Steamroller Art

Who doesn't want to make prints with a steamroller? Don't know if I want to know that person. This past Saturday, for the second year in a row, my partner and I headed down to the CeLOUbrate Print at the Portland Museum in west Louisville to make us some prints with a steamroller.

A month or so before, we'd participated in one of the many carving workshops taking place around town in the run up to steamroller day. Using the same tools you'd use for linocut printmaking, we'd carved 12" x 12" wood blocks with the designs for our prints.

Saturday we finally got to put our work to work, along with plenty of other folks who braved the rain and Thunder to make a little art. The forecast for the day had been rather ominous, but with everything was either indoors or under canopies (even the steamroller) the festivities continued unhindered by the wet weather.

If you're not making a mess, are you even having fun? Hope you didn't wear your good clothes. The process was as simple as it was messy, just roll out some ink with a brayer and then roll it onto your woodblock, with the carved out spacing being the white areas on the print.

Once inked up, your block got laid in front of the steamroller messy side up, with whatever you were printing on atop it.

Then it was just a matter of covering it up and running it over.

Next, the slow reveal.

After that, there was nothing to do but hang up your new print to dry.

There was plenty to see while you waited on your print, with artists, vendors and the Portland Museum itself to explore.

Some were familiar faces from previous years, while others were new.

After getting our fill of that, there was nothing for it but to collect our creations and flee the scene before the half million or so people at the air show and fireworks extravaganza downtown made traffic a complete nightmare.

Now to figure out what to carve next. . .