Teaching with The Zz School for Print Media
The Zz (zee) School of Print Media was a printmaking-focused education initiative founded by the artist Erin Zona in 2015. Zz School’s aim was to promote print-based public art, encourage authentic exchange between artists and the community, and expand the role of printmaking in the visual arts. In addition to technical services and equipment access, Zz School offered an a-typical divergence from the otherwise monolithic institution that is traditional printmaking. This program was a certified ‘strange and amazing’ experience for students and teachers alike. You can learn more about the Zz School legacy here.
World’s Shortest Letterpress Class for Booming Businesses.
During my two years with Zz School, I taught this ‘power lesson’ in how to letterpress print calling cards, with an emphasis on how the trade can be used as a strategy for up-ending common business tactics. Historically, the mass dissemination of information (made possible by printmaking) has compelled and expanded the market economy. In this class, students would instead attempt to counter such pernicious profiteering through the use of “slow print media”. We challenged ourselves to think and dream in alternate worlds wherein ‘business was booming’ outside of capitalism, where hand setting/printing your business cards somehow seemed logical... Students would leave this class having learned how to compose, lock-up, and print a form on a Chandler & Price Press.
Pictured here is an artifact from a class field trip I led which was accompanied by an “Audio Guided Tour of the History of Communication”. Everyone was given a Walkman, headphones, and a mixtape I made which chronicled this timeline. Tracks included the sound of the first phone call made by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, a story of how an undertaker in Kansas City invented the touch-tone phone in 1888 just to undermine his competitor’s wife, Stevie Wonder’s 1984 hit ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’, and more!
