Tag: Alice Paul

November 21, 2016

Deeds (and Words)

As we lurch towards Thanksgiving, still dismayed at the outcome of the election and the steady appointment of very conservative white men as cabinet leaders, we are taking some time to look back and regroup before we move ahead. It’s difficult to find a silver lining in what feels like a crushing defeat, but we are hardly the first to walk this particular mile. Many of the women featured in Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color suffered incredibly disappointing losses. As the first woman to run for President on a major-party ticket, Shirley Chisholm turned over her 152 delegates to George McGovern, who was crushed by Nixon (who resigned in 1974 to avoid impeachment). Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony spent their lives working for the cause of suffrage, but both died before women got the vote. Alice Paul penned the Equal Rights Amendment, but never saw it passed—nor have we. (In 1972, the ERA was finally passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The original seven-year limit was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at that deadline, the ERA had been ratified by only 35 states, three states short of the 38 required.) All these losses are a reminder that we have so much work to do, and it’s going to be a lot harder than we ever thought.

This fall, we have traveled around the Pacific Northwest sharing the stories of the women in our book. It has been largely celebratory—preaching to the choir, and meeting other authors with whom we agree. We spent several days in Portland for a long run of events, including the opportunity to speak on a panel at Wordstock about boundary-breaking women with best-selling author Laurie Notaro and moderator Elly Blue. An event at Powell’s on Hawthorne let us share the stage with Rad Women Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl. The tour wound up with an appearance at Beach Books on the Oregon Coast, attended by Jessica’s mom and three sisters—an intense feminist posse. We even hit the road on election day, speaking to a standing-room-only crowd at the University of Puget Sound, everyone jubilant with the thought that we’d be celebrating that night.

A post-election event at Third Place Books last week was—in contrast—fairly somber, lightened by host Lish McBride (YA author of the fantastic Necromancer and Firebug series, who shared some tips for us newbie authors) and an earnest audience. Carole, an insatiable reader, asked us to sign a copy of our book to send to Donald Trump, thinking the abundant visuals would be welcome by a self-acknowledged non-reader. Another woman introduced herself as a Republican, sharing how she scolded her reading group, admonishing them that they could “still be Feminists and Republicans too.” We left that evening feeling recharged, having been told by many women there that they found some comfort in the gathering and were inspired by a message of action.

While it has been amazing to see our books in stores throughout the country, we are especially excited to have our work in Washington, DC. The National Museum of Women in the Arts will feature our broadsides through the inauguration, until March 17th. Knowing that others have tread this path before us, and still others are following behind us, both heartens and strengthens us. And more than ever, we are reminded that all of us have the right and responsibility to act, for our words and deeds have an impact on the future.

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February 28, 2012

Rose City gals

Seeing our stuff for sale at my all-time favorite bookstore makes me happier than I could ever see. If you’re in Portland, or you’re going to be, you can now find Dead Feminists postcards, lemonade journals and mini-prints at Powell’s City of Books! Last time I was there I found them in the Red Room.

Rumor has it they’re also in the Orange Room, but Powell’s is crazy-huge and charmingly labyrinthine, so I never did come across them there. Never fear, though: the myriad Info Desk staff are smart and lovely. They’ll point you in the right direction.

P.S. How cool is the description on that sign? I love these people.

May 16, 2009

Behind the scenes, part two

When it comes to letterpress printing, process is everything. And since that process is not always evident in the final product, I thought I’d share the technical aspects of the Dead Feminists series. Now, as I said in the last post, letterpress printing is traditionally done using metal or wooden type—or in the case of the photo above, relief images cut into type-high (.918 inches in the US and UK, in case you wondered) blocks. What Jessica and I have been doing, however, ain’t your grandpa’s letterpress. Thanks to a fairly new technology called photopolymer, we’re able to create our own relief plates right in the studio, without having to carve a block by hand or etch a plate with nasty chemicals. Photopolymer has also created a bridge between the traditional print shop and the modern digital world—as you’ll see in a moment. As far as the Dead Feminists go, Jessica and I still have both feet firmly planted in the traditional world—we just dip a toe into the digital realm now and again. Here, let me explain.

This is how it begins for each print: a pencil drawing, at full size. This is the stage where I not only design and illustrate the piece, but also start thinking about color choices: what the colors will be, what element will be which color, where the colors will overlap, how to make things work logistically. Now, this pencil layout isn’t enough to make a plate; for the photopolymer process to work properly, I have to translate the sketch into a solid black-and-white ink drawing.

After everything is pencilled in, I lay a sheet of vellum over the drawing and trace everything in ink.

Since each broadside is printed in two colors, each color means a separate run through the press. So as a result, I had to trace each color separately—being careful to stay as true as possible to the original drawing, since the colors had to line up exactly on press. If you were to line these two color separations up, on top of one another, you’d see how the colors will interact in the final piece.

