Print/Maker is the sixth volume of Uppercase magazine’s Encyclopedia of Inspiration, profiling forty-eight artists, designers and entrepreneurs of the printmaking profession. Each profile features an artist discussing their method, their preferred type of printing (letterpress, screen print, linocut, and other types, many of which were new to me), their sources of inspiration, their business model and their tips for success. As is only proper for an art book, most of the real estate is taken up with beautiful colour photographs of the artists’ studios or retail spaces, their printing presses, tools and stamps, their works-in-progress, and, of course, their art: a feast of lush bolts of printed cloth, vibrant prints, crisp greeting cards, bright posters and more. Print/Maker features artists from all over the world and includes significant Canadian representation; I was delighted to find two of my own favourites: Papirmass, an art subscription business out of Toronto, which I have subscribed to for several happy years, and the Regional Assembly of Text, a Vancouver and Victoria stationery shop that sells beautiful, screen-printed ephemera (and whose monthly letter-writing club I have longed to attend). It was refreshing to learn that, while all the artists featured in Print/Maker are professionals, not all of them have separate studios or storefronts—many described working in spare bedrooms, converted backyard sheds or right at their kitchen table. For a person like me, who cannot seem to stop collecting things like notebooks and art prints and vintage letterpress stamps, this book scratches all those same itches, inspiring me to get cracking on my own art.
