Risograph repair is my main side gig, and sort of the way I’m able to travel to visit presses and community printshops. Mostly I provide three services:
Actual mechanical repair of the machines + drums in the space—this is sort of the most straightforward one: I bring my tools and library of parts.
Operational training along the way—generally whatever folks are interested in, but I have little curricula prepared for: basic maintenance, drum work, and intermediate training.
Consulting + organizational support—collaborating on ideas + plans + systems for how a printshop might function, and sharing what I’ve learned in my time visiting other spaces.
The last is fairly new, but it’s been taking up more and more of my focus while spending time with printer friends. Ever since, I think, I visited Pickwick Independent Press in Portland, ME this spring. Pilar had two machines, both of which had been down for about two years, and a collection of ~15 drums all of which were in an unknown state. This was also just following my first maintenance workshop at Multiple Formats, where of course the first question was “what are best practices for a printshop running risos?”
At Pickwick, I had enough time to really get into the collection, and spend some time figuring out how the space operated. But not enough time to repair every single thing that was wrong there. So the challenge was:
What systems can I implement with the time that I have, in order to keep things well enough maintained that the machines will last as long as possible, until I can make it back for another tune up?
Maps / Lists / Plans + Many Hands
One of the things I’ve learned in my time running the presses in my last studio is that systems in community spaces must come from and be maintained by community or they will simply fall (like the equipment) into disuse. There is no one-size-fits-all system for printshops, especially those with many different artists passing through their doors. What’s educational for me is seeing what works and what doesn’t work within each particular space, and try to understand why—what particular circumstances or structured make something viable in one studio and untenable in another? Plus it’s always fun to help people figure things out, and get excited about how operations might be different or better.
The dream in my mind is:
As a group, the studio figures out what its needs and goals are for the space. This includes resources, access, equipment, cost, programs, and capabilities.
We also determine what is and what is not currently working.
As both individuals and in small groupings, we assess what it is we can (or want) to provide: time, labor, expertise, etc. This has to have some real conversations about equity and ability—how can work be compensated, how much time do we truly have, and what will we feel good about doing day to day? What can we sustain in this collaboration?
We have at hand some references, some ideas of what other folks are doing elsewhere.
The group sketches outlines of systems we might be able to create and commit to, which address those earlier needs; we share these, debate and edit them, find consensus!
Then we develop a timeline and actions we can take to get things going. Better yet, if this system includes plans for how it might need to be changed down the road. Even better still, if we think of all these early systems as trials—experiments in a new way of doing things that we can learn from as we put together more robust systems later.
As an educator, and now organizer. I’ve found that the “teach a man to fish” pattern has sort of subtle facet that isn’t based on knowledge, but on the ownership of that knowledge. People have to feel a part of a system, see their hand/ideas in it, and (co-)own it in order for it to stick and feel good to work with. There is also a confidence story here which parallels with the “self authorship” that brings so many of us to small press. It’s incredibly powerful to be the author of not just the things you make, but the way in which you make them.
So my job in this is more of a facilitator than than a designer. I get to ask questions, make observations, support conversations between the people in the room, and participate myself in the social and functional mechanisms of the space.
Here’s some of the questions I’ve been asking recently:
What happens when something breaks? Who does the printer call, or what actions can they take? How do we get things working again?
What trust exists here, is it demanded, is it warranted? How might it be built or earned?
What do materials actually cost, and where does the rest of the money we are charging for them go?
How do payments work? How important are they to keeping the doors open? How can costs to artists be offset?
Who can access the space? What training or support do they have on running the equipment here? What barriers might people have to making things here?
What does “preventative maintenance” look like here, and when might/how might it happen?
How are decisions made, especially as they affect the artists who work here, and how the work?
How are systems codified and how are they critiqued?
How do we communicate or document these systems?
How do we change them?
The last posting was super long—so I think I’ll end this one early. Next posting will be a continuation of this one, with a little breakdown of patterns I have seen in the various printshops I’ve been visiting.
Current Happenings
I’m in the final days of this last printshop tour, currently in Detroit, MI—spending time with Taxonomy Press, Small Works, Rachel Delmotte, Bulk Space Media, and Diskette. I’ll be headed back home to Seattle Sunday/Monday!
Just finished a full day intensive with Carlina Duan in Rachel Delmotte’s studio—we’re working a zine project for Carlina’s dissertation! Her research is on reading “documentary poetry”—that is: poems which use historical texts and artifacts as a starting point, commenting on, appending, and altering them. These poems become part of the ecosystem of information and learning the orbits the texts.
This collaboration is the result of many years of happenstance and crossed paths! Carlina found my Some Notes commonplace zine at a workshop taught by Rachel Delmotte and reached out—we met up a few years later at the AWP conference in Seattle—and now we’re working on a zine together, along with Rachel and her risos!