Sunday at the Wayzgoose

Recently I went to the most interesting event I've seen in a while: Wayzgoose, an event hosted by King's Books &  held in downtown Tacoma, all about paper & printing.  How exciting can paper & printing be, you ask. Well, when the printing press is a bulldozer, it can be pretty interesting.

The "press" in action: a bulldozer is used as a giant press & is rolled over a hand carved linoleum block, covered with ink. Paper is carefully placed on the block & a piece of wood covers everything, before the bulldozer is set in motion. The trick is to make sure that nothing moves or there will be smearing & the print will be ruined, so people stand along the edges of the wood, moving out of the way when the bulldozer nears. The driver needs to be very careful to drive over everything straight, for the same reason.

Inking the plate: There were a number of plates, each carved by a team, in their own design & then hand inked. The  prints were raffled off (sure wish I had one)

 

Placing the paper: This had to be done very carefully to prevent smudges & fingerprints

Waiting for the press: A group standing on the edges of the wood, to prevent slippage & keep everything straight

Finished print: The wood cover is carefully removed & the paper picked up to reveal the finished print. This one said "Tacoma
Neither Beer nor Bears
 

 
Finished print: This one is of Tacoma's famous Ivan the gorilla, who spent most of his life as an attraction in the B & I shopping center, a beloved but controversial piece of Tacoma's history. The print is displayed here, in the window of King's Books.

There was more to the event: paper making, letter presses, paper makers, printer makers, a fez or two & even a tiny tiki god, but I'll save that for a part two...SAM