ps151205 Gamify your press:
Building community for the NPC&I
Is it feasible to start the Northwest Print Center and Incubators with a printing press? Could the Halfwood Press Line be the beating heart of this enterprise? Are manufacturing and customer support the keys to successful, job-creation and sustainability?
Is it feasible?
In my excitement to
fulfill an order for a new press—this one a unique, white Galleon Halfwood—is rather
like a fifteen-year slow burning fuse lit in the year 2000. It was about that
time I lit out on an effort to take on the world. I started with an art gallery
in our condo. This game me space to meet the public, plus room to organize and
show our art collection.
The next year I moved my
space to a unit text to ours—a 600-foot space I converted to a mix of art
studio, video production and display area. We sold that in 2003 and I moved to Captiol
Hill to participate in an experiment called the Seattle Artists Mall, which
lasted six months.
Immediately after leaving
the SAM, I rented a 300-square foot space at SMJ Studios. I wanted to get back
to my roots in printmaking, so I put pencil to paper and drew my perfect press—a
beautiful press half wood and half steel. In a few months—it was now 2004—I had
it made. As an afterthought, I asked for a miniature version of the original
Halfwood.
The Mini Halfwood let
flow a new current in printmaking for me. Although I was to continue my
printmaking, I discovered that people were hungrier for printmaking experiences
than they were hungry for my art.
My art satisfied me and a
few art patrons (as it always has, and continues to satisfy) but then—as now—I learned
that a more true artistic interaction with people lay in sharing the
experience, not only the art.
This was proof of a theory
which I hatched when I was still teaching college: Printmaking is a performance
art as much as it is a visual art. As the ancestor of all technologies, the
value of printmaking experiences is greater than as an art form. Print spawned
numerous arts—photography, cinema, video, computer graphics and interactive
games.
This is all fine and
good, but can printmaking create jobs? What America needs now is meaningful, sustainable
work for imaginative, creative, discovering and inventive people. Productivity
is the key to sustainability, and it must not help ending Earth’s human life
sustainability as many other products do. Press production, education and business development must bring about another age of reason.
I produce etching
presses called the "Halfwood Line," and variations on the theme of the printmaking
experiences that open up when there is a press handy. Now I am startingup the Northwest Print Center and Incubators with the Halfwood Press line as its cash cow Can the manufacture, sales and support for the Halfwood Press Line—and the
WeeWoodie Rembrandt Press—create jobs for other people as it has done for me?
A feasibility study is
the only way to find out. However, there is a condition to meet: It must be a
feasibility study that uses new ideas, like Concurrent Engineering, Lean
Startups, and Gamification.
About the Author: Bill Ritchie plans that printmaking will be taught, researched, and
practiced in a community of practice and blends traditional printmaking and new
technologies. His press designs and videos are for printmakers globally while
he builds local teams to develop the Northwest Print Center and Incubators.
