I got an invitation to participate in a group show called Yea Big! at the Stumptown Printers in Portland a few weeks ago. I really love this print shop, their work is remarkable, genuine and I love the die cut packaging designs they sell. I was pretty excited to hear they would have a show of little prints in these badass victorian lookin' pop up frames, like the ones you find in stacks of old photos at the antique store..

When I got the email invitation I said yes right away, I planned on sending an already finished edition I did in August. When I dug around in my flat files, it turned out that there were only 26 'keepers' because of smearing when I put them away for storage still wet (oops) and I needed an edition of 30.

This led to some hand wringing - I was not entirely sure if the inks would dry in time (a week) on a print before I needed to send them off. The artist's stone lithography inks I use have wonderful coverage & depth of color compared to  the rubber based inks (not to mention also being light-fast and archival)

The drawbacks are long dry times and multiple layers have to be printed at carefully timed intervals, sometimes with additives, so the inks behave properly on top of each other. It's not too difficult, but there is a long learning curve and sometimes things don't go as planned when the day is extra humid or it gets too cold (or hot) as the ink is very reactive to studio conditions.

I printed up a three color little robot on the Pilot press in an afternoon, I used some reducer on the first two layers and they firmed up by dinner time, when I printed the last layer of black. Everything worked out.

 The show opened on Thursday, Nov. 17th and it's running for a couple months until Jan.6th. I didn't go to the opening as my week was already full...You should check it out if you're in Portland.