As award-winning, nationally recognized artists, The Little Friends of Printmaking have done graphics for Nike, NPR, "Guitar Hero I and II" and are currently working on the Comedians of Comedy's tour identity and San Francisco's indie music festival Noise Pop.
But as Milwaukeeans, the husband and wife duo of James and Melissa Buchanan are perhaps better known for their posters announcing the twice-annual Art vs. Craft fair -- or now as the dynamic, über creative teaching team at Discovery World's Print & Publishing Lab.
With the state-of-the-art print lab -- something the Buchanans were able to build from the ground up to include all the requisite equipment needed for a professional screenprinting shop -- at their disposal, the couple conducts the Inkblot Academy, an ongoing series of teen and adult-focused evening classes in basic screenprinting and print design.
"It's a boot camp," explains James. "You come in knowing nothing and leave with six, two-color screen prints. We go over the basics of the process, the equipment, the technique and how to design for screenprinting. It's basically the first month of a college screenprinting class compressed into six hours. It's intense, but people have a really good time."
The lab has been open about a year, with the two-day Inkblot Academy running once a month. Some of their students enjoy it so much they return month after month, establishing themselves as "Super Champions" in the eyes of their teachers.
"The idea was to develop programming where you can keep coming back," says James. "The first time might be a little rough, but then you can come back and know more and you don't have to listen to us babble -- you can just work and use the great space."
Eventually, they say, the plan is to divide the classes into two segments, one for beginners and the other as studio time for the returning Super Champions. And at $30 for members / $40 non-members, who wouldn't return to work in this graphic designer's dream space with access to an exposure unit, a TMI Jaguar parallel arm airlift screenprinting press (capable of producing 3x4-ft. prints), a T-shirt press, four vacuum tables, and eight manual height-adjustable table stations?
"We're never want to teach somebody something where the first step is to buy a $20,000 piece of equipment," explains Melissa. "You can do (screenprinting) in your basement -- you can do it with a light bulb -- and we go over that the first day. We give them a list of vendors we work with if they wanted to do it from home. But most importantly, we want to be a resource for people who want to come back and use the space."
"We design a print, break it down into the different layers, give a synopsis of what screenprinting is and then they get to print the print," says Melissa. "It's more of an activity than a class and we tie the print into stuff that's been going on in the museum."
Currently, the subject du jour is Melvin the puffer fish, who can be found in the Discovery World's aquarium.
This weekend the Inkblot Academy invited guest artists Dan Ibarra and Michael Byzewski of Aesthetic Apparatus for a lecture about their work: some of the most famous and visually witty rock concert posters of the past 20 years.
Unlike the illustrative focus of Little Friends of Printmaking work, Aesthetic Apparatus works primarily with found images and print type, a tradition in which poster making is deeply rooted. The Minneapolis duo is, essentially, the chocolate to Little Friends' vanilla.
"Sometimes people look at out stuff and get intimidated because it's all drawing and they think, 'Well I can't draw so I can't do graphic design,'" says Melissa. "Aesthetic Apparatus are masters of arranging preexisting images. Their lecture says, 'We do this, and you can do this too.'"
Aesthetic apparatus is doing a lecture for the public on Friday, then running the first day of the Inkblot course on Saturday (Sorry, it's for Super Champions only).
"We're trying to give people opportunities that don't exist here in town," says Melissa. "We'd like to keep this up quarterly; bring in visiting artists from around the country, have them lecture, then have them do a class for our Super Champions. This is the start of what we want to do with the adult programming."
OnMilwaukee.com staff writer Julie Lawrence grew up in Wauwatosa and has lived her whole life in the Milwaukee area.
As any “word nerd” can attest, you never know when inspiration will strike, so from a very early age Julie has rarely been seen sans pen and little notebook. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee it seemed only natural that she major in journalism. When OnMilwaukee.com offered her an avenue to combine her writing and the city she knows and loves in late 2004, she knew it was meant to be. Around the office, she answers to a plethora of nicknames, including “Lar,” (short for “Larry,” which is short for “Lawrence”) as well as the mysteriously-sourced “Bill Murray.”
