2011 HardPressed Calendar: Handpressed Hardware

This past summer I had the opportunity to spend a week in the tiny town of La Mision, Mexico doing mission work with members from Bible Fellowship Church of Sebring, FL. (You can read more about this experience in my previous blog post by clicking here. But wait, not yet, continue reading first.) The trip provided a host of new experiences that lended themselves to a spiritual journey like none other. One of those new experiences was building a house on a hillside for the family of two little girls that attend Open Arms Childcare Ministries (which is a no-cost childcare ministry for needy families). When we arrived at the site on Sunday afternoon there was just a slab of cement and a pile of lumber with a treacherous climb. And when we finished up on Friday there was the shell of a home and even a roof. This required a whole crop of tools and hardware I had rarely laid my hands on before in my life (Thanks, Tom Moran, for teaching me how to properly operate a hammer.)

Searching for materials to print this 2011 Desktop Calendar I found myself walking around a hardware store for hours, examining and touching everything, before leaving with bags of my collected materials. My thoughts couldn't help but go back to that experience on the hillside in La Mision. The community hardware store, where we got most of our materials, certainly didn't have attendants roaming about asking if they could help you pick out granite counter tops or new hardwood flooring. The home that we built with our own hands was nothing more than three rooms and maybe 750 square feet total, but by looking into the eyes of this family you could see that to them it was nothing less than a palace.

As I cranked out these letterpressed calendars, my Christmas gifts this year (spoiler alert for anyone close to me that I get gifts for), for some reason I decided to make a few extra, not really knowing what for. Then just a few weeks ago I got a letter in the mail from Open Arms Childcare Ministries, that spoke of Christmas gifts for their students, asking for donations and all fell into place.

So here you have it... I have 15 extra of these 2011 Desktop Calendars for sale for $35 each until December 1st (yes, that's just two days away), with all proceeds going to Open Arms Childcare Ministries Christmas Gift Fund. Give it as a gift to a friend or to yourself.

To purchase a calendar, email me at cmprietz@yahoo.com. All payments will go through PayPal. Calendars will ship beginning next week (Dec. 6th). (The 4.5 x 5.25 in. calendar comes with a stand, not shown, for viewing one month at a time.)



About the Calendar:
This 2011 Desktop Calendar was created using found hardware objects hand pressed on Crane's Lettra paper using a Vandercook letterpress. The process was a bit of an experiment in the making. I didn't really know what I was going to get until I got into the letterpress studio and got to work. Three days later (with numerous failed experiments), I emerged with this creation.

Materials Used (in order of appearance):
Composite Shims
Metal Grate
Pegboard
Washers

Dates were designed by me and printed using photopolymer letterpress plates produced by Boxcar Press

To see a bit of the process as well as two other calendar creations by fellow NCSU MGD Grads, Brooke Chornyak and Tania Allen, visit my Printing Experiments Flickr set here:
www.flickr.com/photos/27070682@N05/sets/72157625295067255...