This Thursday, July 11th, Wet Paint will host an evening event that’s part Try-It, part meet-and-greet and part book signing with our friend Ruthann Godollei. Hot off the press is Godollei’s new book, “How to Create Your Own Gig Posters, Band T-Shirts, Album Covers, & Stickers: Screenprinting, Photocopy Art, Mixed-Media Collage, and Other Guerilla Poster Styles”, published by Voyageur Press. If you’ve ever wanted to print party announcements, your soccer team’s t-shirts, or posters for a band, this book is for you. Although Godollei is the printmaking professor at our neighboring institution, Macalester College, this book isn’t just for artists and students. It covers all DIY topics and media and will help anyone create their own prints. In fact, Ruthann will be demonstrating cutting your own stencils out of paper during this Thursday night event. Don’t stay away because you don’t have your own printing press. Don’t stay away because you can’t draw. She will assist you in overcoming any barriers to creating your own multiples in no time. And neighborhood folks, don’t be shy. You will most likely know Ruthann from her green stenciled Volvo art car. If nothing else, make sure to stop in so you can hear her many stories from a recent European tour with the group of artists called “Travels in Typography.” They printed their way through Europe, even at the Gutenberg Museum.
It is exciting to see the growing interest in printmaking happening far beyond the walls of art departments in colleges and museums. Our smart phones and many image sharing programs online have given everybody images to work with and printmakers seem to be embracing the general population’s interest in their mediums. Maybe that’s because printmakers have had to share all along. They have shared equipment, and they have naturally had to help each other in a group effort to produce a print compared to the more isolated processing of making a painting.
So join Ruthann and Wet Paint this Thursday evening. Hear some stories. Get a book. Cut a stencil. Take part in some community and some fun.