photo credit: jey maine
The little letterpress print that started it all.
I printed the first handful of copies of this print on my 5x8 Kelsey tabletop press, in my third floor studio apartment. I gave some away & one of my friends posted a photo of it on Facebook. One day in 2015 they messaged me and said, “Uh—I think something is happening…”
The print had started to circulate quickly and far, and that’s how radical emprints was born. I’m still printing & sending these all over the world — along with lots of newer prints — from Portland, Maine.
And now I’m excited to (finally!) be offering a wholesale option for rad bookstores, retail shops, non-profits, & other movement organizations.
Since I started selling prints, I have had a practice of redistributing a portion of my printmaking income as sustaining donations to a collection of movement organizations locally & nationally, as well as contributing to mutual aid efforts & bail funds. I also regularly create fundraising prints for specific movement organizations. Check out these orgs that radical emprints has supported & continues to support.
I’m the printmaker behind the press(es) at radical emprints. I started to learn letterpress printing in 2012, just as I was also beginning to learn about grassroots organizing. I ended up spending about nine years at a base-building organization, where I worked on a health care is a human right campaign and I learned & then started teaching about grassroots fundraising and principled, values-aligned grantwriting (both for when we’re working in orgs within and outside of the non-profit industrial complex.) I was doing all of this while learning how to be a letterpress printer — so it was a natural progression to start putting printmaking & organizing together.
Since 2015-ish, most of my work has been created on a Vandercook 4 at Pickwick Independent Press. And now I am very (VERY!) excited to share that in 2023 I acquired my own Heidelberg Windmill! Stay tuned for my ongoing learning curve on that truly incredible machine.
A few other tidbits about me:
I currently co-facilitate fundraising trainings for movement organizations with Resource Organizing Project;
I am a lover of karaoke, and joined my first Mardi Gras krewe in 2024, which is a MOBILE KARAOKE FLOAT (shout out to Les Sans Culottes!); and
My partner & I have a rescue pup named Ossie, who has acquired many affectionate nicknames, including House Wolf, Ossington McGillicuddy, and The Very Best.
