 Printing was one of the first forms of mass communication, a way to replicate text many times over. Posters are printed to advertise events, including artistic performances. But printing is also an art form all on its own, with multiple forms of printing, such as monotype, woodblock, drypoint, and etching. Whatever form of printing a person decides to do, access to a printing press and other printing equipment can be an obstacle. Thirty artists resolved this obstacle at the Peregrine Press. You need to belong to use the press, because it's extremely hard to have a huge piece, expensive piece of equipment like that in your own studio or in your own home. I needed a place to print, so I asked around for where there were presses and I found Peregrine Press. So initially it was just I needed an etching press, but also I needed a community. I didn't really know anybody in Maine, and so through Peregrine Press I could print, but I also met artists. The collaborative nature of the Peregrine Press goes beyond providing access to presses and equipment. Artists at the Peregrine Press learn from one another, as well as help and inspire each other. What happens when you're an artist working alone in your studio, you can get a little squirrely. You need some feedback, you need ideas, you need to be around other artists to generate enthusiasm, and so everybody learns a little something from other members. Working at the Peregrine Press is a wonderful opportunity to see what everyone is doing and how different everyone's work is. Sharing techniques with each other is a great thing. Also sharing exhibition opportunities and creating portfolios together. That's one of my favorite things that we've done. It's really helped us be noticed as an artist. Currently we have a very strong membership, lots of people working, lots of activity. We're getting ready to do a cooperative program with NECA this year. We are in a position now to grant scholarships every year. We alternate between USM and NECA, giving a student, a graduating student, access to our press for a year. The print makers at Peregrine Press come to their art in a variety of ways, from a variety of backgrounds and specialties in different types of print making. Sissy Buck, who does monotype printing, grew up around artists. My grandmother was an artist who was a teacher and I remember going to her apartment and watching her paint at her easel. So I always had a lot of creativity in my life with my mother and my grandmother. After college I had a really good base of basic print making, old-fashioned print making techniques, etching, engraving, woodblock print, wood engraving, lithographs, screen print. It wasn't until after I got out of college that I found out more about monotypes. That really struck a chord with me. Printmaking is a type of print making where you get a series of monotypes, each one being a little different than the other. This is unique. You get one of a kind print. One reason I like working with monotypes is so I can get many different layers on one piece of paper. What I do is I ink up a plate, a plexiglass plate with some ink, and draw an image onto the plate or I use plant material that I've found and print it, run it through the press and when I pull the print the image is transferred to the paper leaving a residual ghost image on the plate with less ink. I can rework that image. The reason I soak the paper is because if you didn't soak the paper it might rip the paper so soaked paper makes it more pliable and receptive to the ink when you run it through the press. Well, I like to work in the moment and if I have ideas in my head that I'm not sure where I want to start with an image or an idea I can get an idea from that first print where I want to go. Susan Amans also does monotype printing. She paints her concept and prepares her cutouts before printing. I use a sketchbook to lay out my ideas of how I'm going to create shapes and cutouts for my print series. My watercolor sketchbook is what I use to separate the colors out that I'll be using to mix my inks too so the center of the page will be what the image is going to look like and on the side of the page I have all the colors that I'm planning on mixing. I like to observe nature. Where I live there's a big estuary around our house and a lot of fresh water forested wetlands so we have a lot of birds and small animals so I've done a lot of different topics but this seems to be something that's more important to me. Several artists at Peregrine Press are similarly inspired by nature. The main coast inspires Jean O'Toole Heyman who does dry point printing. The rocks and the ocean are so overwhelming that you kind of have to paint them so I did a lot of my first dry points on the rock sculptures and paintings. In dry point printing the artist cuts an image into a hard surface such as copper, plastic or plexiglass. I can put my drawing right underneath the plexiglass and sketch or draw immediately on top. I like the marks that I get with the drill and then that would be inked and damp paper would be put on top of it and it would be run through the press and peeled off and that's the magical moment when you see whether you have screwed up or you've made something fabulous. Larinda Mead who also does dry point uses copper and enjoys how the process takes its own direction. I've been totally attracted to the copper recently. I like the fact that when I'm drawing into it I use a number of tools, roulettes, sharp implements, sandpaper, steel wool and it is that directness that is very appealing. That there's something about that connection, that physical connection with the activity and then doing the print and even though I can read a print plate a little bit better today there's still always a surprise, something's a little lighter, a darker, the print itself takes on a life of its own. Some artists here have moved from another state and some have a local arts education. In