Poster image from the show.

Saturday, we visited the Durham Museum in Omaha Nebraska to see the American Letterpress-The Art of Hatch Show Print, which is in its final week.

The posters have a wonderfully organic nature to them since each one is hand pulled and therefore has variances within a series. They like to call them monoprints for that reason.

The earlier posters were simple but so impactful and memorable…the overlapping triplicate image of Johnny Cash is one of Hatch’s signature prints.

Layered effect created from multiple runs in the press.

I was most drawn to the newest posters in their entire series, where they took old pieces and parts of plates and wooden type, and repurposed them into new, multi-layered posters. They have thousands of wood and lead type in their archives and feel that “Preservation through Production” is what is going to keep the art of the letterpress alive and well.

Check OUT all the wood type! HEAVEN!!!

Even though the wood type was used many years ago, the way Hatch reuses them, and breaks them into many layer, colors and forms, feels very modern in its new translation.

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