The artist and printmaker decided if a band could go on tour, why couldn’t she?
“I loved the experience of being on tour, traveling to new places, meeting people, and sharing your creative work,” she says in an email interview. “I thought, ‘What if I did that with printing?’ That’s how it all got started.”
She came up with the idea for Power and Light Press - an oversized ice cream-style truck outfitted with a vintage letterpress that Durrie would drive from her home of Portland, Ore., to craft fairs, art festivals, bars and concerts around the country to show people the way printmaking used to be done.
“But really, the project was a means to give people an opportunity to use their hands and see what sort of things are possible when you step out from behind your computer screen,” she recently told a PRINT magazine blog.
Durrie funded the project through Kickstarter, asking for $7,000 to fund the construction of a letterpress in a van. But she got much more: 350 people coughed up more than $17,000 to fund the effort.
For the second time this year, Durrie wheels into Spokane with her two letterpresses - one from 1960 and one from the 1870s - to demonstrate printing the old way: with ink, blocks of type and a lot of muscle.
Power & Light Press - Sat, Aug. 18 from 8-11 pm - Avenue Pizza - 2001 W. Pacific Ave. - type-truck.com - 624-0236
