Steamroller Printmaking at the Shoreline Arts Festival June 28 - 29

The Shoreline Community College Art Club is joining forces with the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council to host a Steamroller Printmaking Extravaganza at this year's Shoreline Arts Festival. 

Steamroller Printmaking is always a crowd pleaser, and we think you’ll be delighted by what these students can do. They will be making huge woodcuts and then running them under the “press” of a steamroller! The printmaking instructor and art club advisor Natalie Niblack is heading up this student project and has asked a handful of printmakers in our community to also participate.

“For us as students, it will also be an exciting and challenging opportunity to experience printmaking on a large and public scale. We hope that the event will also increase awareness of the visual art programs at Shoreline CC and the support Shoreline gives to students involved in extra-curricular club activities”.  - Art Club Student

Join the fun - Hands-on Art for Adults.

The Shoreline Arts Festival has always had a vibrant Hands-On Art section for children, and with this year’s Steamroller Printmaking, the fun will be extended to Adults! So roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with the woodblock workshop offered on a rolling bases by the SCC Art Club students.

So, what exactly is Steamroller Printmaking?

Steamroller Printmaking is a kind of relief printmaking, a printmaking process in which an image is drawn on a surface, and the negative or “white”  areas are carved away. The surface or plate is usually made of wood (wood block print or woodcut) or linoleum (linoleum block print or linocut). 

The image is inked with brayers (rollers) and paper is laid over the surface. The image is transferred using some kind of pressure- sometimes a printing press, sometimes a baren (a disk covered with bamboo leaves). In this case the pressure is applied by running a steamroller (!!) over the paper and plate, sandwiched between layers of plywood and blankets. The woodcuts are very large, 2 X 4 ft, or 4 X 6 ft. The result is very dramatic when the large prints are peeled away from the plates and displayed.

Many thanks to Aurora Rents for not only generously donating the Steamroller (technically an asphalt paver) for this event, but also for not laughing us out of the room when we came to them and asked  “Can we borrow a steamroller for the weekend to make huge woodblock prints?”

The Shoreline Arts Festival is a FREE event that provides two extraordinary days of music, dance, theatre, literary arts, visual arts, and food, plus the Shoreline Philippine Festival. This creative community event, sponsored by the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council, will be held at the Shoreline Center, 18560 1st Ave NE. Visit the website for applications, deadlines, or additional information or call the Arts Council at 206-417-4645.

The Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to nurture all of the arts in the community through programs and events, arts education, advocacy, and support for artists and arts organizations.