Buffalo Architecture Prints at WNYBAC

Buffalo, NY is home to some of the greatest American architecture of the late 19th and early 20th century. There are constant reminders of this fact, especially in downtown, and here at WNYBAC we are surrounded on all sides by the remnants of our city's great and impressive past.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation conference is being held this week in Buffalo, celebrating all of the extraordinary architecture that the city has to offer and expressing the need to preserve important landmarks. Coincidentally, over the past year Chris Fritton and Rich Kegler from WNYBAC have been working hard creating beautiful prints reflecting our city's most impressive architectural successes. These 2-dimensional homages to local landmarks reflect not only Buffalo's attention to preserving its buildings, but also its intention to preserve its printing legacy as well.

WNYBAC uses vintage metal and wood type, printers' ornaments, and decorative cuts to create these prints. Each print is 3 or more colors and measures 11" x 17". Occasionally the backs of printing blocks are used to achieve textures and unexpected results from found materials. The pieces are arranged in a press to illustrate a stylized version of each building with proportions and sympathetic colors. Each print is hand-printed on a variety of papers (some etching papers, some fine cover stock papers) in a limited edition from a unique series of forms. Each print is signed and numbered. They are priced at $40.00 each. Special limited editions are available in our shop at WNYBAC, and as always, online at our Etsy shop.

Prints in this series include: Buffalo City Hall, Grain Elevators, Kleinhans Music Hall, Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House, Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building, The Avant Building, and the NY Central Train Terminal.

Books and Ritual: Works by Hyeyoung Shin

The (FREE!) opening reception for

Books and Ritual: Works by Hyeyoung Shin

is this Friday, October 14th from 6-9pm at WNYBAC!

Refreshments, a cash bar,

and a good time will be provided

This show will feature works by Korean printmaker, book artist, and installation artist Hyeyoung Shin. The exhibit will consist of recent works including artist's books, paper sculpture, drawings, and prints. Shin aims to create a structural and ambiguous space through which viewers are invited to recall and create memories within the space of her art. Shin works with the medium of books and paper due to their ability to hold and share experiences and memories, with the ultimate goal of creating a human relationship between the artist and the viewer. The themes of bottles and fish are recurring throughout her work; the bottle, according to Shin, represents the body, and the fish act as a metaphor for the chaotic yet graceful way in which emotions and memories shift and change.

The works featured in this exhibit will showcase Shin's careful attention to detail and process, as well as the wide range and great depth of her work as a book artist and printmaker.

This show will be on view from October 14th through December 10, 2011

Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 12-6pm

Type Truck at WNYBAC

Tomorrow evening from 6-8pm we will have the pleasure of hosting a visit from Kyle Durrie of Power and Light Press and her Type Truck! As part of her nearly year-long Moveable Type project that will bring her across the US, Kyle will open her mobile printing studio to the public outside the Book Arts Center on September 15.

Read more about Kyle's journeys on her blog, type-truck.com, and stop by for a tour and a chance to pull a print between 6 and 8pm!

Don't forget your appetite - Lloyd Taco Truck will be outside WNYBAC selling their delicious tacos, etc. throughout the event!

Fall Interns Needed! Apply now...

WNYBAC is looking for Fall interns; this is the perfect real-world learning opportunity comm design, printmaking, library science, museum studies, arts management, art conservation, and education students. Blind obedience a must. Willingness to get dirty a plus. No, to be honest, it's required.

Come learn letterpress, analog arts, and how things work in the real world! Contact info@wnybookarts.org for more information.

THANK YOU ERNST PRINTING! More Adventures in Wood Type

Our wood type acquisition has progressed nicely, but we wanted to update the public and highlight one particular contributor: Ernst Printing. Ernst Printing is located in Buffalo, and it is currently run by Dick Ernst; the shop has been open close to 40 years. We acquired our Vandercook 219 from Ernst, and when we went looking for wood type, Dick was nice enough to oblige. In total, we obtained 22 drawers of type from Ernst, varying in size from 72-line to 6-line, split about 50/50 between gothics and romans.

Dick is a union printer, and he takes in very few jobs now - mostly raffle tickets and other numbered forms. His shop has two Kluges, a Heidelberg, a couple offset presses, a gas-powered Ludlow machine, and a huge paper shear. Walking into the shop gives you a great feeling; it's very open, things are neat and clean, and Dick is welcoming and friendly. We are really happy we had this opportunity to engage with him again, and to continue the legacy of Ernst Printing through WNYBAC!

