The Firecracker Press is hosting a celebratory party this Saturday, from 6 to 10 p.m. at its Cherokee Street location to commemorate its 10th year in business.
It all started when owner and founder Eric Woods decided he wanted to get his hands dirty. After graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute with a degree in graphic design, Woods entered the world as a professional designer. He soon realized that wasn’t going to be enough. “Once I got into a professional design sense... it was in an office behind a computer,” Woods says. “There was no way to venture outside that sort of cubicle to get my hands dirty and make stuff.” All of that changed in 2002, when The Firecracker Press was born.
The studio is not your average printing studio. Known for specializing solely in letterpress printing (no, there is no screen-printing done here) and using antique equipment, they have made quite a name for themselves. “Most of our presses and equipment are from the late 1800s and early 1900s,” Woods says. “So a lot of it is pretty old stuff, but it is super great, functional and built very well.”
A combination of this old equipment and modern times has produced a business Woods and his crew are very proud of. “We love combining old technology and old working methods with new ways of thinking and I think that sort of drives us,” he says.
He is right. While working with machines over 100 years old, the newest Macintosh computer can also be found in the studio and is part of the printing process. The image must be produced digitally for the woodcuts to be made. Once the woodcuts are made and the type is set, everything is sent to the printing press, where it will be cranked out by hand. (Everything printed at The Firecracker Press is printed by hand.)
"The main reason for the party is to thank people for supporting us for 10 years,” Woods says. “We want to say thank you to St. Louis for being a cool enough place to support the kind of art that we are doing and we just want to let people know that.”
Rob Levy, host of KDHX's Juxaposition, is DJing the party; artist Alicia LaChance will paint a new mural onsite (a project sponsored by Aisle 1 Gallery just down the street), and Urban Eats is catering an "International Popcorn Bar." There will also be a raffle, with prized including a newly designed Schlafly growler, party T-shirts from STL-Style, and 3-D posters. Firecracker Press is located at 2838 Cherokee; for more information, call 314-776-7271 or go to www.firecrackerpress.com.