whatever way these artists have come together many share the experience of finding art in life. I had no formal art school training. I was able to give myself permission to do it any way I wanted and that there was no right or wrong way to do it which you might get as a kid in a school situation with a knowledgeable professor. I explore the world just by having a crazy imagination and a rabid curiosity about things. I mean I love nature. I've got a microscope in my studio. We go to the beach and we pick up things and when we look at them and I'm looking at patterns and I'm looking at things that just pop up that are anomalies and that attracts me. A lot of times art seems to be all around and it's just a matter of noticing it. A lot of art for me is looking at something and say wow what would happen if and then I play with that idea. When you approach your world from an artistic standpoint you're constantly getting information and you're constantly surrounding yourself with ideas and using them to inform your life. Suzy Large uses one of the oldest forms of printmaking. I am involved in woodblock printmaking. You basically chop up a woodblock and slap ink on it. What I love about it is the carving part. It's a lovely medium, it's carving, it's sculpture and that's what I love about it. I make plates sometimes and never get around to printing them. I like the process of carving the wood so much. So they become beautiful objects themselves. Etching is a form of printmaking that is almost the reverse of woodblock. In woodblock printing the part of the wood that is not carved into gets the ink that makes the impression. But in etching it is the depressions where the surface is carved into that fills with ink and makes the impression. Jeff Woodbury explains this technique. You have a flat plate and you're gouging into it with some kind of line or tone and when you ink that then the ink goes into those depressions in between. So then when you put your paper on it the paper picks up the ink that's in the depressions in between. So basically say you're doing copper etching, you start with a copper plate, you make the edges all clean and everything and then you coat it with a base that resists acid and then you take a needle or a sharp thing and you gouge into it, you put it into an acid bath and then the acid eats into where you've cut through the resist. And then you can bring it back out and cut more and do several dips and several layers where it etches deeper and deeper where it's already been and less where it's fresh. Once that's done you take the resist off and basically you ink up the plate, you put the ink all over the plate precedent and then you've got to buff the ink off the plate and take everything off except what's in those etchings, those incisings. At that point you take your paper and generally you wet it, you soak it for a while and that removes the sizing which means the paper will grab the ink better. So you use a press, put the plate down, check your pressure on the press, put the paper on top of that, put blankets over it to create a soft barrier and then you run it between two rollers at high pressure. You lift it off, there's your print. As involved as many printmaking techniques are, there is some uncertainty about exactly what the finished product will look like that intrigues many of the artists here at Peregrine Press. Something that I just love about printmaking is it teaches you every time you do it, you never know what's going to happen and there's always the surprise because it's backwards. You never know how the paint and the ink is going to bleed into the paper, you never know what colors are going to combine that you didn't expect and that's just been an incredible learning tool. That sense of mystery about the finished product is evident in the way Xerox Lithoprintmaking is described. I start out with a piece of paper, it's either a computer printout or a Xerox which has toner on it, which is oily and I put Gum Arabic on that, I spread that on, that wets the paper and then I roll etching ink, which is an oil-based ink, onto the paper and the ink catches on the oily section where the toner is and is repelled by the water. I roll off the excess ink and run it through an etching press. It's hard to believe that it's going to work because it's just this very thin, fragile piece of paper that is accepting the ink. So the ink sticks to the toner and the Gum Arabic, liquid Gum Arabic repels the ink from the white areas of the paper. I then work into the print so I don't actually expect them to come out perfectly each time. Unlike an etching that is a very exact kind of printmaking, you can count on how it's going to come out. A Xerox, you can't. In spite of the variety of styles and techniques, or perhaps because of this variety, the artists here convey a collective enthusiasm for their future as artists. I will just keep on creating art because that's what I do. And if I can help others through the arts, whether it's through art therapy or being in shows and communicating, collaborating with people and letting other people see art, that's what makes the world go around. I see myself chopping away until I can't chop anymore. My world is opening up more and more and making contact with people and becoming more comfortable around people whose work I admire who might have been more intimidating a few years ago. More experienced artists like Pat Hardy and Michael Wallach helped me a lot and taught me a lot about different kinds of trades within the arts. I am in a place where I can help younger artists. Well, there is that creative energy. Most students find out if when you're working alone in your studio, it starts to get very sterile and very dry and you need that feedback. You need to talk to people. I get to see a lot of other people that are creative and interested in working and when you're around creative people who are working, you want to work. And that's terrific.