Printers Without Margins:
Supporting Maine initiatives grantees with Social Justice Art
During 2021, artists from Pickwick Independent Press will be paired with six Maine Initiatives grantee organizations to design and create beautiful fine art prints that support each organization’s work. We’re so excited to assist your efforts to fight for racial and economic justice in Maine!
WHO WE ARE
Printers Without Margins is a program of Pickwick Independent Press: a community printshop in the SPACE Studios building on Congress Street in Portland. We are a collection of social justice printmakers in southern Maine who focus on creating work and collaborating with organizations and groups who are fighting for all forms of racial, economic, gender, and environmental justice.
What we can create for you
Our menu of options includes using screen printing, risograph printing, and/or letterpress printing to produce an edition of 50 - 200 prints of one of the following projects:
11x17 inch posters
4x6 inch postcards (as invitations, art prints for fundraising, etc.)
5x7 inch prints
A 4-6 page zine
A short video showcasing some of the examples of Printers WIthout Margins work!
Printers Without Margins Project Interest Form
Questions about the Project
How could fine art prints be useful to our work?
A set of beautiful prints (postcards, small prints, or posters) could be used as:
fundraising incentives,
event invitations,
communications with members of your organization,
advertisements for an event,
posters for a rally or protest,
donor communications,
sale items for fundraising,
and anything else you can dream up!
We’ve already designed something we were going to get printed at a copy shop. Can you make those as prints for us instead?
Each of our printmaking processes involves layering colors one at a time, so this project isn’t a good fit for print materials that haven’t been designed with the process in mind. Each print is made by hand, color by color, which creates a much more textured and art-quality specialty product than what you’d get from regular printing at Kinko’s.
This project also gives you the benefit and opportunity of working with an artist to develop something creative and original for your organization.
Can you make more than 200?
Because each printing process that we use means that each print is made by hand, we aren’t able to make more than 200 of one print per project.
What is screen printing?
Screen printing is a process where a stencil is applied to a mesh screen on a frame, and ink is pressed through the screen onto paper or fabric to create a print. The stencil is created by hand or with the aid of a photographic emulsion. Pickwick’s screen printing facilities can produce art prints, posters, cards, and more!
What is RISOGRAPH printing?
Risography is using an (in our case) obsolete Japanese duplicator machine to make prints. Risography is basically a cross between photocopying and screen printing. It is known for its unique bright color palette and economic printing capabilities. (And by “economic”, we mean: high volume, not-photo-quality, & unreliable registration.) Great for flyers, zines, small art prints, and cards.
What is letterpress printing?
Letterpress printing is a type of relief printing where wood and metal type, or custom wood, linoleum blocks or photopolymer plates are put into printing presses, rollers are inked, and paper is fed through the press to produce multiple copies of the same image or type. Pickwick’s letterpress facilities are small but mighty, allowing us to make art prints, posters, cards, small books, covers, and more!