My Time as a Letterpress Teacher at Elk River High School

Well, it always starts the same. I get asked to do something that I know I can do, it’s not like people are asking me to give lectures on Polynomial functions, they are asking me to teach letterpress and talk about me and my business. Simple right? How could I possibly mess that up? Well, I can’t but I still get wicked nervous and I strain and fret to get everything together for an awesome time. I think high schoolers are a tough crowd, or they get a rap for being such, even if they are not.

So I prepped and prepped with my old intern Nikki in the shop, packed everything up, ran through it and saddled up. I got there and I had no choice but to take charge and tell some kids that this is going to rock. They totally bought it, they did not know why but they were intrigued. Letterpress is a strange thing for young people, mostly what they know at this point in their artist careers is how to control things like drawing, painting, and clay. What they do not know is how to let go a little bit and lay ink on paper and make beautiful things that they have little control of. It is liberating and wonderful and I passed on this virus to 4 classrooms of kids. It was stupendous.

As I talked about my story, which is pretty damn interesting, I included many visual aids, and slowly but surely all eyes were on me. You cannot deny the stunning effect of a good letterpress printed poster, print, broadside, or card. You simply cannot. Well, unless you are a taste deficient moron.

The second day the ideas and thumbnails started to come to life and the ink was already flyin’, I of course had it across my forehead, on my earlobes, and from fingertip to forearm. I think they thought that was interesting, not many teachers actually get in there, up to their eyeballs in it. These kids want to stay clean, and I could give a shit.

On the second day they worked getting further and further sucked into the small poster press I borrowed from St. Bens Art Department. I also graced these oh-so-lucky kids with 2 full drawers of wood type. They also understood quickly that I love my wood type, love like the kid I never had, and they were to respect said type or all bets were off.

                                           


          

There was a week in between the second day and the third and in that time these kids really stepped up their game. Even though the “easy cut” was incredibly “super not easy to cut” cut, they did amazing blocks and were super stoked to print. 

 

                                                     

          

     

     

               

          

          

          

     

The level one class worked on something very different but with fantastic results! They did monoprints! These self portraits are haunting, hilarious, and like nothing I have seen before. At more than one point in the 53 minute class, the teacher and I noticed near silence and we all know what that means, getting 33 high school kids to concentrate on a project is a ginormous success.

Check out these pictures from some really talented kids…


          

          

          

          

          

     

     

          

          

     


Thank you students and teachers for a truly awesome experience, I would come back anytime and I hope you are proud of what you accomplished and please come visit me at Bruno Press anytime you find yourselves in St. Joseph!

My First Gypsy Experience

I recently met and began a certain journey with an interesting person. Her name is Jami Lea and here is the story. 

I had heard many times that I need to get my cards into Gypsy Lea's in Sauk Rapids. This is an easy enough thing to do, I go there with a catalog and some samples of my stuff and meet the gal. Well it remained on my to do list for almost a year. Things sometimes go like that for me no matter what my intentions are, sometimes the time is just not right.

Then a few weeks ago I got a phone call from this very same gal, only she was telling me that she had been told many times over that she needs to carry Bruno Press cards and meet this crazy Mary C Bruno. 

She called and said: "Dammit, can I just come over and meet you fer crying out loud??" and I could do

nothing but reply "hell yes." So she did come to Bruno Press and we sat out on the patio and had a beer
and talked about our businesses and our lives and things that pissed us off and other things that made us very happy, one of those things just happened to be whiskey. Turns out, we would be friends.

She decided to make an order of my cards and carry them in Gypsy Lea's, not to mention she wanted to plaster my posters all over her walls and pimp me out in every way she could. How freakin cool, right? So began a friendship/business collaboration that shall continue and twist and turn and morph and grow and probably have a few meetings at the Capital Tavern, where we sample white corn whiskey, that frankly, tastes like shit.

Thanks for believing in what I do and believing in what I drink.

The New Old School

CREATIVE, PROVOCATIVE, HILARIOUS

+

500 YEAR OLD PRINT TECHNOLOGY 

=

BRUNO PRESS

Mary Bruno (owner of Bruno Press) is an interesting person. By interesting we mean:

FUNNY

CREATIVE

PROVOCATIVE

EDGY

BEGUILING

INTELLIGENT

OUTSPOKEN

RACY

SPICY

ENCHANTING

There are some people in life YOU JUST GOTTA MEET. Mary is one of them. 

Anyway........ Mary is an artist who uses Letterpress Printing to create outrageous Greeting Cards, Postcards, Posters, Art Prints, Broadsides and Invitations. Letterpress Printing was invented by Johannes Gutenberg circa 1440 (Yeah, over 500 years ago). Letterpress art is crisper than offset litho because its' impression on paper gives greater visual definition to both the type and the artwork. Letterpress Printing requires a high degree of craftsmanship. It excels at fine typography, resulting in artful and textured product.

Click here for a video of Mary in action.

Mary's Art is beautiful. It is also sometimes outrageous. She calls herself "an equal opportunity offender". If you are easily offended, DO NOT visit her website.

This Girl is Crafty... And she's just my Type (Get it? Type?)

So, past intern Nick S contacted me to inquire about printing some wedding invites for his sister Jaime. I seys, sure dude, lets do this. This is the complete process of printing some nice simple invites for a nice simple girl that turned those invites into something GD beautiful. I tell ya, I had some opinions about those scrapbooker folk, after today, the things I saw, the things I learned... they are a creative forse to be reckoned!!!!!

I order the Magnesium plates from St. Cloud Engraving and went to pick them up. I began the project by cutting the plates down on my trusty letterpress table saw!

Then I cut them, as people do with saws...

Then I mixed a lovely "dusty rose" color that I matched from the scrapbook paper Jamie was using to accent the invite.

After that I applied the ink to the C & P and let that baby ink itself all up

The locked in the plates and started rollin' (get it? Rollin'?)

Then, as luck would have it, things went exceptionally well and we printed all the pieces and Jamie put them all together in a lovely design, surely to make even Martha, green with envy...

The final crafty thing she did was stamping + glitter stuff + cool glitter stuff + ray gun looking-heat apperatus = wicked cool gold emboss leaves thing!

Last but not least we worked out the matter of payment and then I got a bonus, for a great attitude and unmatched hilarity on the job...

I got to add another bottle to my collection!!! Thanks Streine's, I gotta lotta drinkin tah dooooooo!