Artist, letterpress operator, and gallery owner
EVENT: Print Show the First at Cracked Compass Productions (2139 Third Ave, 770-5900). Opening reception Fri May 18, 6:30-9 pm.
Where does the gallery name come from? "It comes from a letter van Gogh wrote to his brother. He was talking about his art and he wasn't sure how things were going and he said, 'Well, my conscience is my compass, even though I know it doesn't work properly.' It stuck with me."
And you'll be showing all prints? "That's my big love. It's what I studied and fell in love with. I love the old [letterpress] machinery. I love the look of the paper and the ink. There are so many different things you can do, and I wanted to present a broad range of stuff. The first show is mostly women--it just turned out that way."
All the pressmen I've ever met are men. "It's totally macho. When I was in Wisconsin I was working with Walter Hamady--he's a big name in letterpress and papermaking, and there's this whole system of supplication that you have to go through to prove that you can do it, you can withstand it all. It's traditionally a very macho thing to do. But there's an undercurrent of a lot of women getting into letterpress. So, it's really opening up, because women don't understand the need to hide the information. But there was a lot of paranoia from a lot of the old printers when the technology started changing. They didn't want to see what they loved be ruined by computers."
