Wednesday, December 1st, 2010.

Well, its been quite the while since we last meant to blog…but in all fairness, we can proudly say we’ve been really busy! Maybe then, blogging this time of year is pretty appropriate, as we’ve shut down for the year and can now take stock of what we’ve done.

This has been a stellar year for inPrint as we undertook what for us was pretty heavy programming in exhibitions, considering we don’t have our own space. We got our first taste with Stomping Grounds, held graciously by Alternative Grounds, kicking off our “InStore” series. “InStore” was inspired by the fact that we do not have our own space quite yet, but we didn’t want to let that stop us! We also felt that it was a great way to build community ties with our city by getting involved with local businesses, particularly as so many of them have been generous with inPrint when it came to fundraisers and supporting our other events. And we learned a lot from that first show.

Then came RePrint, generously hosted by Love Me Two Time Vintage Boutique. This show to date has held the most artists, and was pretty stressful in the planning but well worth it. We had wonderful attendance at our reception, and this show become our first exhibition where artists’ work has been sold! We were quite excited that we were able to provide an opportunity for emerging artists to get their work sold. Congratulations–and really, all the work received such praise throughout the run, that we would have been proud of this show whether anyone bought anything or not.  In fact, some of the work is still up, so if you’d like to take a peak and do some holiday shopping, I’m sure Kim at LMTT would love to see you! This was also the first show where we had an international artist send us work, coming all the way from Ireland! We were pretty happy to extend a welcome across the globe.

Quickly after, we had to get in gear for Culture Days, which proved to be an exciting and important event for the development of inPrint. For the first nation wide Culture Days, we held a Print-In with various artists, doing live demos on the second floor of restaurant Fire on the Eastside. We also hung some work, which included lovely prints both locally and internationally (again!)–this time coming all the way from Dubai. We got to meet some new artists and really, it was a wonderful feeling to get to print in a group setting again–it only strengthened our resolve to open up our own studion–and soon! We also got quite lucky with this event–we were contacted by the Ontario Arts Council to do a live demo at Yonge and Dundas Square the day before our own event to kick off Culture Days celebrations. We silkscreened posters with the Culture Days logo all day long. It proved to be one of our favourite inPrint moments ever–we had such enthusiasm from both the CD volunteers and attendees alike! We even had a couple of guys take off their tshirts and screen them! Too much fun! We also made a few contacts, wherein the Collective got hired to print tshirts for a local non-profit (all proceeds for the job went to directly to fund future inPrint activities–of which we’ve already got a few in the works for 2011!). We met so many people, and we were quite proud to take part in something like Culture Days. We hope to do it again next year!

Then came last but not least our affiliated exhibition with Printopolis, InPrint @ Haus: A Small-Print Show. Again, we got to participate this year in the first-ever symposium on printmaking held by the Open Studio. We did this call for submissions quite informally–we invited past participants to make work, with the caveat that they had to provide a write up on how they managed to make their work fresh out of being in school, or being trained. We were happy to say that this show, like our previous ones, also included work from international artists, as well, we also sold some art. The owners of HAUS graciously hosted the reception, taking a load off of us, and it was truly a fantastic night! All in all, inPrint had a great year, and we’re feeling very encouraging about our future prospects. We hope you’ll join us next year! In the meantime, stay tuned as we develop more shows, take some old projects off the shelf and finally get them running and welcome new artists to our group!

Thanks everyone, SO MUCH, for your continued support of inPrint. We really appreciate it!

Happy Holidays, and see you in the New Year!

Maureen.
xoxo

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010.

InPrint is happily looking forward to a busy summer. We’ve got our vintage show in the works (DEADLINE ALERT:JULY 2nd TO SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION), we’re gearing up for Culture Days with our PRINT-IN, which we hope you’ll join us, as well as a number of other things.

Maaike and I have been learning the art of metal printmaking at the Devil’s Workshop the past few mondays, which is giving us some ideas of what we can do with our home studio (and hopefully loads of beautiful jewelry). We’ve both also signed up for AWOL’s SquareFoot show, which should definitely light a fire under our printy bums to make some new art. Very exciting! And a busy summer, indeed.

