Every fall, the San Francisco Center for the Book asks local artists to create a design that is then cut into a 48 inch square piece of linoleum. The designs are printed using a large (3-ton) steamroller at the SFCB annual street fair and it’s quite a sight. I am particularly enamored of one of the prints this year — that’s it to the right. It’s by Patricia Curtan (who you might know from illustrations in Chez Panisse cookbooks) and looks just like my own press. It’s to be auctioned on Nov 7th at an SFCB fund raiser — oh how I wish it came in a smaller size that I could afford!
See the steamroller printing in action here. There’s more about Patricia Curtan here. Also, on her website, she has a lovely illustration of the progression of printing a multicolor block print (roll over the number sequence at the right of this page to see the progression). You can see all the steamroller prints from this year here.
I think this is the most stellar group of prints yet.
We did this here in Montana, too. I’m having a hard time finding example of this year’s work, but the old gallery is nice and there are a few on Flickr: