A Hundred Ways to Make Art at Peregrine and Pickwick Presses
By Nancy English
With the Print Crawl beckoning visitors on the 12th through 14th of December, would-be print makers can see dozens of printing techniques on display at local print shops. Prepare to be amused and charmed. Peregrine Press and Pickwick Press are two of the eight participating businesses. Both are long-established and both feature art overflowing with wit and whimsey.
“I can include snark sometimes,” said Crystal Cawley, a longtime member and printer’s devil (an apprentice) at Pickwick. The snark can be pungent. For example, one poster objecting to nostalgia reads, “There are no good old days.” But the message is never dour.
Gathering at the Press
Cawley has been a member of the Pickwick Press for 10 years. It now has 30 members, many of whom gathered on a November night to assemble its annual calendar, a vital fundraiser.
The crew assembled thirteen prints by thirteen members. Cawley finished it at the drill press with a hole to hang them with.
Pilar Nadal, the director since 2015, radiated with the delight of a charmed teacher, keeping the work steady.
Later there would be print parties to fold 1,000 “passports”. Volunteers stapled each into a hand-printed cover. Included is a folded map of print shops and pages ready to be stamped.
David Wolfe, with Wolfe Editions, has made the printed cover in the past. His shop printed a poster and series of cards with fanciful fonts and embellishments.
Wolfe’s website, which also features wood prints and fine print book production, says, “From music promotion, to propaganda, to protest, the poster has been an essential tool in cultural change since the early 19th century.”
The print shops collaborate with each other each summer at a Print Jam that involves large format printing. For weeks in 2025, many of Peregrine Press’ 34 members labored on a four- by-four-foot woodcu. They brought it to Running with Scissors on Anderson Street, where they inked and “pressed” it by a steamroller.
The finely detailed bird’s head and chest now blaze forth on the wall of the Peregrine Press studio. It hangs as a fierce superintendent of the work always underway.
Peregrine Press – Over 30 years in Maine
Peregrine Press has its space on the second floor of the Bakery Building at 61 Pleasant Street, in what was originally a Maine College of Art studio. At the long wide glass-topped tables from its earlier use, the newest scholarship member, Claire Christensen, worked on a print.
Gathered to discuss their well-loved print shop were more than a half dozen longtime members, including this year’s co-directors, Jenny Scheu and Soozie Large. Mary Hart, a longtime member at work in the studio, said not having one leader allows continuity. Each year there are new directors.
Alice Spencer, a local artist, arts leader, and longtime member, said this was the first print shop in Maine. “I am struck by the number of women,” she said.
Indeed, the members gathered that day were all women. Members, vetted by a selection committee, pay $800 annually and do various chores as part of their participation.
For its 33rd year anniversary, members produced a portfolio in the shape of a 33rpm LP album. It now is held at various collections around the country including the New York Public Library.
From the Peregrine Press Portfolio webpage of artist prints, we find Mary Hart’s “Disaster Doily” with its serried flies drawing us into a roiling center. Kate Katomski’s “Quarry Project, Maine – Dome” with its enigmatic gentlemen and Jenny Scheu’s azure “Music from an LP Garden” both set the imagination wandering. Deb Schmitt’s “Landscape” reveals a sunset-colored terrain of stretched stitches.
Collaborative Spirit
A trip to Athens in 2025, and an upcoming show in the lower-level gallery of the Press Hotel (where in fact the previous newspaper building’s printing presses once stood) are two of many events, workshops, and collaborations the members enjoy participating in.
Like many print shop members, Crystal Cawley has projects underway in her own studios. Type is sorted and arranged ready at hand in the basement. Upstairs, rainbows of wound thread sit tucked into compartmented trays, ready to be sewn into the brain quilt stretched across a table.
Cawley has stitched together fabric pieces which she printed with anatomical brain shapes into a wide quilt. She embroidered one brain with a red flower and a spray of blossoms.
The creative assembly of shapes and different fabrics, colorful embroidery, and lace-fringed linen, keeps the eyes dancing along. I can only imagine that I am almost as entertained and delighted as the artist surely felt when she brought the vision into being.
