Waves Rolling In

“Waves Rolling In” was designed and produced by Theresa Whitehill, who worked part-time for the Mendocino Art Center as letterpress printer from mid-1985 to mid-1986. As part of her job, she ran Grays Trousers Press, which was located in the “Green Room” of the Mendocino Theatre Company building (the room on the east side). Whitehill worked with local artist and Mendocino Art Center volunteer, Josh Pierson. Pierson based his hand-cut stencils of the serigraph on a watercolor of the Mendocino coast by his son, Jerry Pierson. Josh and Theresa pulled the serigraph edition together in Josh’s studio. Whitehill then hand-set lead type from Grays Trousers Press metal type and printed the text.

The print was intended to be the title sheet for a suite of prints to be called “Mendocino: Place & Spirit” as a collaboration between the Mendocino Art Center and selected local artists. No further prints were produced. Grays Trousers Press was founded by the Mendocino Art Center in the early 1980s and was furnished and equipped mainly by Paula Gray. Gray obtained a grant to fund the operation and hired Whitehill to run it. The name of the press was an affectionate tribute to Paula’s work to create a letterpress studio for the art center, and a comment on her habitual wardrobe.

When Whitehill took over the press, it was equipped with a 10” x 15” Chandler & Price platen press that Gray had bought for the Art Center, along with a Vandercook Universal III cylinder press on loan from printer and engraver Glenn Gasaway of Philo. Paper stock was sourced by Whitehill, with substantial quantities coming from Zida Borcich Letterpress in Fort Bragg, where Whitehill was also working part-time. Whitehill rounded out the letterpress equipment tools and added to the stock of metal type with purchases made at the used type warehouse of James Heagy in San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point Shipyard. While she served as printer for the Art Center, she designed, typeset by hand, and printed promotional materials for the Art Center’s various programs, and also recruited and hired teachers and produced two letterpress printing classes, one by Peter Koch of Berkeley, and another by Susan E. King of Los Angeles. Whitehill also printed poetry broadsides on her own time using the Art Center’s presses, and produced local poetry readings. When the grant-funded year was complete, Whitehill went on to work full-time for Zida Borcich Letterpress. The Art Center did not continue the program. The C&P press, the metal type, and equipment were sold to local designer and printer, Nancy Riley. Glenn Gasaway moved his Vandercook back to his property in Philo.

The “Waves Rolling In” edition, which had been in Whitehill’s keeping since 1986, was returned to the Art Center in 2021 as part of BAM! Book Arts Mendocino!, a two-month festival of all things book arts.

"Waves Rolling In"
Paper: Rives BFK, white
Press: Vandercook Universal III belonging to Glenn Gasaway, at the time on loan to the Mendocino Art Center’s Grays Trousers Press.
Serigraph: Josh Pierson, assisted by Theresa Whitehill, in Pierson’s studio, Fort Bragg, CA
Typeface: Baskerville (lead)
Inks: Text, gray; image: 13 passes
Publisher: Mendocino Art Center
Note: Josh Pierson was a mentor to Theresa Whitehill in serigraph techniques early in her career on the Mendocino coast. In this piece, he attempted to convey the delicacy of a watercolor through the serigraph process by overprinting similar shades of color.