Don’t forget to keep up with our Call for Submissions page and submit your work to our shows! We may be busy, but we always make time to get together over a glass of wine for art (hint hint: we will have a liquor license at both of our upcoming shows! muahahaha!). And hey, have a peak at our press section too. We had some kind words and photos from SNAP Bloor-West about our first curated show, Stomping Grounds. Huzzah!

See, I told you we were busy

Maureen.

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010.

Stomping Grounds is in its last week!  The set-up went well, and we thank everyone who trekked out in the rain for coming to the opening. So we hope anyone who couldn’t make it then gets one last chance to grab a coffee at Alternative Grounds and have a look-see. It was wonderful meeting some of the artists, and we’re pretty damn proud of how the show looks. We can’t wait for the next one so don’t forget to check out our calls for submission–this one is Vin*tage themed. We think its a rich and fun and open topic to delve into and look forward to your submissions…we’ve already got some good ones coming in! Got some old photos you want to reinvent, or an old press you’re dying to try out? Send us a line with what you’re doing, we’d love to consider for our next show.

In the meantime, we’re working away on getting our studio functional. Home exposing certainly makes me miss York’s studio, but its nice to have something right in my house that I can share with InPrint and keep us printing. The tables Val made us are great, and the gocco set, if not for the discontinued supplies (ps does anyone know where I can get a supply of masters for a gocco set?) was certainly a nice surprise in terms of what it could do. The baby press is here too! Just sourcing out a table we can put her on, then she’s getting a name and some plates to print. We’ve been chatting with some print ladies so we’re hoping an art jam party is in the near future. We’ll blog about it here when it happens and show you what we’re up to.

Til then,

Maureen.

***

Saturday, March 13th, 2010.

Busy, busy, busy.

Tables are in, the baby press is on its way, a reorganization of the space in my house that we’re working in are all on the list of BUSY that we’ve been. Organization and promotion of “Stomping Grounds”, our first curated show are well underway as I continue to mine online and social media for its potential. PLUS we’ve got the new call for the next show already under way, a small general call for volunteers, and the continued struggle for me to figure out the wonderful world of website maintenance; first up, figuring out how to resize and retouch our photos for the gallery section, then getting those goshdarn podcasts up and out. We’re hoping to record some more artists talking about their work soon too. And then hopefully, some art writing can emerge. Such a lovely list of things to do…and of course, lest we forget to add to the list, a crop of art ideas to sort through…

Now to get printing.

Maureen.

***

Thursday, January 21, 2010.

So we’ve taken a bit of a break since the holidays from the website but we’ve been squirreling away behind the scenes, reorganizing ourselves a bit. We’re hard at work on our first ever curated show for a new series of emerging printmaker exhibitions called ‘In-Store’–the inaugural event to be held at Alternative Grounds! We’ve gotten some pretty fabulous submissions so far, but we’d love to keep seeing more work, so don’t forget you have til the end of February to submit! Have a look-see over at our Calls For Submissions page for more info.

Also, I’ve been trying to figure out this whole business of podcasting, so I can get the recordings of our artist talks up on the page. We’re planning to set up a ‘Conversations’ page that archives the works and/or writings about emerging artists and printmakers, as a research resource accessible to all. Who knows what this may turn into, but we’re excited to collect your words and keep them safe on our site. Look for that (hopefully) soon, as well as a small gallery section (once I figure out how to properly resize all our photos–computer literacy is not my forte but I’m learning!).

But I guess the thing I’m most personally excited about is the fact that our lovely volunteer Val is building us a couple of new screen tables to put up in my house (our current art-making space until the glorious day in the future that we can open a real studio) in the next week or two. My personal artmaking abilities have gotten a bit rusty over the year due to the intensity of my school program (which was not art-related), and its time to get back in shape. Our baby press should be making its way into my home sometime in the next two months and I’ve got a print gocco set just sitting there as well. I’m planning to host a few art-making and writing groups in my home with some friends starting in February, and will be sure to blog about the exciting things that tends to happen when people get together to create, so the website and the art-making of InPrint will soon be a flurry of activity!

