Artist to Know: Printmaker Dan Wood - Inside Art With Michael Rose

Artist to Know: Printmaker Dan Wood - Inside Art With Michael Rose

 

In an unassuming industrial building in Providence’s West End, printmaker Dan Wood is at work on a major project producing cards with letterpress accents for the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. His shop is filled with vintage printing equipment and there is a steady hum of mechanical elements. His apron is flecked with printer’s inks. Alongside this busy commercial business, he also produces text-based artworks on the same machines and enthusiastically shares his joy for print media. One of the city’s most active and experienced printmakers, Dan Wood, is an artist to know.

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Raised in Boston, Wood graduated from RISD in 1994 and has lived much of his creative life in Providence. While he studied printmaking in college, the bulk of his skillset came from working in active print shops and learning from those who were steeped in the industry. He founded his business, DWRI Letterpress, in 2002 and has been behind projects ranging from wedding invitations and business cards to artist collaborations and his own creative work.

 

Asked what is special about being an artist in Rhode Island, Wood answers, “I would say, more than anything, there may not be a hugely supportive buyer community here, but there’s a hugely supportive community. There are so many people here that are just doing weird things despite gentrification and a lot of different changes. I really do feel like it’s an incredibly welcoming and supportive environment for artists.” Wood goes on to say that living in a small, tight-knit community means that certain references to local politics or history are easily readable for a wide audience.

 

 

Wood’s major personal artistic project, The Linotype Daily, utilized daily typecasting to document a year’s worth of events from March 1, 2019 to February 29, 2020. The project continues now under the moniker The Linotype Occasionally and pulls stories from news headlines to turn into text-based artworks. In punchy prints, Wood advocates for voting and calls for an end to war. A self-described news hound, his art is political and tuned in to current issues. His work has been collected by the MFA in Boston, RISD Museum, and the New York Public Library, among others.

 

Explaining why he enjoys creating art on the industrial Linotype press, Wood says, “First of all, it is just, as you can see, an insane machine. Once you start running and using one of these machines, and I’m mostly self-taught with help along the way, it is a horrible addiction. It’s got 3,000 moving parts, you know, it’s got all these different things. I love the fact that I am working on a machine that is just a mechanical object that is literally from Victorian England in its engineering, but it’s also such a part of our history. So, whatever jobs, like newspapers, that this particular machine printed while using it, I feel very particularly connected to that history and our shared history.” In short, Wood relishes using the Linotype to create contemporary work that is in conversation with the machine’s original purpose.

 

 

Wood is also active in the community. He helped found AS220’s print shop and teaches every semester at RISD. While working in his studio, Wood is able to quickly and succinctly share facts about the history of printing, the way printmaking machinery works, and how it has transformed culture. His excitement for the field is invigorating.

 

Looking ahead, Wood says the shop has been planning a holiday yard sale that will include artwork, extra paper, and other odds and ends. He is also participating in a wayzgoose, a printmakers’ meetup, on October 26 at Gaspereau Press in Nova Scotia. Additionally, Wood is aiming to make more space for his personal practice, saying, “I am looking forward to rearranging things in such a way where the commercial printing world is not taking up such a huge part of my waking hours, but that is something I say all the time.”

 

 

Through January 11, works produced in Dan’s shop are included in the show Pied Type: Letterpress Printing in Providence 1762 - Today, which was curated by his coworker Lois Harada for the Providence Public Library. This show is a great opportunity to explore the art of the print.

 

Sitting at his Linotype machine, Wood references a quote from his cousin, who is a commercial printer. Upon visiting his shop once, Wood’s cousin repeated a popular saying that goes, “If you have one working Linotype machine, that means you could be certifiably insane.” Reflecting on this fact with a laugh, Wood says, “I have two!”

 

 

Learn more about Dan Wood’s commercial projects at www.dwriletterpress.net, and learn more about his fine art practice at www.longesturinal.com. Dan can be found on Instagram at @dwriletterpress or via @thelinotypedaily.