Check below for pictures of the shop and some of the wood type.

Richard Tuttle::8 Poems

We've been waiting a while to make this announcement, but now that the project is underway, we're happy to reveal: Mohawk Press is designing and printing a book for American artist Richard Tuttle! Richard paid us a visit a few months ago (at the behest of State University of New York at Buffalo Art Galleries) and intimated that he'd be interested in having us produce a book for a short series of poems he'd been working on. A few weeks later, we received a hand-written letter and a small maquette to use as a model. Since then, Richard Kegler and Chris Fritton have been hard at work designing, corresponding, and finalizing the details of this unique project.

Tuttle was visiting Buffalo as part of a larger project curated by UB Art Galleries Center for the Arts; Artpark: 1974-1984 was a retrospective look at a local artspace and cultural phenomenon. Tuttle chose a three-pronged approach to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a sculptural work he'd created for Artpark (that was almost immediately vandalized): he made a series of smaller sculptures that were placed around Western New York, produced a newspaper documenting this distribution called the Artpark Sun, and finally, commissioned this handmade book of poems from WNYBAC.

We'll reveal more about the book as it progresses, but here are some of the specs: the final book will measure a mere 3.5" x 5.5"; it will feature an inside cover and inside back cover made of handmade pigmented paper cast from wood blocks cut by Tuttle; it will have 8 pages, entirely letterpressed, each featuring a single poem and a portion of a "continuous line" that undulates throughout the book; it will be hand-sewn and bound in an edition of 200. The book has been made possible by Sandra Firmin and Robert Scalise's tireless liaising, as well as private funding secured through UB Art Galleries. This the first collaboration between WNYBAC and UB Art Galleries.

See photos of mock ups, pieces in progress, presswork, and read a further description below!




More on the continuous line: the book itself is an exploration of the line as object, the line as concept, the line as boundary, and the line as path. The line, as object, is fundamental for the delineation of all things spatial - it is the crux of dimensionality. The line as concept is infinitely variable, and infinitely employable. The line as concept is strong enough to subsume almost all definitions/descriptions, even those so abstract that they always appear to be analogies (i.e. time, love, justice, truth) The line as boundary denotes a transitional space, but if the line has body or weight, it acts as an apron, or entrance into this other space, or contrarily, an obstacle. It can be an invitation, an inclination, or an obstruction. The line as path is akin to the final cause, that string which pulls but has no capacity to push, that which leads but only does so because it possesses an inherent quality of continuity.

Kickstarter Ending!!!

This is it - 18 hours left in our Kickstarter campaign to save wood type. We are grateful to everyone who already donated, and we wanted to let you know that when we put out the call,
some wood type was donated as well! So before we use our funds to acquire new wood type and print some amazing specimen sheets, we've already been integrated those donations into our collection. We'll be making specimen sheets with these typefaces as well, and those will go out to our Kickstarter backs too...just to give you a little taste, here are some photos of these early arrivals :-)
There's still a chance to get in on this opportunity!!! Donate now!

A Fine Specimen

We've been working the presses overtime lately at WNYBAC printing tons of new specimen sheets, gig posters, cards, and architectural prints. If you haven't been down in a while, it's really time to visit and check out all of the phenomenal work. Pictured below, a specimen sheet of an as-yet-unidentified brush script wood type font. It was designed with nostalgia in mind - don't you remember learning cursive on that amazing two-color ruled paper?

Fresh off the Press

Two new cards were printed at WNYBAC this week -

The perfect way to say I hate you:

"I Really Hate You" is printed in magenta ink on silver and textured off-white paper.

A traditional globe printed from a vintage block:

The globe is printed in dark grey-blue ink on cream with deckled edge or heavy grey paper.

Both cards are available for $3 each in our store (that's just $2.40 for members!)

Brand New Printing Equipment!

WNYBAC is pleased to announce the acquisition of what may prove to be our most invaluable piece of printing equipment: the Fisher-Price Arts and Crafts Printer's Kit. This exquisite specimen is from 1980; it is brand new, and has never been used. The 'composing frame' holds up to eight individual pieces of rubber 'type', and the kit comes with 6 sheets of colored paper to print on!

More on this when our first projects with this beauty develop. Until then, here are the pics: