Seriously,

When ink gets pushed deep into the fibers of paper, as is the case with letterpress printing, it unlocks up to three ounces of a special pheromone called REALNESS. Once you breath in the REALNESS, you can’t help but caress the paper with eyes and fingers alike and suddenly, oh god, you think about the people who actually printed the thing, by hand. Mixing inks, carefully feeding paper, checking each print.THE REALNESS, you gasp. THE REALNESS!

So what is this? Huh? Some arts and crafts William Morris Olde Tyme Printerie kind of hippie bulls**t? No way! It’s THE REALNESS!

* * scene * *

The work I did while illustrator-in-residence at Pantry Press is now up for sale. I made drawings, they printed them. It was holy.

Check it all out at: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5587410

There are prints, pattern posters, coasters and notecards, and most of them use the overprinting of two colours to nice effect, making a third colour. They’re practically soaked in REALNESS. They just reek of it.

So please, take a look, and buy something, if you like what you see. Or if you have a blog, give us a shout out! That’d be nice.

Oh, and here’s some more info on the whole residency:

- A diary of the first five days, in The National Post. Wraps up tomorrow. I totally sound like an crybaby.
Do a search for Ray Fenwick at the following url:
http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

- Christian talks about the process
http://inkinourveins.blogspot.com/2008/02/few-words-about-process.html

Thanks as always!

Yours in REALNESS,
Ray