Kennedy Prints!

Back in July, I took a class called "Exercising the First Amendment: Poster Printing" with letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy. Held at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts using their Vandercook proofing presses, the course's nine students each brought in quotes that inspired us and turned them into posters.


Amos works out of Akron, Alabama, and has been printing for close to thirty years. His shop, Kennedy Prints!, can be hired as a job printer, but he also creates his own work, which can be viewed and ordered through his website. (The gallery of posters online is not up to date from what I can tell, but there's some beautiful work to be seen there.) The MCBA has a nice sampling in its retail shop as well.

Printing just about everything on 12.5 x 19" chip board, Amos usually lays down backgrounds of multiple ink colors using type or type-high wood blocks, changing the ink colors and combinations so that no two are alike. Then he comes back with a final black print of the main message. (When anyone questions the use of non-archival chip board as a medium, he tells them to come back and see him in a hundred or hundred and fifty years when the paper starts to go bad.)

A recent set of Amos's posters that were on exhibit in MCBA's gallery was made up of a set of 14 Rosa Parks quotes, each with a different color background, and with the primary type set in varying sizes in black. The posters were laid out in a grid, surrounding one final poster that said simply, "Rosa Louise Parks, 1913-2005." It was a moving and visually stunning collection.


When he arrived in Minneapolis, Amos was just returning from a visit to Italy. He brought with him a large suitcase filled with a complete set of foot-tall, condensed gothic wood type. It was in amazing condition. (Unfortunately, Amos would not reveal his source.)


I printed two pieces in the class. At left is the inking slab I used on my second poster, which is shown at right. This poster were primarily hand-rolled, so there was a lot of color variation among all the copies. The word "apathy" is pressure printed from letters I cut out of chip board.

I'm not sure how successful my posters are (I tend to think my inking slab is nicer looking than my posters!), but I definitely learned a lot about what not to do, and had fun doing it.