Ben Blount
-Ben found the last year challenging and issues arising from both, covid, BLM and working from home
Ben saw rainbows starting to appear in Italy, which was ahead of the rest of the world in terms of the virus as it first spread. How could I contribute to this?
-He made posters and asked what can I do and for people to share their skills. At the bottom of the posters there was a line that said, 'we are all connected'
-During lockdown Ben found himself acting in a more neighbourly way to help others. Then made a poster and handed it to 250 neighbours. The posters were then put up around the neighbourhood by the recipients.
-White supremacy is.. posters. 18 different posters, 18 different responses. they were all exhibited in an exhibition called, eyes wide shut.
-Ben helped to develop a set of posters to push and promote people to vote. The posters were priced at $11.03 to reflect the date of voting and were also free to download
(I love that these posters were affordable and accessible to all whilst made an impact)
I asked..
Do you feel like the community spirit has kept pace more than a year on from the start of the pandemic?
Ben said he felt people were looking out for each other more and were more engaged with the community and what they could do.
Naomi Kent - Ink Squasher
Naomi makes type setting puzzles and has created new furniture for the curves and patterns to sit in
Whilst teaching during Covid, questioned, can printmaking be exclusive to students with money/time/no issues?
Pandemic gave reason and time to curate learning at home in different ways and open up printmaking to more.
Scott Cameron
Scott since graduating has been cutting new type using a CNC machine.
Erik Spiekermann of p98a has since been using and praising the skills of Cameron.
Scott uses beech wood, which is quite available and pear and all types of fruit trees to cut type.
Pete Gibbons
Pete is a member of the British Printing Society, he has recently over lockdown had time to create a tangram pack which he made for the recent wayzgoose.
He made a 404 error code print from small type works under Railton Press
Richard Ardagh - New North Press
Richard says it important to give access to people who have worthwhile messages to say, there are enough posters with music lyrics.
I asked Richard..
I remember in the online talk you did for the opening of the exhibition you said about working with younger individuals on creating posters and joining them in the conversation, have you had any further feedback on this and how the exhibition has developed voices with the younger participants?
There was a couple of girls who lived locally in Hackney and I reached out for them to gain insight to their experience of the forced grading (downgraded government policy over covid) to see their views. They made a very powerful poster that said, don't judge me by my postcode. There were so many others and I was really grateful we had such a diverse group involved and the power of letterpress process shows it flows out of them.
Comments