Posts Tagged ‘hatch show print’

so much to say

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

Alright kids, my work here is done. And now what do I do? I am stuck in a cafe because it is pouring down rain. A man next to me says to two nice women, “I will cut your ear off.” For the next week I will eat a lot and ride my bike.

Friday I attended the world premiere of the documentary film, William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet, which is about the making of a ballet set to Shatner’s record, Has Been. This was at the Nashville Film Festival, to which I received free passes. The movie was just OK, but Mr. Shatner was there, along with Ben Folds and a slew of other celebrities. Very strange.

Yesterday, I was in Chattanooga, TN, for an Avett Brothers concert. Very good, very good. However, before the show, Kate and I went to a pizza place to get some slices. We waited in line for half an hour. Then waited at our table for 45 minutes to get three slices of pizza. So, we decided to slip vodka into our water glasses.

Apparently, Kate and I are now models. See for yourself HERE. Story goes: we were out on the artwalk in March, dressed up very nice, and a photographer, Sheri O’Neal, approached us asking if she could photograph us. So it goes. (there are three photos up on her site there. they were all shot in my house)

Speaking of photos: go HERE for a large collection of photos of Hatch and such.

This post is long and rambling… Congratulations to my good friend Heather Petersen for her acceptance to the graduate theatre program at Ohio University. A full ride scholarship! Cheers!

That same man next to me is now praying with these two woman. A spiritual revival is occurring.

Now I will share with you my recent and final Hatch posters. A show in the Nashville Cats series at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Wayne Moss
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A commemorative poster for the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum’s 10th anniversary. Hamilton is the type foundry that made much of Hatch Show Print’s collection over the past 130 years.
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A silly poster to warn the kids not to put their faces in Huey’s face.
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This was typeset by Mr. Jim, but I got to print it on my last day. It is inked by hand on the press. A gift for Simon (which is not the Simon as I first thought) for his work with American Idol when it came to the Grand Ole Opry.
thankyou

Thanks, kids. More misadventures to come.

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Posted in Art, Free Bananas, Letterpress, Music, Nashville, poster | 2 Comments »

Free Bananas!

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Status update: content, quiet, tired, sometimes active, sometimes inactive. Riding my bike is fun in this town–up and down the hills, through the neighborhoods and parks, pissing off the cars. Saturday I was downtown, riding, looking to the sky at the brewing storm. It came, slowly, with a warm breeze and sunshine, then torrential downpour, as I took refuge in the nearest bar I could find. Sunday night I was riding a greenway in the dark, and a coyote crossed my path. Monday night, riding up 51st by my house, the passenger in a car threw the car’s cigarette lighter at me, hitting my shoulder. I almost caught up to them at a stoplight, their lighter in hand. On another note, I like to take ‘er easy. Early to bed, early to rise. Always a good night for a dumpster dive. Another aside, I have been helping out the kids in Food Not Bombs, cooking up delicious food in bulk on Sunday afternoons, serving it downtown to all the kind streetfolk. Last time, I dished up my kale specialty, with a hint of garam masala.

Enough talk, here are some fresh posters. Fresh Free Bananas posters. Each one is different–I pulled all sorts of backgrounds from the scrap piles. There are some real gems in here, but you must see them in person. My photographs are pretty terrible and heavily Photoshop-ed–ain’t no good lighting in the shop. But you get the idea:

freebananas1  freebananas5
freebananas2  freebananas4
freebananas3  freebananas6

And I finished one today–a souvenir poster, for all them tourists wandering through the shop:

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And for good measure, here is a photo of manager Jim Sherraden printing on his massive press:

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Posted in Free Bananas, Letterpress, poster | 2 Comments »

two jobs done this week

Friday, March 27th, 2009

kurtis-jen-wedding

That there is a giant wedding invitation I designed and printed this week. It is 14 X 22 inches, and they are going to mail these out as invitations. People take their weddings very seriously, so I hope they like it. Kurtis and Jen live out of town, so they won’t see the finished poster until the package arrives at their door. They damn well better like it.

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Alright, alright. Another one I designed this week. Please read through this thing to understand what it is. Oh, don’t quite understand why there is a drawing of a man in a suit bullfighting? Or why does it look like that man is in the mafia, nicely placing a blanket over a docile cow? Well, that man is Dewey Daane, in a bullfight in Spain. Don’t ask. I love this poster though. (I had to make a plate of all that tiny text in the bottom-left. Just too much type.)

Here is Eli, my fellow intern. I just like this photo.

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And did you know that Nashville has its very own full-size replica of the Greek Parthenon? It sits in the middle of Centennial Park–a nice, big park, just outside of downtown.

