Letterpress Classes & Events
Wouldn’t you agree that spending more hours in front of a computer screen isn’t something we should aspire to? Well, allow us to present the perfect antidote to too much digital. Here, at SVC, we teach people of all levels how to use their hands, brains, and eyes to create beautiful, touchable, lovable art using the centuries-old craft of letterpress printing.
Featured Classes and Workshops
Letterpress classes and workshops at SVC can take you from a true beginner, all the way to becoming an accomplished printer.
Letterpress at Lunch
After this fun, 2-hour, hands-on sampling of the joy of letterpress, you'll walk away with as many posters as you can design and print. No prior experience is needed — just a couple of hours of your time.
Letterpress Printing Level 1
Our foundational 10-week course on the essentials of letterpress is for those who have never printed before, or are new to SVC. This class will give you a thorough introduction to typesetting, printing, and proper shop techniques.
Letterpress Printing Level 2
This 10-week course provides advanced instruction for students who have taken the Level 1 course, while more accomplished students can take this class as continuing studies to pursue their personal projects with expert supervision.
Letterpress Workshops
There are more letterpress workshops at SVC for all levels than we have room to include here. Sometimes we'll do a deep dive on inks, carving, or printing with objects other than type and engravings. We can even do letterpress team-building days for corporations. Times vary; learning and enjoyment don't.
Community Events & Projects
Steamroller Smackdown: Summer 2019
Crazy, creative artists. Indelible ink. Sharp instruments. And a 5-ton steamroller. If that's not the perfect combination for fun, we don't know what is. Each August, SVC and the South Lake Union Block Party co-present the Steamroller Smackdown, where teams of top artists and design firms from around the Northwest print oversized posters with a steamroller instead of a printing press.
Annual Wayzgoose
SVC celebrates its 17th Annual Letterpress Wayzgoose on September 16, 2018, from 4–8pm. What’s a Wayzgoose? It’s an annual party by letterpress printers, for letterpress printers featuring an equipment swap, ephemera exchange, typesetting races, printerkucha, and type trivia. RSVP to wayzgoose@svcseattle.com to learn about how you can participate!
Children's Hospital Broadside Project
This collaboration between SVC and Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools program at Seattle Children's Hospital yields some of the most moving and meaningful work to come off our presses. Terminally ill and long-term patients write poems from the heart that SVC's team of letterpress artists turn into stunning broadsides. Seven volumes of poems have been created so far, thanks to invaluable donations from Neenah Paper, Puget Bindery, Ecological Fibers, and Boxcar Press.
Designer in Residence: Claudia Castro Luna
SVC is pleased to announce that Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna will be our 2018-2019 Designer in Residence. Before being named Poet Laureate and SVC’s Designer in Residence, she served as Seattle's Civic Poet from 2015-2017, is the author of Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press) and This City, (Floating Bridge Press), a Hedgebrook and VONA alumna, a 2014 Jack Straw fellow, the recipient of a King County 4Culture grant, and an individual artist grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture. Born in El Salvador, she came to the United States in 1981. She has an MA in Urban Planning, a teaching certificate, and an MFA in poetry.
