Chuck Sperry

As someone who has actually been “in the trenches” printing all of my own posters, I have a right to a few words here on the subject.

To this day, 16 years and still going strong, I design and print all of my own posters and prints.

I don’t like it when artists who don’t print their own work act like they do. That’s elitist, untruthful and wrong. I think it’s part of the class system that we have grown to culturally accept having to do with working with your hands. As if manual dexterity is of a lower order of importance in the making of art, than to make something with your mind and to direct the labor to produce it. I feel this relationship of the artist as boss who directs labor to produce art, further emphasizes the elitism of a class stratified society.

In fact, working with your hands while using your mind is the very essence of artistic activity. This activity unifies the physical and cerebral into one activity. When I make my own art – when I actually print it – it is the fullest expression of my command of my mental artistic aims and my physical material conditions. It is pretentious to lead people to believe you produce your own prints, when you pay someone else to produce them.

If it is so glorious to produce the print, as many claim to do, when they do not, then why not get into the print studio and do the actual work. By working with the actual printing you will learn something about color, composition, design, screen printing itself (which is a physical activity), paper, ink, texture, luminosity, and the relationship between color and form. It will make you a better artist. If you do not print your own editions, don’t pretend like you do; It’s untruthful, and therefore can not be art. Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth. There I said it.

Full interview at Inside The Rock Poster Frame