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A somewhat-informative explanation:

In the 1840’s educator Philip Lindsay thought that Nashville should encourage the ideals of Classical Greek education, such as Philosophy and Latin and be known as the Athens of the West. While that nick -name never took hold, decades later Nashville would be given a similar nick-name; Athens of the South, that would became synonymous with Nashville until the title of Music City arrived, with the dawn of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930’s. If you look in the yellow pages of Nashville, you will still find many companies with the name of Athens within their title.

In 1895 Tennessee searched for a way to commemorate its 100-year anniversary and decided on a centennial exposition to be staged in its capitol of Nashville and then building an exact replica of the Parthenon of ancient Greece and thus the Parthenon, being the pinnacle of the Grand Exposition, was the first building erected.
–about.com

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Posted in Letterpress, poster | 2 Comments »

Gold ink is hot

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Quick update. New poster. This one is for a benefit concert at the Ryman Auditorium featuring Vince Gill. The client wanted a “contemporary” look with geometric shapes and lines. I used a metallic gold ink for the first color:

coloronejammin

Those big gold blocks are just the bottom of old plates. The top one has “NIXON” on the other side. Richard Nixon campaign poster way back when? Who knows. Then the black brings it all together:

vince gill

Mary snapped this photo of me printing. That’s a Vandercook just like what we use back at the UO (but a little bigger).

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Posted in Letterpress, poster | 3 Comments »

Jim Reeves

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Another busy week at the shop, it is. Another strange week in Nashville. I swear, I have been drinking beer and eating eggs everyday this week. In fact, I am drinking a beer right now–local Blackstone Brewery porter for $2.75 a pint at happy hour at The Flying Saucer. OK, OK–here is a poster I printed this week. A re-strike of an old Jim Reeves poster:

JimReevesrestrike

Posters like this are what we sell up front, along with other newer posters, postcards, etc., and Jim’s beautiful monoprints. What we do is look at the old poster and typeset it anew to look exactly like the old one, then mix the inks accordingly. It’s old, but new at the same time, ya know.

I am working on two new jobs as well. One is fairly typical: a benefit concert at the Ryman Auditorium featuring Vince Gill. The other is a strange one like my last job–that “Watercolor” poster. It is for the Conference on Financial Markets and Financial Policy at Vanderbilt University, in honor of Dewey Daane on his 90th birthday, and it is to include an image of Mr. Daane participating in a bull fight in Spain. Will it make sense to anybody but the guy ordering the poster and Mr. Daane himself? I don’t know. Customer knows best. This one also is going to contain a list of every speaker at the conference. That is tons of type, so I am getting a plate made, which means I have to type it up on the computer.

atcomputer

Check out the progress.

FMRCposter

We don’t use computers ’round here. It’s all manual–hands-on. Looking at those fonts on the screen was tripping me out–these days I am so used to feeling fonts. I touch type, not punch on a keyboard. Some of those standard fonts on computers–Wide Latin, Franklin Gothic, Rockwell, etc.–we have those. I touch them, move them around, add spacing to them, and print them. Words are real!

On another note–what are the odds of two young women in Nashville who don’t know each other wearing the same vintage dinosaur t-shirt from different thrift stores to the same bar on a Wednesday night? I don’t know.

pict8750

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Posted in Letterpress, Nashville | No Comments »

Weird poster. Looks good.

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

The weather is terrible right now here in Nashville. It’s like I am back in Eugene. Freezing rain, ice, wind. Maybe the same tomorrow. I can’t ride my bike in this weather! The days before this were just lovely–springtime in the South, just as I imagined. Blossoms on the trees, warm and breezy, quaint (rich) neighborhoods alive with schoolchildren and old ladies, and lots of dogs. Then I sat on the porch with rolled up pants and played guitar and smoked a cigarette. I wish I had had my straw hat.

Enough fluff. I finished a new job yesterday. This one was a doozy. The copy contained only four words. The client wanted a tropical beach feeling. He wanted it landscape format. On chipboard. One would think only four words would be nice and easy, but not true. So, this job was for a house in the Bahamas. This house is called Watercolor. He is giving it to the people who bought the house (did he sell it?) Um, but he is getting 100 posters because that is our minimum order. At two colors it is $3.00/poster. Strange, strange. But I prevailed and designed a simple beach-feeling-with-tropical-colors-and-a-palm-tree poster that I think he will be happy with. He is from Ohio. Remember that Best Western bartender from Ohio from a couple weeks back? That state must be a weird place.

