Owner of Pickwick Independent Press Pilar Nadal holds the poster for the Portland Print Crawl, which she organizes. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

As holiday bazaars and markets abound in Portland this time of year, the Portland Print Crawl offered a unique way to see a wide variety of printmakers’ works, right where they are pressed. From Dec. 13-15, eight local printmaking studios participated in the annual event that in previous years had over 600 attendees admiring their work, purchasing prints and celebrating the art community in Portland.

“I think people have really seen it as like an opportunity to not only shop for the holidays, but also have an experience,” said Pilar Nadal, owner and operator of Pickwick Independent Press and organizer of the event.

“I think it’s really exciting to see where everything’s made. There’s a working feel to the space,” said Nadal.

Nadal started the Portland Print Crawl in 2018 after attending a printmaking tour in Oaxaca, Mexico. Bringing this idea back to Portland, she saw an opportunity to connect the city’s printmakers with the public and with each other.

Throughout the weekend, Portland Print Crawl attendees were guided by a little printed “passport” that included a map of the city’s participating print studios: the Art Department, Little Chair Printing, Running With Scissors Art Studios, Pickwick Independent Press, Peregrine Press, Kris Johnsen Studio, Wolfe Editions and Strong Arm Bindery. Upon a participant making it to a studio, a page of their passport gets stamped with a unique print, encouraging stops at multiple studios.

“This was really born out of the idea of ‘how do we let the rest of the community know that there are these amazing printmakers here?’ A lot of our studios are closed to the public typically, so how do we welcome them into the studio?” said Kate Anker, owner and director of Running With Scissors Art Studios.

“It’s different than, say, a pop-up market at an existing business or brewery or something. This is actually bringing people into those studios so they can see the presses. They can see where the artists are making their work,” said Anker.

Pickwick Independent Press is a community print studio with 27 members who are professional working artists using the space for print mediums including intaglio, relief, letterpress, screenprinting and offset lithography. While members of Pickwick Independent Press do make sales through the studio’s collective online store and in-person stand, the Portland Print Crawl generates their biggest in-person sales of the year. Almost all the studio’s artists displayed an array of colorful prints in all styles for purchase.

“There’s so many artists who are making so many great things that it’s really wonderful to have so many opportunities to have them be able to sell things without having everybody having to have their own retail store, their own online presence,” said Nadal.

“I can imagine that it would be a much harder thing to (do) if we were not operating as a community, much harder to find,” she said.

Running With Scissors Art Studios houses 80 artists working in clay, wood and print. The Portland Print Crawl is their printmakers’ biggest sales event of the year, with each artist selling their work from their own studio space inside the 16,000-square-foot collective. Anker said each artist usually makes their most sales in this three-day period, which is particularly well timed. Between the holiday sales and the summer tourist season, the following winter months are a financial challenge to Portland artists making a living selling their work, she said.

“So they really, really count on and need those holiday sales to carry them through the leaner times. And so it’s important that people support the local artists and makers during this time,” said Anker.

Martha Kearsley is the artist behind Strong Arm Bindery, a letterpress and bookbinding studio. She works out of Running With Scissors Art Studios and sold cards, journals and calendars at the Portland Print Crawl. She appreciated how the event celebrated the printmaking community in Portland.

“Oh, I think it’s great fun. We all know each other. We all work with each other. We troubleshoot when somebody’s got a problem with their equipment. So it’s really fantastic to have the opportunity to sort of be together … when people come in, I get to see where they’ve been, and we can talk about the other people’s shops,” said Kearsley.

“It’s such a nice thing to feel a part of, having worked with these people for years. It’s nice to have a real concrete event around the fact that we’re all still here. We’re all still doing what we love to do,” she said.

Of the eight print studios that participated in the Portland Print Crawl, three were community print shops and five were independent shops, amounting to over 50 printmakers selling their work over the three days.

“A city of this size, having this many print shops – both community and non-community (print shops) – is pretty remarkable,” said Nadal.

This plethora does not drive a spirit of competition, however, but one of collaboration, made evident through the Portland Print Crawl.

“It’s really a great example of how … community works well together, and thinking about abundance. Rather than working in this capitalistic world where we have to fight, (instead) figuring out how we’re all gonna make a living,” said Nadal.

“We’re all in this together, and we all really want to make sure that we each survive. So rather than trying to have separate events on separate days and really stretching out our public, how can we all work together?” she said.