My Printmaking Game (or) “Honey, I shrunk my press!”

by Bill H. Ritchie

The new millennium meant it was time for change. Bill Ritchie had been known as a printmaker for two generations, but new technologies impinged themselves on his art and craft. Digital printmaking, for example, meant his skills with traditional plate-making and printmaking were - if not obsolete - less relevant to what the world really needed. Yet, he loves printmaking with real materials and simple, hand-operated printing presses. He hadn’t had his own press for fifteen years, so he designed and had one built. This led to a surprising series of events and opened a new chapter in his life. Mainly it was because he “shrunk” his press from a three-by-six foot, 300-pound etching press to a miniature that fit in a small box and weighed a little over ten pounds. The rest of the decade filled with new opportunities and challenges. His friends in the art world must have thought he’d changed careers, and so it would seem if judged by the past century’s norms. However, new channels were opening up, thanks to a decade of the Internet. It could be that the Mini Halfwood Press was a kind of artwork of its own offering new possibilities to artists (and art teachers) over sixty.

Kindle Edition

Published February 20, 2019