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Another interesting thing–well, a lot of interesting things happen at Hatch Show Print–happened today. A well-to-do older gentleman walked into the shop looking to inquire about our place of business. He saw our showcase at the airport. He’s in the print business. He researched us on the internet shortly afterward and found out we have a Meihle press. Well, he comes in and tells us he owns the company that has owned Miehle for 80 years. Jim takes him back to the press, where Dan is currently running the thing. So, this thing was built in 1946, it’s a monster, a beaut, and it can crank out a thousand-poster run in no time. Only Dan knows how to operate it, and he’s retired! It goes when he goes. It sounds like an old milk truck rattling down some dusty, bumpy southern road while perhaps little children ride bicycles around it in dizzying circles. Check it out.

Miehle

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How to make a Hatch poster, pt. 2

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

Alright, Saturday. A good night last night of rocking out to Hillbilly Casino until last call.

Now to finish the job. Time to print! It shouldn’t take all day to print a two color poster, but, you know, it does.

7) The type is already locked up and ready to go. Put that ink on the rollers, and let ‘er go.
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8) Start printing. Deal with all the little problems (some blocks don’t print, some print too hard, add little bits of packing to letters and rules, raise the press bed, too much ink, etc., etc.) Eventually, you come out with a stack that looks like this. The first color.
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9) Clean the press, putting your face into smelly mineral spirits and dirty rags.
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10) Lock up the next layer in the press. Ink it up, and deal with all those problems again. This one was a pain in the ass. Get frustrated, and turn the CD player up louder. Run tons of proofs, which turn out to become beautiful make-readies. When you get it right, just roll along.
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11) Relax and admire your fabulous poster. Printed 100 times. Clean the press. Call the client. They come by the shop to pick up the posters, and they tell you how amazing you are, and you feel accomplished for the long week of printing like mad. Hatch broke a record this week, actually. Sixteen jobs finished in one work week. Yes!
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Posted in Letterpress | 4 Comments »

Letterpressin videos

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Folks, it’s Friday again. Here I am, same place, same time. Tired from the week. Flat tire on my bike, and stormy weather outside. There is a very large Italian birthday dinner happening to my right. Nashville drivers are terrible, and I am tired of going up and down West End Pike. Gotta do it though. Gotta earn my keep. Oh wait…

For a time-based glimpse into what I have been doing 9-5 everyday, please see the following videos. They are brief. And fun!

A very short tour of the workshop:

A demonstration of the back press, a Vandercook Universal III:

“Are you from Tennessee? ‘Cuz you’re the only ten I see”

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Posted in Letterpress, Nashville | 5 Comments »

I’m woyking heeya

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

pict8570x

Second day on the job. Putting up type. That’s what I do, for now. Getting decades old dust on my fingers and feeling fine. Long hours on my feet. Pulling open wrong drawers all over the place. Theys don’t write down what theys set, so you gotta hunt around. Most of the time it’s easy–6 pica gothic no. 2, or 20 pica no. 3. Then there is the Antique wood. And the stuff that ain’t got names nor numbers. Then all the lead type spread all over the shop–but most of the time it is Franklin Condensed or Farmers Condensed or John Hancock. Sometimes you see Tower or Stymie. I want to keep trying that old News Gothic drawer, but it ain’t ever the one. A whole lot furniture to put away–just measure and shelve. 72 pica, presswide. 12 points to a pica. 6 picas to an inch. Those leads are 4.5 picas wide–don’t put the 4 leads in the 5. Remember the dingbat drawers. Star bars go in the star drawer. Sunbursts with the sunbursts. Hell, there’s even a microphone/radio tower drawer. Yesterday, a man came in looking to buy a poster. He said he was a longtime customer. Yeah, that poster near the ceiling–the huge PECO Gas advertisement, printed in red from one woodblock–that was his. Printed in 1940, he was the guy who ordered it. Just another day.

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Posted in Letterpress | 2 Comments »

Hatch Show Print

Friday, February 6th, 2009

johnny cash

Nashville, Tennesse That is Johnny Cash, taken from a classic poster by Hatch.

So, this is where I will be working for two months, starting February 16, 2009. Basically, Hatch Show Print is a letterpress print shop that opened in 1879 in downtown Nashville. It continues to operate, making posters and doing design work for a huge host of music and country culture clients, using type and woodblocks carved over the past centuries and printing on ancient presses. It is a dirty job, but these folks are the best. Their style is all their own.

I will be doing the dirty work, of course, but I will also designing and printing. I will be handling those classic woodblock images, printing restrikes of classic posters. Like this one. I do not really know what to expect though. More details to come.

For now, check out their website at http://countrymusichalloffame.com/site/experience-hatch.aspx

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Posted in Letterpress, Nashville | 2 Comments »