Roadworks Festival 2016

This weekend Mathilde and I spent an afternoon in the city at one of our favorite annual festivals.

Each year, San Francisco Center for the Book hosts the Roadworks Steamroller Printing Festival. It's a fun day full of printing and book binding activities with a market place for local print makers to sell their artwork. The highlight of the festival is the steamroller printing. A vintage steamroller rolls over a carefully place linoleum block, paper and layer of blankets to produce amazing prints. It's such a fun and novel way to produce prints.

This year, there was not one steamroller at the festival like previous years, but two. Double the steamroller fun! One steamroller was used to produce the large 3' x 3' prints as per usual, and another was used to print smaller prints to order, four at a time. This meant that there was twice as much steamroller action, something that Mathilde was pretty excited about.

Roadworks Festival 2015

This past weekend we attended one of San Francisco's quirky events. No, not the Folsom Street Fair - although we did spot many of that festival's attendees in their interesting attire (or lack there of!) on our way home. No, the festival that we attended was the annual Roadworks Steamroller Printing Festival hosted by San Francisco Center for the Book. Much more family friendly!

The highlight of the Roadworks Festival is watching linoleum block prints being made with the help of a steam roller. You know, the sort of thing that would've been used to smooth out roads back when coal was the power source de jour for vehicles. We've attended the Roadworks Festival in the past and we've all enjoyed it. Now that we have a "digger" obsessed toddler in our midst attending the festival was a no-brainer. A whole afternoon of watching a ye olde construction vehicle paired with hands on print making and book binding fun. Perfect!

Roadworks Festival 2012

It's been a busy few weeks here at Little Hiccups with a big road trip, visits from family and friends and a quick European vacation. More on all of that later. In the meantime I thought I'd share an event that we attended this weekend here in San Francisco.

Each year the San Francisco Center for the Book holds their annual Roadworks Festival. The major drawcard of this festival is the steam roller produced linoleum block prints. Last year we missed out on attending the Roadworks Festival as it was held a few weeks before our arrival in the states. I was pretty excited that we could make it this year.

One of my favourite prints from the day by Mike Kimball

The kids loved watching the steam roller roll over the lino block, paper and padding. The results were amazing producing some spectacular prints - all of which are available to purchase for $500.00. Now if only I had a spare wall and a spare wad of cash...

Here's a look at the steam roller printing in action.

Setting up the lino block and paper for printing

Ready to roll

Rolling, rolling, rolling

Lifting off the print

Perfect!

Cleaning up one of the lino blocks

As well as the steam roller printing there were plenty of activities to keep us busy. Ava in particular was keen to try out all sorts of printing and book crafts.

Ava's first project (and the one she was most excited about) was making her own little note book. She started by printing an image on the cover using a table top printing press...

Ava prints an image onto the cover of her note book

Cover printed

Then it was time to bind the pages and cover together using a simple stitch technique...

Ava stitches her book together

All bound together

Once Ava's book was bound together she printed a design inside using a lino block.

Ava rolls out the ink

Rolling the ink onto the lino block

Here comes the print

Voila!

Next up Ava made badges for Lola and herself. She chose images from a magazine and squeezed them together with the badge components in the badge press. The lady helping Ava was surprised that she could work the press all on her own. Ava was pretty pleased with herself about this! She's very strong, you know ;)

Ready to squeeze the badge parts together

Use those muscles!

Next up was fruit and vegetable printing courtesy of Whole Foods supermarket. Ava printed with celery, capsicum, apples and lemons to create a brightly coloured lunch bag. Ava was a pro at printing with fruit and vegetables given her previous experience with this crafty project.

Printing with capsicum

Printing with celery

One of a kind printed lunch bag 

The last craft project that Ava worked on was a print on the Vandercook press. This is similar to the press that I used when I did my letterpress workshop earlier in the year.

Crimping the paper in place

Starting to move the roller

It's pretty heavy!

Another successful print

We had a lovely afternoon in the sun watching the printing and taking part in the activities. The festival featured plenty of stalls from local artists and designers and I had to try my very hardest not to buy almost everything I saw. San Francisco boasts so many wonderful, talented artists. I'd love to be able to purchase one of the prints produced on the day. Oh how special that would be!

Mike Kimball's steam roller print features the shipping cranes synonymous with Oakland's waterfront 

Steam roller prints by Anna Branning, Caitlin Mattisson and  Rik Olson