Here’s what I mean. You can see the separation that will become the grey color in Tugboat Thea here, laid directly over the inked octopus below. This is definitely the old-fashioned way of doing things; there are plenty of digital methods of color separation. I guess I just prefer the physical connection between the pen and the hand—even despite the greater risk of screw-ups (as you can see if you look closely at the word “to” above).

Here’s where I dip that toe into digital waters. Once I’m finished inking, I scan the finished line drawings at a super-high resolution and load them into Photoshop. This is where I clean up any mistakes (ahem) and convert the drawings into bitmap (pure black and white, with no grey) files. Jessica sends me her written colophon, and I set the text digitally. Then I export everything to the proper file type, and send the files to a local service bureau to have film negatives made. So now we’ve gone from analog to digital and back again.

Here are the negatives for Tugboat Thea; grey separation on the top half of each one, teal on the bottom. As you can see, there aren’t any right angles in the bottom half (octopus) of the teal separation, so if you look closely you can see the little tick marks I added (above and to the right of the starfish) to aid with color registration. Those marks line up with a grid etched on the metal base we use to lock up the plates on press; once we had the plates exactly where we wanted them, I simply shaved those little tick marks off with an Xacto knife, so they’d no longer print. Real slick.

Anyway, photopolymer is a light-sensitive plastic that works just like making a contact exposure in a darkroom does. First I take a negative, place it face-down on an unexposed plate, and load both pieces onto the exposure tray of Jessica’s platemaker (which looks remarkably like an Easy-Bake Oven).

The negative is held flush with the plate by a layer of plastic and a vacuum system; the plate is exposed with UV light (some DIY enthusiasts also accomplish this using glass and a bright, sunny day, but photopolymer is awfully expensive to use in sketchy experiments in the cloudy Northwest).

Next I place the exposed plate in the wash-out unit, where it is scrubbed gently with soft bristle brushes in a tank of cool water. Everything that is exposed is hardened enough to resist scrubbing, while everything else dissolves away. (And turns the water a sickly shade of yellow. Mmmm….plastic byproducts. Still, it’s less toxic than many other printmaking techniques.)

What we’re left with is a raised plate ideal for relief printing. The real benefit of photopolymer is that it can reproduce nearly any image, and can hold an incredible amount of detail. I can transfer my drawings directly to the plate, without adding the laborious step of carving the image into wood or linoleum (backwards!), or etching copper with acid, for example. It’s not exactly an economical option for letterpress printing, but the results can be exquisite, and the possibilities are nearly endless.

Here’s our new octopus plate on press, all inked up and ready to print—it’s stuck to that gridded base with removable adhesive. The thickness of the plate and base together add up to exactly .918 inches. Ah, precision feels good.

And here’s how it looks on paper.

Here you can see the registration between the colors. This is the hard part—I’m sure that despite my best separation efforts and useful tick marks, Jessica is ready to tear her hair out whenever she sees what insane registration issues I’ve thrown at her this time. She’s not a master printer for nothing, though—tiny, 9-point colophon type? Large, solid color blocks? Exacting registration with no margin of error? She can handle anything.

Actually printing these broadsides is where all our careful planning and preparation goes right out the window. We can sketch and plot as much as we like, but many of our artistic decisions end up being made on the fly, right on press. Here Jessica is mixing ink for Prop Cake, according to some choices I suggested in our handy-dandy color recipe book.

You can see our original draw-down (color test) in the upper left corner. So far, so good.

The orange turned out exactly as we’d hoped, but when we started printing the pink separation, we hated the result. What looked so good in the draw-down lost all its contrast in the print. It was awful, trust me.

So Jessica changed the color right on press, until we were happy with it.

Here’s the finished product, all lined up in the drying rack.

If lining up the color areas is the hardest part of printing, keeping an eye on the ink consistency was probably the most fiddly. We’re using a very unusual paper for these prints—one made from recycled clothing—that is extremely “thirsty.” Not only are there inconsistencies in the paper that can throw off the overall quality of color; but we had to add ink to the press after every fourth or fifth print. As you can see, this is a pretty organic process—lots of variables, small corrections and compromises along the way. (And a whole lot of cursing and starting over.)

All of this is par for the course for a letterpress project—it’s an exacting, sometimes frustrating process, but that’s what we love about it. And the finished product … well, it’s like nothing else. Ah, letterpress, how we love thee.

May 14, 2009

Behind the scenes, part one

Holy cannoli, everyone! I’ve only just now come up for air—I’ve been buried under invoices, subscription forms, kraft mailers, and email print-outs, and Thea’s face is repeated all around me as reserved copies are spread all over the studio. Since I posted her here on Tuesday night the orders have just poured in, and over three-quarters of the edition is spoken for already. And Prop Cake is disappearing fast, too; we’re down to our last handful. Wow—just…wow. Thank you all so, so much.

