Week 1: Printmaking (or, "Who you tryna get crazy with, esse? Don't you know I'm Gocco?")

The Labour Day project begins with an adventure in Gocco printing. I do not own one of these wonderful machines (essentially, it is a mini-screen printer, and it is awesome) but a lovely friend of mine very generously let me use hers. I didn't think the extremely fine script in my Eazy-E drawing would work out, but the screen came out perfectly, and it printed quite nicely onto a kraft brown Moleskine cahier. It's a bit splotchy, but that's most likely a result of my over-inking. I also used the Gocco to print out a new set of gift tags for next weekend's show. I first started making these last Christmas, using my good old clackety-clack Smith Corona to type each one out. Since then her ribbon has run dry and I haven't been able to find a replacement, so it was Gocco to the rescue. The beauty of this project was that even without the machine, I could continue to make prints at home just by inking the screen and running my credit card along the top - a technique I like to call Ghetto Gocco. I'm quite impressed with this little gadget, it has changed my life significantly.