Creative Clean Up
People of Print article:
Letterpress artist Phil Gambrill of Fresh Lemon Print is driven by his desire to experiment with type and ink. His posters are large format typographic experiments, born from printing woodblock type over multiple layers of inked backgrounds. However, his experimentation doesn’t stop after he has completed a print run.
“One of the more arduous tasks of traditional printing is the wash up at the end of the day” describes Phil, “each letter needs to be de-inked, the rollers need to be cleaned and the inking area has to be prepared for the next day“. This is when he continues his creative process. Phil adds solvent to the excess ink on the block and mops it up with various discarded test prints. He then overprints them with the inked up type still on the press. These experimental prints are then hung to dry, to be added to another day. Phil hates wastage and doesn’t discard any of his misprints, and instead puts them in a draw to be brought to life another day; nothing goes to waste.
He discovered this additional creative process whist cleaning up the left-over ink with old newsprint paper. Phil stumbled upon the wonderful abstract effects that were created when solvent interacts with ink and are then left to dry. Wondering what to do next with these ‘curious sheets’, he started to run them through the press to clean off the excess ink. As type was introduced, unique interactions of words emerging out of wet ink ignited the sheets and transformed, the once redundant prints, into intriguing typographical creations.
