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Posted by Jason Urban on October 8th, 2009 | 
Boxcar Press is a Syracuse-based letterpress founded by Harold Kyle. Aside from being a pretty large operation that does quality work, Boxcar is noteworthy as an environmentally progressive letterpress. Their green mission and commitment to sustainable printing seems so timely that we decided to ask Harold Kyle a few questions. Our interview follows….
JU: Let’s start at the beginning…. Why letterpress? What’s the appeal of letterpress to you and what’s the appeal to your customers?
HK: For me the appeal is wide-ranging: the precisely machined cast iron; the endless problem-solving; the lineage of techniques stretching back to Gutenberg’s workshop; the warm community of printers carrying the torch; the crisp bite of type into paper; the beautiful letterpress papers. And it’s true, I also really
JU: You started out in Minneapolis but ended up in Syracuse. What role does the city of Syracuse play in defining the identity of Boxcar Press?
HK: Well, we could afford running a business here! The rust belt has treated us well by keeping expenses down and keeping us focused on our work. Since we bootstrapped everything, this was crucial. Living and working in Syracuse is so much easier than in any of the other cities that we’ve called home. We toil away inside one of Syracuse’s large old warehouses, which has today become a lively center for artists and graphic professionals—we love sharing cheap space with kindred spirits. Syracuse is a down-to-earth, modest city without flashiness but with a lot of history and know-how. We try to carry these values into our everyday work.
Continue reading Interview: Boxcar Press’ Harold Kyle
Posted by Jason Urban on September 10th, 2009 | For those of you wishing that printmakers could harness the power of water for something other than soaking paper, allow us to introduce Aquascript. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to merge dot matrix printing technology and water. Here’s a brief Discovery Channel film about German artist Julius Popp and his piece, Bit.Fall, a waterfall of internet-generated information installed a few years back at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University of St. Louis.
Here’s one more…
And if that isn’t enough “hydro-printing” for you, CLICK HERE to see the advertising potential in harnessing nature’s bounty. Because advertising doesn’t seem so crass when it comes in the form of water! “Engage! Activate! Interact!”
Posted by RL Tillman on August 19th, 2009 | “Ink-Cartridge Lamp, Cyan 220ml K3″ by boxlightbox:
Also available in light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, matte black, light black, and chandelier:
Thanks for the find, m’lady!
Posted by RL Tillman on July 18th, 2009 | Strolling through the vendor fair at Baltimore’s summer arts festival, I spotted this fine example of adaptive re-use by Brainstorm Print and Design:
That’s green printmaking!
Posted by Jason Urban on May 18th, 2009 | 
From Inhabitat (thanks)… Solid ink printers use heat to melt ink to paper. The major benefit is that solid ink doesn’t require the usual plastic cartridge that powdered ink does, so you get good results with far less waste. 90% less according to Xerox. On the downside, you’ll never get this kind happy accident. Solid ink technology was pioneered by a company called Techtronix back in the eighties (though their ink was shaped more like crayons) before being acquired by Xerox.
With no cost-effective version available for consumers, these printers are currently limited to corporate/business use. From an environmental point of view, xerox would be served well by getting a cheap desktop version on the market soon. This is smart technology.
Here’s a rare example of an artwork generated with a solid ink printer…
 Jeremiah Young, Digital Print & Wire Postcard Rack, 2008. Some detail pics after the jump…
Continue reading Solid Ink/Solid Gold!
Posted by Jason Urban on May 8th, 2009 | Greenpeace to German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “go ahead and fix the banks, but fix global warming, too.”
Just when you were starting to forget the iconic Shepard Fairey Obama poster, it gets resuscitated to support another cause. Greenpeace is promoting a December climate conference in Copenhagen by posting these Angie-You-Can posters around Germany. While I feel an almost-nostalgic appreciation at the Fairey poster reference (has it really only been a few months since inauguration?), this image falls short of inspiring “hope”. Nice try, Greenpeace, but it’s time for a new design.
On a colloquial note, Merkelgraphics lacks the catchiness of Obamagraphics.
A downloadable PDF is generously available.
Posted by Jason Urban on April 22nd, 2009 | We’d be remiss if we let Earth Day pass without a post on green printing…. PB Copy is an owner-operated digital print shop in Surrey, British Columbia. You might be imagining 44″ Epson printers and photopolymer plates, but I should clarify. PB Copy isn’t a fine art printshop; it’s a full-fledged commercial printshop- the kind that makes copies of paperwork for local businesses.
So why should Printeresting care about a commercial printshop? Well, the interesting thing about PB Copy is their commitment to eco-friendly printing. They make thier copies with a RISO printer powered by bicycle and solar panels. We’ve talked about bicycle-powered printing before but never when put to such practical application.
