PEOPLE OF THE PRESS: BECCA LEVI

Name: Rebecca Levi

Year of graduation: 2011

Major/Minor: Art Studio (Environmental Issues)

Where are you from? Boston, Massachusetts

How long have you been working at the Press? Since mid-junior year.

Briefly describe what you do at the Press:
I print posters for the Sound of Colorado College Student Radio station events, including student band and visiting artist live shows. I have also done various editions for CC Farm club events and opportunities, and other CC events.

What brought you to the Press?
A love for workmanship and craft. Immediately I was fascinated by the intimate relationship between a printer and her work. I had done many other forms of printmaking before, but letterpress presented a whole new world of understanding. The technical aspects and true sense of patience that letterpress demands are challenging and continually fascinating to me. The sense of respect that I have for other printers and the community that I feel I am now more a part of is also something I think brought me to the Press, and will keep me printing for the rest of my life.

What keeps you coming back?
What I said above sums it up pretty well...but besides the passion and fascinations, there’s always the deadlines.

How has working at the Press enhanced your overall education at Colorado College?
Time spent at the Press allows me to use my hands in a way that most classes do not. Though I am an art major, and am working with my hands a lot, there is a meditative and calming aspect to letterpress printing that has allowed me to be a more aware student and member of the CC community. However, I must say that printing can also be stressful--yet without those moments of stress I would have less appreciation for times of calmness and would probably get a lot less done. Letterpress has taught me about time management, stress management, working with other people to meet a deadline, learning how to be a better teacher and mentor, and learning how to work in harmony with the other printers in a small(ish) space.

How would you like to see the Press grow and change in the future?
I would love to see the Press grow to be something that the whole CC community knows about. Much of the time, people don’t know that the posters they see are letterpressed by hand, and it would be great to spread that basis of knowledge about the medium throughout the campus--not only so the printers can be more recognized--but so that we can share this awesome tradition with others who value hand made things. I am really looking forward to seeing the apprenticeship program flourish, and am loving seeing the classwork that gets done at the press. It would be super cool to see students hanging out at the Press that aren’t just printers...students who want a nice place to do work or hang out with a printer-friend. Mostly, I would like to see the press integrated into the CC students database of cool places on campus, because it really is one of the raddest places to be.

FUNK FACE AT THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

For this project, I made an edition of 31 posters, 10"x 20". The event is a student band (FUNK FACE!) playing live at the Morreale Carriage House on Friday the 25th at 10pm. Sponsored by The Sound of Colorado College Student Radio Station.

Above: Top: Printing the first color, and essentially laying the foundation for the poster in red. Photo taken by my assistant--Daniel Alvarado.

Above: Bottom: Printing the 2nd color: brown. On the left is the lock down on the press bed, on the right is the product hot off the press.

Carving for the third run. This is mid-carving, when I was done the block looked mostly lighter--this was in an attempt to shade the edges of the lines with the third color (dark purple) to add depth and movement.

Playing around with margin size and formatting. So many choices! Final poster is the one on the far right.

Above: all three stages of the poster. From right to left you can see the red, brown, and finally the purple phases of the image. This poster was done using linoleum blocks, and utilizes what is called a 'reductive' printing process, this meaning as I printed each run (or in this case, each color) I carved away more and more of the block. You can see in the first few images, I started out with solid red blocks to lay a base color, and then in the sixth image, that I was on my second stage of carving. There is one sentence of type at the bottom, set by hand in Nubian typeface, size 14, which was printed on the third run in purple. So in between each run, I went back to the carving block and changed where the press was going to lay down ink--for a grand total of three runs and two carving sessions!