New West Coast Design: Books     
Curators: Mary Austin & Kathleen Burch
In the Gallery Jan 25-Apr 25, 2008     

 

		< Previous | Catalogue | Next > Whether Man Christopher Stern, Stern & Faye, Skagit Valley, Washington www.sternandfaye.com Boadsides by Christopher Stern Hand-printed with found woodtype, metal type, collage. 2002; Limited Edition of 20. Sadly, Christopher Stern died in the autumn of 2006. In the last six years of his life, he combined his tradeskills of typography and letterpress printing to find his own, widely-acclaimed collage style of layering ink and image with hand-set type. His partner Jules Remedios Faye, a renowned printmaker and illustrator, continues their work at the press in Skagit Valley. Describing in part how the the ambiance of the printshop has contributed to their aesthetics, Faye comments that "it is located in a renovated barn on the high banks of the Skagit River in the foothills of the North Cascades Mountain range. The barn houses an extensive collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century letterpress equipment. Six different letterpresses with cast iron flywheels or stout cranks & cylinders stand where the cows used to get fed. Each press can accommodate different capacities for paper sizes & ink coverage which allows us to execute a wide range of printing possibilities. "For hand typesetting we have over 20 cabinets filled with wood and metal type which line the barn walls & stairwell. The staircase acts as an ersatz gallery of letterpress printed ephemera, broadsides, poster art & prints. Upstairs where the hayloft used to be, is now the sky lit bindery filled with wide tables, nipping presses, glue jars, needles & thread. Behind the barn is the type foundry where we preserve the craft of casting metal type. The bronze type matrix library is stacked so high it almost reaches the ceiling. "All of this equipment was scavenged from the basements of retired printers, defunct printshops, extinct printing schools & obsolete typehouses over many years of search & rescue operations. As much as we are printers for hire we are also preservationists of the craft of letterpress printing." A broadside in memory of Christopher Stern was letterpress printed in June 2007 at Day Moon Press by Maura Shapley and Maralyn Crosetto: YOU TOLD ME YOU ONCE YOU ONLY PRINTED IN NATURAL LIGHT It is only now Now that you have gone That I begin to see that light you spoke of Came from your passion for type The dark and light intertwined on the page Your alchemist's hands caressing the lead Teasing the paper and ink To rise above their base forms Teasing them into a sublime dance of positive and negative Your passion spilling out and filling the barn Spilling out with a kind of energy That burned up the rest of your life An energy that could only be contained On the surface of a finely printed page - Mare Blocker
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