I’m sure that most of you know by now that Melanie is a professor at MCLA (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts). She teaches an array of fine arts/printmaking classses, and this summer PRESS is home to her Experimental Letterpress class. This amazing class teaches traditional letterpress processes including setting and printing type and relief image making as well as more experimental techniques like pressure printing and mixed printing techniques.

We have currently been working on a really cool process that Melanie learned at Penland School of Crafts. It’s called a sandragraph. As stated by Harry Reese,the creator of the sandragraph, it is a low-relief collagraphic printmaking procedure in which prints are directly off surfaces that have been covered by cloth and acrylic polymer gel medium, mounted type-high and locked up on the flat bed of a printing press, and printed in a traditional letterpress or relief manner. We even did a post about them earlier in the summer (found here).

These are examples of the plates that we used to print our Sandragraphs.

Here’s some the prints in progress!

The best part about this process is the fact that none of us knew how the sandragraphs would actually look! We all had a blast figuring out what the next step would be for our prints, and I can’t wait to see how everyone’s work turns out. As the summer continues we’ll be posting more student work from the Experimental Letterpress class. Some of it will even be showcased in the End of Summer exhibition so keep your eyes and ears open for details! Thanks for stopping in!