It's finally officially official, the press release went public today. The Maryland Institute College of Art will purchase the majority of Baltimore's Globe Poster collection, including type, cuts, and their printed archives. BALTIMORE—Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) announces its intent to acquire approximately 75 percent of the historic Globe Poster Company working collection of wood type, images and illustrations employed for letterpress printing. MICA will use items in the collection as academic and research resources while preserving the legacy of these historic assets. After the acquisition is complete, young artists and designers will have the opportunity to learn first-hand traditional printing practices even as they explore contemporary methods in the digital age. MICA will make a public announcement on Tuesday, March 22 at 6 p.m. in the Brown Center’s Falvey Hall, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave. Jim Sherraden of Nashville’s Hatch Show Print will follow with a lecture entitled Preservation Through Production. Jim Sherraden of Hatch Show Print will be at MICA on Tuesday, March 22, speaking at Falvey Hall at 6 PM on the topic of Preservation Through Production. The Cicero Brothers of Globe Poster will be there, and you should too! Congratulations to MICA on an amazing purchase. This will shape your Printmaking, Illustration, and Design programs for many many years to come. Much more information can be found at City Paper, the Daily Record, Baltimore Sun, Printeresting, and our earlier blabbing here. Poster above printed by the stupendous Friends of Globe - go say hello, won't you?

It's been a busy month for us at BPS. We taught our first ever screenprinting workshop, studio rental is picking up, and holy cow, it's almost MARCH! Keep a close eye here. We should have March workshops listed very shortly.

This little tidbit of news doesn't have anything to do with our shop at all, but it's just too fantastic to not talk about. The expansive, exquisite, and one-of-a-kind collection that is Globe Poster will be purchased by the Maryland Institute College of Art, right here in Baltimore, MD. If you know anything about Baltimore's Globe Poster, this is humongous news. The discussions had been back and forth across the table, and the owners Bob and Frank Cicero, had been entertaining offers of other buyers around the country. This would have ultimately led to the collection being parted out, losing its local heritage, and, for the most part, being forgotten. MICA has stepped up to the plate. They will be buying the majority of the collection this spring and ultimately using it in the classroom, hands on with students, in Illustration, Graphic Design, and of course, Printmaking. Final negotiations are under way, and contracts are being written. Kudos to MICA for doing the right thing. A few links to pass along: The long list of Thank Yous from the MICA Printmaking Department. Globe Poster's Etsy page (go buy some lovely reprints of their classics - there aren't many restrikes left!) Some articles from the Baltimore City Paper: Letter Men - 2009 and Pressed for Time - 2011, in case you want a brief history Globe's Flickr page (where we pulled our images from) And, most importantly, the student-run, grassroots Friends of Globe, who were instrumental in these final stretches. Here is the trailer for what we believe was an unfinished documentary. Truly Baltimore, through and through! Today is a good day.

New Workshops are finally on their way! Our walls are completed, our heat is ON, and we are ready for more workshops! We are thrilled to announce SIX new full-length workshops AND a new holiday-card workshop (just in time for Valentine's Day). Our workshops in screenprinting or letterpress are very hands-on, small classes, designed to teach all the basics. If you have been wanting to rent studio time but can't remember (or never learned in the first place), then these are for you. The full-length workshops are $125, are (almost all) offered on Sundays, and last approximately 6 hours. Classes are expected to fill quickly, so if you have not already signed up for our e-mail list or started following us on twitter, now is the time. Class registration will be announced approximately a week before each class. Workshops and dates are listed on the Workshops and Classes page. We hope you're as excited as we are.

Details and registration information are here.

We are thrilled to announce a series of super-mini-workshops for Saturday, December 18th. We're calling it our Holiday Card Mini-DIY-Magnetic-Poetry-Workshop, 2010, (or something silly like that). Details are forthcoming on our Workshop page as soon as we get it running, but in short you'll be picking from our collection of pre-determined common (and not so common) holiday-card-phrase-pieces to make your own.  For example, your card could read: "Have A :: Warm :: Holiday Season" or it could read: "Cheers to a :: Kick-ass :: Festivus." We'll provide the pieces, you decide what to say. Each 2-hour workshop will host 10 participants, and everyone will walk away with 30 cards of their own design. So, if you're not already on our mailing list, or following us on twitter, please sign up. We'll make the announcement asap. As for our regularly scheduled full-length studio workshops; we had full intentions to be running them by now BUT we have had a few heating issues develop recently. In short, the studio is FREEZING COLD. Genuinely in the low 40s, maybe colder. The powers that be have promised us that heat is coming soon, and shortly after the holidays we should be back up and running. But we just said workshop, and freezing studio, right? Yes! It's quite chilly. We think 2 hours is manageable. 6 hours is definitely not. So dig out your thermals and dress in layers, and we'll find all the space heaters we can. Hopefully this will tide us over as we work through this seasonal speedbump and we promise we'll be back on track as soon as we are able.

Hey Baltimore! Our friend Kyle Durrie of Power and Light Press in Portland, OR needs your help! She wants to buy an old bread truck and convert it to a FLIPPIN' PRINT SHOP! Wait - it gets better! She wants to drive said print shop around the country and proclaim the greatness of printmaking everywhere she goes. Long story short, if this can get us to finally join Kickstarter, there's no reason you shouldn't too. And, we can't actually promise anything, but if this all works out as hoped there's no reason to think she won't grace the curb of Baltimore Print Studios. Go, pledge! Every dollar helps, but the more you give the more you get! Tell your friends!

This feels like the week of a lot of press, no pun intended. While we're plugging away on the behind the scenes things, you know website and business nonsense, we've been getting a lot of publicity. Mid-October brought a lovely write-up from Urbanite. This week we are the feature article at Bmore Media, which is awesome. And tomorrow we'll be featured on Baltimore's Public Radio station, WYPR, on their arts program The Signal, interviewed in our studio by Lisa Morgan. It airs at both noon and 7 PM, and you can listen to it anywhere in the world. AND if you miss it live, it can be downloaded or subscribed to on iTunes.

Baltimore Print Studios is thrilled to announce our Grand Opening on Sunday October 17th, from 3-7 PM. We are located at 18 W. North Ave., between Maryland Ave. and Charles St. in the Station North Arts District. Opening our doors to the public for the first time, we will be offering hands-on printmaking demos in both letterpress and screenprinting, and handing out information on workshops and studio access. Light refreshments will be provided. The event is free and open to the public. Come one, come all! The formal press release is available here: pr-baltimoreprintstudios.pdf Photos above by MLY Photo.

Just thought you'd all like to know we're still working, every day, putting things in place and so forth. To whet your appetite a little, here's a lovely photo of our 8 line Futura Medium. More progress photos over here. Also, kudos to our good friends Keegan Meegan in PDX who are also enjoying a new studio too! Can't wait to visit the new shop! We're pushing hard to open in a month. Are you excited yet? We are!