Special thanks to Val for her kick in the ass that her screen tables is going to give me and Maaike!

And I’m really looking forward to Maaike’s curation at Alternative Grounds. It’s always great to work with new artists.

xoxo

Maureen.

***

Friday, November 27th, 2009.

THANKS TO ALL WHO CAME OUT TO PRINT OR TREAT! We had a blast! Thank you to all our sponsors, and everyone who came out and supported us! Congrats to Chiara-Anne, who won the best costume prize: the Zombie Tramp Printer! We’re looking into our first baby press, and setting up screen tables, so some art jams should be coming up!

Special thanks to our volunteer Rob, for manning the door for us and Jeremy for tending our bar. As well, thanks to Derooted, Mill Street Brewery, Cryptic Canvas, Love Me Two Times Vintage Boutique, Precious Pink Designs, Fire on the Eastside, Woolfitt’s Art Enterprises, Sonniea Gray and Alternative Grounds for all their work and support in creating this event.  As always, it was lovely to have you on board.

INPRINT ART SHOW SUBMISSIONS WANTED!

We were almost forgetting: we’ve got an inPrint art show coming up at Alternative Grounds in April 2010! It’s not a huge space, but we’re looking for submissions from friends and other print lovers alike! Of course, it will be limited to print media… If you’re interested fire an email off in our direction with a jpeg file of the piece you’re thinking about submitting. Include along with the jpeg a title, dimensions, and a brief statement about your piece. The email should go to info[at]inprintstudio[dot]ca.

Stay tuned for upcoming solo shows and events!

Maaike

***

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009.

THE MAKING OF A ZOMBIE TRAMP PRINTER!

Hallowe’en’s just around the corner! I can’t lie, this is totally my favourite day of the year. It’s just bursting with creativity and CANDY! And a flurry of printmaking, hence this post…

As part of the Print or Treat festivities, our fabulous Ms. Maaike B.W. has retooled her Tramp Printer series (which you can read all about under our Press section link to Mondo) for complete zombification.  The Limited Edition Zombie Tramp Printer will be featured as a the prize for BEST COSTUME this October 31st!

While the original print series were one layer lithographs, for this set, Maaike took to silkscreening. This hand-tinted varied edition took quite well to the technique change, and proved to us what is possible when funds are tight and the lack of a fully equipped studio looms over you.

We had a great time printing it, so we hope whomever takes it home loves it as much as we do!

We laughed, we screened, it was a great time for everyone…though registration isn’t quite so fun when you don’t have the proper table clamps to keep your screen down. But I do want to give my living room a shout-out for being a great convertible space to print in! And a double shout out to the mounds of newsprint and archival paper Maaike and I seemed to have accumulated over our years at York.

In the meantime, check out our facebook event page for a sneak peek! Though, of course we won’t reveal the finished print until the eve’n of Print or Treat! Muahahahahahaha! See you there…

Spooky Print Love!

Maureen.

***

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009.

So we’ve been getting in gear for InPrint’s hallowe’en party, Print or Treat! Thanks to our creative partners over at Derooted we’ve been up to some fun stuff trying to get the word out there about our art party. Check out the making of our hallowe’en baggie campaign,courtesy of graphic designer extraordinaire Simon Rojas:

Tedious work (as you can see) but totally fun. (That’s totally my arm in the corner). Check our twitter (@inprintca) or our facebook event page to see pictures of the various spots we’ve been leaving them in!

Gotta give a shout-out to Derooted for all their great work in helping us throw what we know is gonna be a fabulous art party!

Print love!

xoxo

Maureen.

***

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009.

Welcome to the InPrint’s new blog section!

We thought the blog might be a fun and interactive way to use the site to talk about art and the processes that InPrint members go through whenever we plan an event or make new work.  Twitter and facebook are great tools, but here we can go into a little more depth about what we’re doing and gives us another web-based avenue to express ourselves.

We hope to experiment more with this section along with the rest of the page as we are developing our learning curve (graciously designed and started by the fellows at Derooted) and we figure out how to work this thing. We hope you’ll join us along for the ride.

Print love!

xoxo

Maureen.