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The Itinerant Printer: A look at contemporary letterpress printing across North America
Thursday, December 5 @ 3:00pm
Lessing J. Rosenwald Room, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress
Please join RBSCD for an afternoon with Chris Fritton, aka the Itinerant Printer. In 2014, Fritton resigned as the Studio Director of the Western New York Book Arts Center in Buffalo, NY, to travel across the US and Canada from one letterpress print shop to the next. Working exclusively with each shops' idiosyncratic collections of wood type, metal type, cuts and ornaments, Fritton made prints at every stop along the way, supplying only his own paper and ink. 2 1/2 years, 137 shops, 47,000 miles, and 15,000+ prints later, Fritton returned home to document the experience. The resulting 320-page tome comprises a series of independent yet interconnected vignettes celebrating the people, places, and prints from the road. Part travel diary, part cultural anthropology, part philosophical musing, and part poetic digression, The Itinerant Printer upholds a time-honored tradition of tramp printing. Come learn about the history of itinerant printing in North America, hear stories from the road, and see hundreds of examples of prints from the adventure.
Chris Fritton is the former Studio Director of the Western New York Book Arts Center. A poet, printer, and fine artist, Fritton has over a decade of experience writing, printing, and making his own books, in addition to collaborative efforts with other authors and artists. Fritton has collaborated directly with influential American artist Richard Tuttle, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Carl Dennis, esteemed printer Amos P. Kennedy Jr., and renowned type designer Richard Kegler. His books are in various collections throughout the U.S. including The Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Visual & Concrete Poetry, Fleet Library Special Collections at the Rhode Island School of Design, The Poetry Collection SUNY at Buffalo, University of Wisconsin at Madison Rare Books Collection, Special Collections at Harvard Library, Maryland Institute College of Art Special Collections, and the Arthur & Mata Jaffe Collection. He has been an artist-in-residence at AS220 in Providence, RI, the Denbo Fellow at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (2015), a TEDx Buffalo speaker, a main presenter at Typecon, the featured speaker at the 10th Annual Los Angeles Printers Fair, and an instructor/visiting artist at numerous institutions, including the Penland School of Crafts, RISD, MICA, and VCU.
Looking forward to seeing you there! For questions, please call: 202-707-3448.
