The Curator's Eye

Feminist Broadsides

Chandler O’Leary and Jessica Spring, Letterpress Artists

selected by sweet pea Flaherty, director of Wayzgoose at King's Books

Victory Garden

In their “Dead Feminists” series of broadsides, Jessica Spring of Springtide Press and Chandler O’Leary of Anagram Press focus on a subject I’m fascinated with — women’s history — and breathe life into the words of feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Eleonor Roosevelt.

O’Leary, a new arrival to Tacoma from Minneapolis, illustrates and hand-letters the designs which Spring then converts to photo polymer plates.
The plates are then used to create limited-edition prints, which combine a stunning aesthetic with quirky style.  They take something that could be stodgy and transform it into a product that’s accessible to everyone.  O’Leary and Spring have another broadside due out this month about marriage equality, using a quote from suffragist Alice Paul. 

Come My Conservative Friend

I met Jessica Spring when she came into the store to install work from her Art of the Press class at Pacific Lutheran University.  We talked about Small Press Month and came up with the idea of throwing a Wayzgoose, originally a party to benefit printers, to celebrate the different facets of book arts here in Tacoma. This year’s Wayzgoose, or, Letterpress and Book Arts Extravaganza, takes place at King’s Books (218 St. Helens Ave.) March 1 from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

— sweet pea Flaherty

Images courtesy of Anagram Press and Springtide Press.

To keep up with Letterpress events at King's Books in Tacoma, visit their store Web site.