Here’s a link to a story about PB Copy in the Vancouver Sun:
In the last few months Shane Fortune and Kevin LaHay have spent hours on a bicycle generating juice for a printer at their Surrey store.
Ten minutes of riding the bike “at a reasonable pace” — often in slacks and a dress shirt — generates enough power to print 100 copies “off the grid,” Fortune estimated.
Combine this eco-exercise regimen with two solar panels and 100-per-cent post-consumer recycled paper made using renewable energy, and 90 per cent of PB Copy’s print jobs — the exception being colour, cover or glossy paper — are a stone’s throw away from being carbon neutral.
Fine art printmaking has taken a cue from industry in the past so it couldn’t hurt to look there for green printing tips, too. The guys at PB Copy are swamped with work at the moment (which is great for them) but when things slow down a bit, they’re going to send us a report on eco-friendly printing in the commercial sector.
Posted by RL Tillman on October 3rd, 2008 | 
Two Columns, a new public installation by Friedhard Kiekeben in downtown Chicago. As described by Sabina Ott in the Chicago-based art journal PROMPT:
Kiekeben makes monumental digital prints that can be wrapped around concrete pillars or stretched across windows and walls. His undulating images break the rules of perspective, and the monumental scale of the digital imprint challenges the preciousness of traditional prints on paper. In his installations, virtual and real space collide, engaging us in the purely pleasurable phenomena of movement.
Thanks to Jennifer Kiekeben at NontoxicPrint.com for providing the image and the quote.
Posted by Jason Urban on July 8th, 2008 | 
This image comes compliments of Creative Review. British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey were commissioned by HSBC Bank to make this work for 2008 Wimbledon Tennis Championships. They are using the light sensitive properties of grass in conjunction with projected negatives to create these temporary artworks. So they basically use an indirect stencil process to create these pieces. The post at CR Blog explains the process…
“When grass gets plenty of sunlight, it produces chlorophyll and therefore turns green – but the less light it receives, the more yellow the colour is,” explains JWT art director Mark Norcutt of the process used to make the work. “Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey discovered that by projecting a bright black-and-white negative image onto a patch of grass as it grows (in an otherwise dark room), they can use the natural photosensitive properties of the grass to reproduce photographs. From a distance it looks like any other monochrome photograph (albeit with a slightly unusual tint); up close, it looks like perfectly ordinary grass. But even individual blades sometimes have a range of hues, as any given cell can respond to the amount of light it receives.”
It’s a little surprising that Wimbledon that would have commissioned public artwork but apparently it is the only Grand Slam tennis tournament still using grass which makes the collaborators’ work a logical choice. The husband/wife team’s work brings together their interests in art, science, and the environment. From their 2001 exhibition at the Gardner Museum in Boston…
Through their work with grass as a photographic medium, Ackroyd and Harvey are fostering a heightened collaboration among the artistic and scientific communities. The two have worked closely with leading scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER) in Wales. IGER has helped the artists develop their work through the application of a “stay-green” grass that extends the life of their grass canvases. “Our understanding of the molecular events of leaf death have been greatly enhanced through our relationship with scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research,” says Ackroyd.
More works by Ackroyd and Harvey can be found here.
Continue reading Chlorophyll Power
Posted by Jason Urban on May 29th, 2008 | On some level, printmaking inevitably mirrors culture, right? So if culture’s hottest buzz word was “digital” but now is “green,” it stands to reason that the same would be true in printmaking. It doesn’t just apply to fuel economy. In the printshop, we’re doing what we can… We’ve made the switch to non-toxic grounds and cleaning products. We’ve tried to minimize waste by implemented material-saving procedures into the routine of our shops. So is there more to do? I’ve been looking into sustainable/eco-friendly paper sources…
Legion Paper has a comprehensive list of papers that is cross-referenced by category: alternative energy, chlorine-free, handmade, mill-certified, and tree free. This is a great resource.
 
Hahnemühle appears to be at the forefront in terms of producing a bamboo fine art paper (not to mention being at the forefront of allusions to the karate-chopping power of print- see pic above). In keeping with their fairly rigorous environmental policy, they’ve released a 265gsm mixed media paper, a 105gsm sketch paper, and a 290gsm digital paper all made from bamboo (I am still waiting to hear back from them about plans for a traditional print paper). I’ve read mixed reviews about bamboo. The pros are that it grows incredibly fast -one third faster than the fastest growing tree- and it can grow almost anywhere without pesticides or chemical fertalizers. Pre-existing, wood-based technologies can be used to process bamboo. In terms of cons, I did find one particularly damning article in Earth Island Journal about the negative impact of bamboo products.
I know- “green” is trendy. At the moment there is a lot of public pressure on industry to step up their environmental efforts, but whether the motivation is financial or moral, I think it deserves some acknowledgment. Legion and Hahnemühle are just two companies so this isn’t even close to a comprehensive list but I was hoping to start a conversation.
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