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Wood type continues to draw interest as the film Typeface, about the revival of the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, premieres around the globe. And on April 22nd, it was screened in Peoria, with a talk by director/filmmaker Justine Nagan. It also provided an opportunity to make use of our own collection of wood type, creating a poster using collagraph textures and some metal type printed on our Vandercook SP-15.

Letterpress and other tactile media continue to garner more attention these days from designers and clients alike. People respond to the very qualities that differentiate these objects and processes from the plethora of digital media. Designers find the the hands-on processes refreshing after working exclusively in virtual space for so long.

Three letterpress artist books by Robert Rowe, December 2009

I have completed three book projects as part of the residency at the Prairie Center of the Arts. These were included in an exhibit at the Hartmann Center Gallery.

I have been working also to help the Prairie Center to set up a letterpress studio. It now has three presses, metal and wood type, and a nice clean studio for binding and other processes. Through cooperation between Bradley’s College of Communication and Fine Arts, the Prairie Center of the Arts and the Peoria community, we may well be on our way to a having a book and fine print center here in Peoria that could offer community classses, host resident artists, publish, and curate and host exhibitions and other book-related events.

Starting a new blog thread here, as I join a collaborative project to create multiple iterations of a single poetic text by Kevin Stein, employing new media, animation, time-based, interactive, electronic, performance and print.  The poem is “on being a Nielson Family” and is, in part, a reflection on how we define ourselves by our relationship with media.

I have been printing poetry for over a year using letterpress, but for even longer, i have been exploring text in animation, with and without audio; first with Flash, then with AfterEffects. It will be interesting to see how these elements come together and interact in one space.