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 ad

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 inspiration

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 ma

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 show

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 l

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 incredi

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

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.

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Alisa Golden
Where's Owl?, 2023
Art quilt- letterpress printed on cotton
25 x 21 in

Down by San Francisco Bay, from November until March or so, you might see a burrowing owl standing on a rock at the edge of the water. But it blends in so well, camouflaged in color and form as if it were a rock itself, that someone will likely need to point it out for you. At least at first. In my weekly winter walks by the bay, a friend and I often go to look for the burrowing owl, hoping it will turn its head in a half circle to look at us with its big yellow eyes. In this piece I've printed all the wood type Os, Ws, and Ls I had, using the letters to add meaning and to point to the theme: the words becoming the owl, the rocks, and the background.