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Adventures in Letterpress:
Ready, Set…Type Setting
Creating Fine Art Prints and Hand-bound Artist’s Books on a 100-year-old Platen Press
In the late summer of 2018, visual artist Sonja Horoshko and I were sitting in her enchanted garden in SW Colorado, sipping white wine amidst the rose bushes, dreaming up another collaboration. This delightful conversation was the seed of the 18-month long “Paper Wings” collaboration which resulted in a series of 12 limited edition artist prints and 6 hand-bound artist manuscripts which are now available for purchase to collectors internationally.
The project was started in 2019 and completed over 18 months; first through a 12-month artist residency with Mancos Common Press in Mancos, CO, and completed during a week-long artist residency at Willowtail Springs Nature Preserve in Mancos, CO.
At the time, Mancos Common Press was restored enough to let artists use the renovated presses for fine arts projects. You can watch the story of how the press was restored on PBS. When we arrived as the first artists to have a working residency there, things were still being sorted, discovered, and learned about this lost form of printing.
