PRESS ON: A Juried Exhibition of the Art of Letterpress from Pyramid Atlantic

On View: May 30–July 20, 2025
Jurors: Celene Aubry, Hatch Show Print, and Allison Tipton, Globe Collection and Press at MICA

Artists from all over the US, with additional participants from Canada, France, and Japan,
are featured in this exhibition that celebrates letterpress as a powerful medium for artistic expression. In addition to traditional letterpress printing, varied techniques include inkless pressure printing and linocut blocks reconfigured to be used on a letterpress machine. The resulting show has nearly 100 works and is a testament to the creative possibilities of letterpress.

Jurors Celene Aubry, Hatch Show Print (TN), and Allison Tipton, Globe Collection and Press at MICA (MD) had the difficult job of selecting from over 400 entries. The resulting show features a wide range of formats, including artist books, work on fabric, vinyl, and paper. The content ranges from political to inspirational; narrative to conceptual; and type both representing and exploring language, including English, French, Hebrew, Japanese, and Korean.

To accommodate the size of the exhibition, Pyramid is utilizing newly opened space within its facility. The additional space is currently in a planning phase for future use, but the Pyramid team is very excited to have an extra large gallery to showcase the Press On works.

Letterpress printing dates back to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of a printing press with movable type in the 1450s. Letterpress printing remained commonly used until the 1950s, when further automation processes made offset printing more favorable. By the 1980s, letterpress machine and type manufactures essentially ceased production. However, artists have returned to the aesthetic appeal and craftsmanship associated with the handmade quality visible in letterpress printing. New tools, such as polymer plate graphics and type, offer artists a wide range of old and new options for creativity in print while still using these now vintage machines. Pyramid has several presses and a good collection of type for artistic use and loves seeing ways in which artists have used historic methods, contemporary hacks, and ingenuity to make new work on these old machines.

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PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Celene Aubry, Hatch Show Print:

Celene is the Director and Print Shop Manager at Hatch Show Print, one of America’s oldest surviving letterpress show poster and design shops. While the business thrives as a letterpress poster and design shop, expanded programming includes a visiting artist program, a gallery periodically showcasing print-centric art, and offering hands-on tours and workshops from the education space. In between poster runs and whatnot, she also enjoys analog photography, making cyanotypes and van Dyke photoprints specifically.

Allison Tipton, Globe Collection and Press at MICA

Allison is a designer and letterpress printer from Baltimore, Maryland. She is the manager of the Globe Collection and Press at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art). As a student she fell in love with printmaking while earning her BFA is graphic design at MICA and was bitten by the DayGlo love of Globe. She devoted most of her senior year helping to rally student support for acquisition of the collection. Her love of Globe kept her in Baltimore, lurking around MICA’s campus, helping on projects and spreading the word of Globe until MICA finally hired her. She oversees Globe’s operation including archiving, education, and production of new projects in the iconic Globe style for clients including CFG Bank Area, John Waters X New York Film Festival, and Baltimore Magazine.

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THE AWARDEES:

Alisa Golden, Where’s Owl, 2023, Art quilt- letterpress printed on cotton
Aya Masumoto, Heartbeat, 2023, Letterpress artist book
David Wolske, Polysynthesis No. 1, 2021/22, Relief and letterpress from movable wood and metal type

Jurors’ Statement:

“Press On is a resounding, vibrant, thoughtful, poignant, and delightful statement that indeed, letterpress printing is not dead. There are more “stories” than there are artists represented on the walls at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center this summer, and I am honored to have been able to see so much incredible and incredibly diverse work all in one sitting, almost.

As a fellow printer, used to mixing ink and making ready and cranking cranky old printing presses myself, the award winners stood out as creators whose work continues to push the medium, using familiar tools in new ways, or in the case of two of these artists, working in an additional medium or process without losing focus on letterpress printing. All three of these artists elevate the process and offer insight at what more ART there is yet to attempt to bring into the world with this ridiculously outmoded technology.

I am humbled to have been able to view all of the work in this show, and I am certainly inspired!”

By Celene Aubry, Hatch Show Print and on behalf of Allison Tipton, Globe Collection and Press at MICA, June 2025

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THE REVIEWS:

Read two reviews of the Press On exhibition, by Stephanie Rudig in the Washington City Paper and Mark Jenkins in his Substack newsletter, DisCerning Eye.