for British printmaker Viola Wang and her ability to print everywhere and anywhere. I watched her video about “kitchen lithography” and decided to try it one rainy afternoon watching sitcoms with a friend.
Here is my second attempt - can’t wait to try again!
MDRC
Six Recommendations for Supporting Families Affected by Parental Incarceration
by Emily Brennan, Meghan McCormick, Bright Sarfo, Michelle S. Manno
Illustrations created for a brief document studying efficacy of family-strengthening programs.
Austin Book Arts Center’s printshop
Thumbpeople
Letterpress - inked fingerprints and hand-drawn illustrations made into a photopolymer plate. Printed on Challenger and Vandercook presses at the printshop.
Is it a bad idea to upload your finger prints to the internet?
For this broadsheet, I first dipped my fingers in ink to create the bodies of my thumbpeople and created illustrations to complement them. I had the two seperate pieces transformed into polymer plates.
This piece represents three passes through the press (one per color) for a playful, and somewhat ominous, effect. I’m really happy with it.
Austin Book Arts Center - workshop
Workshop Collaboration - Folded Zine
Letterpress - wood and metal type, old cuts. Printed using a Challenger cylinder press.
In 2024, the Austin Book Arts Center hosted a workshop with California-based artist, Peter Thomas. We learned a lot about press maintenance and how to stay loose, experimenting with combining wood & metal type, plus printing by embedding stencils into press packing.
MDRC
Measures for Early Success
A series of illustrations for a variety of MDRC publications in the area of Family Well-Being and Children’s Development.