Why Letterpress?

I often get asked how letterpress relates to my work in social impact design strategy. The answer is easy to those who know the medium and more complicated for those not familiar with the dimensions of design thinking, so I’ve attempted to document my perspective on how lenspeace seeks empathy and authentic human connections through printmaking.

Relationships

As a conceptual artist I’m fascinated by relationships, the dynamics that pull together and tear apart, and the intimate communications that occur in this space. I’ve been with my partner my entire adult life, so you could say relationship, communication, and the empathy within self and other dynamics have been a recurring theme after nearly 20 years. The ways we communicate within relationships fascinate me, and letterpress allows me to explore genuine sentiments we share across the spectrum of human emotion. Shared emotional experience creates a vulnerable strength that binds us to other people in ways we can’t rationally explain, a knowing that transcends the world of words and form, to dance throughout time and space. These relationships become a web representing our friends, family, home, neighbors, cities, states, countries, and planet, and whether we want to be or not, we’re bound to each other for survival.

Communication

As a designer I’m fascinated how effective communication and presentation can change people’s minds, compel them to act, invoke empathy, and create connections. Graphic design has spurred movements, sold both innovative and completely useless products, changed lives, and been telling us what to believe since it began. Again, I’m fascinated by relationships, but instead of the intimate personal ones, these are the ones we have with our culture, society, economy, and environment. This craft is where we create a visual voice for ideas to express needs, desires, and problems as an organized collective. This power helps shape our collective consciousness, a power deserving of the time and intention letterpress requires.

Space becomes form

If design is the practice of intentional communication. The goal of graphic artists is to create an experience within the intersection of ideas and material. What better medium to communicate on behalf of the human condition than a handcraft you can literally feel? The tactile sensations and inking techniques of printmaking and letterpress are ideal for establishing these emotional connections. Each piece from the studio is a personal intention as every sheet is crafted by minds, connected to hearts, and touched by hands. Once received, the texture of quality paper is felt under your skin and you have a response you can’t resist, it makes an unforgettable impression. You know you’ve never experienced anything quite like it before and you may never again, so you desire to hold on to it, creating a connection between every head, heart, and hand the print touches.

Unity within diversity

As a variable inking medium no two pieces come out exactly alike. Subtle differences emerge within the relationships between the paper and the ink, the speed by which the press has moved across the form, the height of the inking rollers, the relative humidity and the temperature of the room. So in letterpress, just like our lives, no two connections between any two people, or groups of people could ever be the same, they all have to be explored and respected for the potential they could be when combined in new ways. The type itself creates a metaphor for the beauty inherent within the unifying love of diverse groups and expressions of self.

Practice love

I chose letterpress for two key reasons. Objectively, it’s a conceptual manifestation of the conversation I seek to have through my work; relationships, feelings, intentions, integrity, connectedness, compassion, community, and humanity. Subjectively, it’s a space to explore my own human condition through a practice that requires patience, abstract and detailed thinking, creative problem solving, and intentional action. Printing also frees me to collaborate with artists from a variety of backgrounds and explore communication arts together to benefit our community while creating a community in the process.

The medium and this work remind me daily that everything emerges from the present moment, the big picture and tiny details are equally important, we’re only as strong as our relationships, and diversity makes us stronger.

Lennie Gray Mowris | lenspeace | a spectrum of creative ideas

social impact design strategist | letterpress printmaker | graphic artist

#designwithheart #createwitheverybreath @lenspeace