Great news! This year, you don’t have to wake up before dawn and battle the Black Friday crowds to find the best holiday deals. Why? Because the Honolulu Printmakers Print & Book Fair starts Friday at 5pm on the second floor of the Honolulu Museum of Art School and continues all day Saturday! The annual sale will feature more than 45 vendor tables representing more than 60 artists and makers. Count on finding limited-edition prints, screenprinted T-shirts, tote bags, and other soft goods, hand-bound artists’ books and quirky printed objets d’art—even bargain-priced misprints—from a diverse roster of emerging and established artists. Why suffer through an impersonal shopping experience at a big-box store when you can chat with and buy direct from local print artists?
As part of the fair, the Honolulu Printmakers have flown in New Hampshire-based artist and publisher Josh Dannin of Directangle Press for a mini-residency. As a featured fair vendor, Josh will launch the fourth issue of his printmaking zine, Power Washer, at the fair where his unique risograph collages and prints will also be available for purchase.
Originally from Philadelphia, Josh first fell in love with printing as an undergraduate student at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. “I took a printmaking class and immediately saw it as an opportunity to continue working with traditional processes and avoid staring at computers,” Josh says. “I started carving blocks nonstop and, as soon as I discovered letterpress, began collecting and restoring presses. I love the process of maintaining equipment, carving or locking up a composition, and pulling prints just as much as seeing the finished product.”
By 2014, Josh had accumulated enough equipment to launch Directangle Press, operating out of his studio at Ohio University while completing his MFA in printmaking. “I’ve since had the privilege of collaborating with a bunch of great artists on exciting letterpress and risograph print and book projects, and continue to produce my own work,” he gushes.
As part of his residency, Josh also led a workshop in improvisational risography at the Art School last week that explored ways of incorporating chance and play into the risograph printing process. “My process has become much more improvisational over the years,” Josh explains. “While certain parts are still quite measured, I try to make calls on the fly as much as possible. I often have a small printer’s saw setup right next to my proofing press to quickly chop up blocks as I’m building a composition, and this approach has influenced my more recent risograph collages. If I can’t make a formal decision quickly, I try to just chop something up and move on.” In the same vein as his practice, Josh’s workshop breaks the cycle of design-to-print, exploring alternative methods, and encouraging creative “misuse” of the riso as an open-ended tool for image building.
The Print & Book Fair kicks off on Nov 24 at 5pm with Friday Night Prints—an opening reception featuring snacks from Watanabe Bakery, rare grooves from local crate diggers Aloha Got Soul and Maximum Joy Collective, live printmaking demos, and exclusive Black Friday merchandise. That same night, you can also browse the museumʻs Art School Holiday Sale until 9pm. Both the Art & Book Fair and the Holiday Sale will continue on Saturday from 10am-6pm.