Alan Stein/Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
Alan Stein is an artist exhibiting a hand printed book as part of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts booth.
I divide my time working on paintings in pastel and designing and hand printing limited edition books illustrated with my own wood engravings. My press is called the Church Street Press
In the first image I am sitting in front of my easel wall, there are finished pastels on paper tacked to the wall and part of a table full of chalk pastels can be seen off to the side.This series of pastels is based on my on-site sketches in rural Newfoundland on the Bonavista Peninsula where I have a house and studio in an old fishing harbour, near the town of Trinity, these are part of a larger project, and exhibition to be completed 2022. Next fall I begin on a hand printed book of poems by Newfoundland poet, and musician Des Walsh, I will be creating a wood engraving inspired by the poems and my on-site sketches for each of the 16 poems, the pages will be hand bound into hardcovers in a limited edition of 60 copies. The exhibit will feature the paintings, sketches, prints and book, at the English Harbour Arts Centre, Newfoundland.
The second photo shows me standing at the press, a 1940’s Vandercook #4 proof press, you can also see type drawers behind, and some hand printed broadsides in the background. For each of the books I print I set the type by hand, and then print the sheets one at a time on the press onto handmade paper from St. Armand in Montreal. After all the text is printed, I will engrave the wood blocks and print those directly from the blocks one page a time. This project will take two years from start to finish.
