Two weeks at Penland Letterpress
I returned to Penland School of Craft earlier this month for a two week session in Experimental Typography, taught by Ingrid Ankerson (who, coincidentally, is my doppelgänger – people kept mistaking me for her!).
I spent two weeks setting type in an angle chase, mixing ink with transparent white, and becoming even more familiar with a Vandercook. Here are some of my experiments. All were done by setting wood or metal type and running the same piece of paper through the press repeatedly, changing the orientation/location of the paper or type each time.
Our studio assistant, Hannah Moog, also taught us how to pressure print with the Vandercook. I absolutely loved that. I foraged across campus for leaves and created compositions with masking tape. I made more of these than anything else, running a sheet of paper through the press to make the print, then another to capture the ghost.
By the end of the session, I had eschewed the experimental typography part of the workshop (sorry Ingrid!) and ended up making a pressure-printed and typeset book about Stowaway Seal, my and P's travel companion. A huge inside joke. I printed and assembled a small edition of 4. They were delightful to make!
Overall though, my time at Penland felt uneasy and disorientating. No shade to Ingrid and my classmates. They were all so wonderful and helpful. This was the wrong workshop for me at the wrong time. I signed up for the class earlier this year, and between then and my arrival in North Carolina, I was less enthused about letterpress. I didn't love where I was staying. I missed the textile studio dearly! Everything felt both exactly the same and completely different from my 6 week concentration last fall. There was a huge thunderstorm and a tornado watch in the middle of the session. I sliced off the tip of my nail and finger with an exacto knife. Where was that Penland magic? It was so disconcerting.
On my way out of Penland, I stopped in Asheville to view a show at Momentum Gallery called Uncommon Threads. It was SO GOOD and made me remember how much I liked art. I just missed textiles. Some pictures of work by Andrea Donnelly and Susie Taylor.
Year of Stories recent read: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell