SHOP WORK

I know, no post last week. I know. Trying currently to cut myself the same grace/ slack I try to for everyone else (I’m not good at it). Like living in a god damned blender.

But look at all this cool shit I helped make happen.

I feel like I can’t turn my head in any direction these days without relating it all to the larger shit pool in which we’re all swimming. Maybe that’s good, maybe it’s bad, I don’t know.

But, you see, this is my little print shop. That’s what I’m writing about because at least I can understand it and it makes sense (unlike just about everything else).

I started it when I got laid off of my letterpress job; in fact, it sort of fell into my lap. Newly jobless and at a loss of what to do next to make money (get a pilot’s license? Mushroom farmer? Post office? Live in a cave and eat moss?), I panicked for a bit, then collected my unemployment (for the first time ever. I honestly didn’t even know how it worked) and decided to cool my jets and keep my eyes open for whatever showed up next. And it did. An old pal wasn’t using his T-Shirt press and I thought “hey, I did this 30 years ago, I could probably do it again”, and then a chance encounter with a local punk collective landed me an open space 6 blocks from my house; it snowballed from there— another pal getting rid of his auto poster press, and then the final piece (which I posted about already, and the only element here not acquired directly from friends/ my community), the 2-color RISO. That’s a whole shop, with the capability to kick out a lot of diverse stuff, all on my lonesome.

Some of it I know, some of it I used to know and had to re-learn, some of it is new to me. It’s all print of one type or another, but all different processes, each with it’s own systems and…complications.

My whole goal, then (and even more so now) was: create something small and (eventually) sustainable enough to just survive on. That’s the dream.

Not something that grows, and expands past that basic idea: survival. Enough to get by on. Something you can’t get let go or fired from (unless you fire yourself or screw up really badly), something you can feel ok about doing. And beyond that—could you pull this off working with people you know, from the various circles you’ve occupied over the course of your life? Musicians, artists, sure— but also friends, urban farm, barber shop, guy who fixes pinball machines, whatever. People doing honest stuff, on some level. At least I’d know what I was doing, and who I was doing it for, and with.

And hypothetically (it hasn’t really worked out that way, so far, but here’s hoping) depending on what jobs are or aren’t coming in, I could find and make time to do the stuff that doesn’t make me any money (comics, art, etc) because I’d be able to set my own hours (car broke down? Get more jobs this month. Got some freelance? Take less jobs).

My impossible thought when I started it was “if only I could do this and NOT have to have a website: just word of mouth.”

So far so good. I didn’t want a print shop where I make shirts for a bank, as my bread and butter. There’s good money there, I’m sure. If had a website maybe they’d call. But fuck man, it doesn’t feel worth it, until I have to. This doesn’t feel like a time to be doing things you don’t care about. Do I care A LOT about T-shirts? Not really. They are fine and you can wear them on your torso. I do that a lot, actually.

Do I care about helping pals— not some nameless, faceless organization— get stuff made? Yes, I do. It is at least one thing I can feel good about, right now. Useful, even. And that’s worth quite a bit.

And little print shops…can have a lot of uses.

Now I’m almost 2 years in. From both a practical (friends are already losing their jobs, which SUCKS) and ethical (see above, I get to work with real people, making real things), I’m glad I did it. I don’t even have an IG handle for the place (and I sort of like that, too, but we’ll see). Still crawling out of a nagging bit of debt firing this whole deal up (I’m a terrible businessman and even worse at math) but I’m getting close, and the various systems that need to function to run these different machines are working, but still getting the kinks out. So am I. I’m not an expert at any of these trades, but I’m making do.

But here we are. The Hand Print Shop (get it? yes I know it’s real clever but I couldn’t resist). Here’s some cool people I got to work with. And now I get to tell you about it.

Instead of screaming into the void. Maybe next week.

The new Circuit Des Yeux record is really great. I met Haley a while back and before this tour she had a bunch of old shirts she wanted me to print a new design ON TOP of. I’ll admit, I was skeptical, and it was a sort of hilarious mess with all the permutations, but they ended up looking really damn cool (we ended up doing some on blank shirts, as well). You should get her new record and by all means go see her on tour right now (And pick up one of these beauties).

In typical ME fashion, I delivered them 2 songs into the first show of the tour, here in Minneapolis.

Uncivilized Books has been doing this “Structures” series for a while now; a different artist does whatever they can/ want with the general idea (I think I’m going to do one, actually) and then there is a zine.

Banged out these 2 color RISO covers (and then my trim went a little wonky, so I ended up hand assembling the first 50 of them so they’d be right). This one is by an artist named Jason Novak, and you can get it (along with a bunch of other great stuff) here.

And finally, a couple really beautiful shirts (and a few prints) for local musician Molly Dean, who is having a record release show on May 2nd at Icehouse.

That’s all, for the moment. More soon(er than you think). As always, thanks for being here.

—Z.