Since Jessica and I talked about our process at the Tacoma Art Museum the other day, we thought it made sense to share that process with you, as well. But since there’s rather a lot to say on the subject, I’ve decided to break it into two posts.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Before I get into the technical details behind our series, I should probably share a little background information on letterpress and the art of the broadside. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the process, letterpress printing refers to a type of relief printing, where pressure is applied to a piece of paper placed over a raised form that is covered with a thin layer of ink. This pressure transfers the inked image onto the paper, and can be repeated to create a batch, or edition, of prints. The form can be a carved block of wood or linoleum; a raised plate made of magnesium, photopolymer (plastic) or other materials; or as the term letterpress implies, movable type made from metal or wood.

The innovation of printing words from individual letter blocks that can be rearranged and reused was actually invented by the ancient Chinese (seriously, what wasn’t originally invented in China? We owe those folks a whole heap), but the process that evolved into modern letterpress was most famously perfected over 500 years ago by Johann Gutenberg, of Gutenberg Bible fame. By the first half of the twentieth century, when more modern commercial printing came along, it was still common for printers to perfect their layouts using movable type and relief-cut images on a proof press (such as Jessica’s Vandercook below). They’d then use the resulting print to make more sophisticated plates for their more efficient and advanced commercial presses.

As commercial printing became more streamlined, the cylinder and platen proof presses (see photo of Jessica printing above) fell out of vogue, and eventually were no longer manufactured. Artists quickly saw their potential, however, and have adopted letterpress printing as an art form—using, refurbishing and maintaining this antique equipment to create original works of art.

Hand-in-hand with letterpress printing, the art of the broadside has also survived and evolved into a modern format. The term broadside means any single sheet used to convey information, often of a political kind—the great-grandpappy of the modern poster. While today the words broadside and poster are sometimes used interchangeably, the broadside has remained a favorite of the letterpress community because of its emphasis on typography and content (hey, we need an excuse to use all that gorgeous metal type!).

Jessica and I had this history in mind when we began the Dead Feminists series. As I said before, we never dreamed of starting down the path we’re on now; we just wanted to make a political and artistic contribution to the election. And to pay homage to the history of the broadside and the era in which each of our feminists lived, I designed each piece with historic broadsides and posters in mind. And to keep the series consistent, Jessica and I came up with a few rules of engagement:

1. Each poster has to feature a quote by a feminist. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a woman, but there are already plenty of posters highlighting the words of dudes, so we figured that one was covered already.

2. Said feminist must be deceased. (Hence the name.) You’d be surprised how many challenges that’s created for us.

3. Each quote is tied into a current sociopolitical issue or event. This is usually Jessica’s job, as she’s got a particular knack for finding relevant quotes.

4. The whole piece (except the colophon at the bottom, of course) is hand-drawn.

5. We try to stay away from well-worn tropes like “women can do anything men can do!” in favor of broader topics and concepts.

Who knows how long people will be interested in these things, or how many broadsides there’ll be in the series—all we can say is that we’re grateful for the response people have had, and we’re having way too much fun to quit now. The fun of art-making and the joy of the public response aside, the best part of creating this series has been exploring the lives and work of so many inspirational people. “Feminism” has become somewhat of a dirty word these days—mostly because of misconceptions. To us it’s a positive thing, and creating this series is our way of celebrating those who championed far more than just gender equality. Besides, we’d like to make our own contribution to our social history—and using the “power of the press” in the literal sense is the best way we know how.

Coming in part two: the nitty gritty details behind our process.

February 9, 2009

Prop Cake

Jessica Spring and I have been having a high ol’ time with our series thus far, celebrating positive changes happening around the country with the first two prints we created. At the same time, we were shocked and dismayed to learn that in the recent election, Proposition 8 had passed in California. We wanted to express our thoughts on the matter, so Prop Cake was born. The quote we chose made the issue seem like…well, a piece of cake:

There is nothing complicated about ordinary equality. —Alice Paul

The initial idea for this piece came almost immediately; Jessica looked over at me on a drive home from Seattle one day and said, “How about a big, pink wedding cake?” I grinned from ear to ear, and started sketching as soon as I got home. The design didn’t come together so easily, however. Everything I came up with looked more like an ad for Modern Bride than a political poster. Frustrated, I pushed my sketches aside and took a few days off to think.

And then I went to San Francisco.

It was my first trip there, and my first thought as I passed through the residential neighborhoods, with rows and rows of candy-colored stucco houses, was “Wow, these things look like big frosted cakes!” And the lightbulb turned on, at last. I spent three days walking, driving, and riding around the neighborhoods, camera and sketchbook in hand. I made pages and pages of notes on architectural detailing.

When I arrived home, I got right to work. This time, finally, it all came together.

Alice was right—it really was a piece of cake.

Prop Cake: No. 3 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 108
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Alice Stokes Paul (1885 – 1977) continued the work of the suffragists, and helped form the National Woman’s Party to demand equal rights. The NWP engaged in militant demonstrations and the first picketing of the White House; these “Silent Sentinels” were mobbed and imprisoned, then force-fed while attempting a hunger strike. Public and media support for their cause grew and by 1920, women secured the vote. Alice Paul continued to work on their behalf, writing the original Equal Rights Amendment in 1923.

UPDATE: poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the shop!