Cape Fear Press


	Cape Fear Press Presents... BIG PRINT BLOCK PARTY ART FESTIVAL See giant 4x8 foot woodcuts printed with a steamroller, LIVE! Participating Artists Printing 4x8 Blocks Stephan Bode & Seagh Mulligan Wilmington NC collaboration Todd Carignan Wilmington NC Alex Clark Charlotte NC Kristin Gibson Carolina Beach NC Fritzi Huber Wilmington NC Rebecca Jones Charlotte NC Jeremy Millard Wilmington NC Jennifer Page Carolina Beach NC Robert Pleasants Carolina Beach NC & Mike Houston & Martin Mazorra of Cannonball Press NYC The past will meet the present as thirteen contemporary artists take on the oldest form of printmaking to make giant, original prints, right before your eyes. This is the first event of its kind in the southeast. Special guests, Mike Houston and Martin Mazorra of Cannonball Press, who are masters of the medium, will be bringing four of their blocks to print. All of the prints will be printed in black relief ink on a tight weave, 7 oz. white muslin fabric made of 55% hemp and 45% organic cotton. We will be using a steamroller to provide the pressure of a traditional printing press. The mission of this event is to give a group of local artists the opportunity to make large scale prints together while demonstrating to the public the relief printmaking process and the art of making original prints. All of the artists will get to share their skills and ideas with each other and the public to further enhance our experiences with art and printmaking. It is my hope that this will become an annual event in Carolina Beach, my hometown for the last 16 years.

Cape Fear Press is a privately owned photo etching studio located in Southeast North Carolina. The owner of CFP is an artist dedicated to non toxic, less toxic and technical innovations in the field of fine art photo etching. Cape Fear Press is the exclusive distributor of Puretch, a high resolution photopolymer etch resist for traditionally etched metal plate intaglio printmaking, PCB photo circuit boards and jewelry. Cape Fear Press was established in 2001 and has been supplying Puretch Photopolymer to artists since then.

For searchability, Puretch photopolymer is also commonly misspelled as Purtech, Pure-Etch or Puretech. The name originates from the purist who prefers to etch the plate.

The name Cape Fear is what the region here is referred to and the river that empties into the Atlantic on the point of a Cape that is named the same.

From Chronicles of the Cape Fear River 1660-1916 by James Sprunt
"Looking then to the Cape for the idea and reason of its name, we find that it is the southern most point of Smith's Island - a naked, bleak, elbow of sand, jutting far out into the ocean. Immediately in its front are the Frying Pan Shoals, pushing out still farther, twenty miles, to sea. Together they stand for warning and for woe; and together they catch the long majestic roll of the Atlantic as it sweeps through a thousand miles of grandeur and power from the arctic towards the Gulf. It is the playground of billows and tempests, the kingdom of silence and awe, disturbed by no sound save the seagull's shriek and the breakers' roar. Its whole aspect is suggestive, not of repose and beauty, but of desolation and terror. Imagination can not adorn it. Romance can not hallow it. Local pride can not soften it. There it stands today, bleak, and threatening, and pitiless, as it stood three hundred years ago, when Greenville and White came nigh unto death upon its sands. And there it will stand, bleak, and threatening, and pitiless, until the earth and the sea shall give up their dead. And, as its nature, so its name, is now, always has been, and always will be, the Cape of Fear."