Meet Your Printmaker
at Washington Printmakers Gallery

June 29, 2009 – July 26, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, July 3 from 5:30pm to 8:30pm

For over a year Meet Your Printmaker has been compiling a directory of independent print/printmaking studios around the world through its blog. Meet Your Printmaker shifts the emphasis away from the artist/printmaker and presents the printers/printmakers as a unique workforce … the groups and individuals who uphold and evolve new and traditional printing/printmaking techniques, whether in the form of commercial work, artist editions or retail products and who share their skills and educate their respective communities.

The work in this exhibition presents a selection of printed matter from 40 print/printmaking studios around the world.

Participating studios in no particular order (apologies if we left your studio name out): DWRI Letterpress, Dirty Hands Serigraphie, Bleu Acier, The Little Friends of Printmaking, Sycamore Street Press, Dieu Donné, Deep Wood Press, Standard Deluxe, Patent Pending, Outlaw Print Co., Erika Ebert Press, Cannonball Press, Atlanta Printmakers Studio, Common Press, Stumptown Printers, Slugfest Printmaking Workshop, Extrapool, Squid Ink Kollective, Tugboat Printshop, Lunalux, Purgatory Pie Press, The Firecracker Press, Thomas-Printers, Aesthetic Apparatus, The Lower East Side Printshop, Iskra Print Collective, Halo Halo Screen Printing, AS220 Community Printshop, Proyecto´ace, Elshopo, Low Rider Tee Shirt, Starshaped Press, Pinball Publishing, Uhrgalo, Sonnenzimmer, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions, Polluted Eyeball, Spudnik Press, Bob Eight Pop.

Washington Printmakers Gallery
1732 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington DC 20009
www.washingtonprintmakers.com

Studio On Fire is a design and letterpress workspace in Minneapolis, MN that collaborates with creative firms, printers, and individuals/artists. You can purchase their letterpress goods here and see more great work on their blog Beast Pieces.

Established in 1967 as the first open access studio in Edinburgh, Britain, Edinburgh Printmakers (EP) is dedicated to the promotion of contemporary printmaking practice.

It achieves this by providing, maintaining and staffing an entrance free gallery and inexpensive, open access print studio, where artists and members of the public can use equipment and source technical expertise in order to develop their hands on printmaking skills.

Within its very cool looking 19th century warehouses, Cork Printmakers in Cork, Ireland offers professional printmaking facilities, artist residency programs, various educational opportunities and exhibitions. The studio supports over ninety artist members based in Ireland, the UK and America.

Lowrider Teeshirt is screenprint shop in Fribourg Switzerland offering lots of their own products and collaborations with other artists.

SNAP is an independent, cooperatively run fine art printshop and art gallery in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. SNAP’s mandate is to promote, facilitate and communicate printmaking as an art form. Currently, SNAP Gallery has a program schedule of about ten exhibitions per year. SNAP is equipt for etching, lithography, screenprinting, woodcut, letterpress, and photobased print art, along with supportive education programs.

Squid Ink Kollective is a local fine art screen printing business in Denton, TX specializing in printing paper and apparel using non-toxic inks. You can see more work on their flickr pages.

Bob Eight Pop is a London, UK print shop specializing in hand bench screen printing. Seems they can screen print just about anything onto just about anything and for some great designers like Scott King. While anticipating the launch of their new site, check out some of the latest work in their flickr photostream.

Halo Halo Screen Printing is an eco-friendly group in Canada “currently hustling between two Toronto print studios” each with its own focus from over-sized poster printing to apparel to flyers to printing for furniture design & architecture. The group offers pretty cool courses like Psychedelic 3D Tees & Zines for Teens (he name alone is enough to make you wanna sign up), open print sessions, drawing/printing jams, exhibitions, screen printing crash courses and rentals if you think you already know what to do. Check the blog, too. Thanks Phillp for the link.

Outlaw Print Co. is the by-day textile/tee screenprinting operation of the two Philadelphia, PA dudes behind Magick Outlaw apparel.