Letterpress Greeting Card Workshop with Erin Maurelli

Join Twin Cities printmaker and book artist Erin Maurelli for a Letterpress Printing Workshop at the Anderson Center’s Granary Printmaking Studio on Saturday, February 4 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Class fee is $140 for general public and $125 for Anderson Center Members (class fee includes $15 materials fee). Space is limited, advance registration is required. Appropriate for ages 16 and older.

Erin is a great technician and aims to help students improve their technique as well as explore their creativity. Students will utilize the Anderson Center’s extensive library of typeface and decorative ornaments to go hands-on with a Vandercook 219 Letterpress. Participants will leave with a dozen of their very own original letterpress greeting cards — just in time for Valentine’s Day! This class is a unique opportunity to become more familiar with the letterpress process, as well as the Anderson Center’s printmaking studio, which is rented out to experienced printmakers.

Erin Maurelli is a Twin Cities based artist, working primarily in printmaking and book Arts. She is a Tamarind Certified Master Printer and collaborative printmaker. Her work is centered on aspects of the human body as the most amazing form of biotechnology. Maurelli draws parallels between a man-made physical world and the micro-functioning of our own bodies. Her work points out similarities found in nature, our own cellular structure, and human constructs. The machine is a metaphor for the body and vice versa. Maurelli has a strong interest in the science of prosthetics and the recent technological advances in this area of study. She dreams of a day when she might literally have an extra set of hands or eyes in the back of her head.

Erin’s Artist Statement:

“In my work, I am interested in the intersection between image and text as forms of communication. As humans we read symbols as easily as we read words. We can derive and understand meaning when text is contradictory to the image next to it. We perceive much more in visual language. For a long while my work has centered on the human body as a form of functioning / malfunctioning machine. The viewer recognizes the softness of the flesh, but also the lock and grind of gears, for example. Themes in my work has turned inward to reflect on the parts of ourselves we keep hidden versus the parts of ourselves we share. I am aware of the parts of myself I mask, and the reasons for doing so. No one is truly transparent.”

This workshop is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Featured image at top: 2017 Anderson Center artist-in-residence Amy Pirkle working in the Granary Printmaking Studio. Photo by Ruth Nerhaugen.