One of the best parts about working in a trade like screen printing, is that it takes you places. Like being part of a band, we travel all over to take part in fairs and gallery shows, and to meet artists too! We have some great trips coming up, but recently we took part in a small road trip, just west of Montreal to a little place called Ottawa. It turns out that Troy Lovegates was making a short stop in Ottawa, which is only a 2 hour drive from Montreal, so rather than have our recent print collab shipped for signing with the ever reliable (*sarcasm) post service, we decided to drive it ourselves! 

The actual driving part of this road trip was pretty uneventful, but once we arrived at our destination things picked up! Troy invited us into his parents home whom he was visiting, and we got to setting up an area where he could begin the long process of signing, numbering and labelling each of the 50 prints. We spoke about many things; his travels, partying in Berlin, cross-country skiing, distaste for Harper, etc. When I asked him about the print in front of him and why he chose this image, he told me about his love for drawing old faces and there wrinkles, weathered with time. He compared this to the old building in a way that I totally understood (having a love for antiques and old things), saying that growing up in the city as a graffiti artist and skateboarder "..we used to have abandoned buildings to skateboard in ,explore,paint,and huge spaces for art studios .... that is now mostly gone...all these beautiful old buildings have been erased for shiny new sleek plastic and glass highrises ...all that detail and workmanship...". Out with the old, in with the new I guess. A sad truth. He finished signing, and we packed up the prints. He asked if I'd like to see some of his Linocut work. These are beautiful prints created from cutting out negative space on a sheet of linoleum, then inked and transferred onto paper, the areas that aren't cut get printed. 

He showed me the 18 colour linocut below, its only one of two that exist ... beautiful ( but not for sale unfortunately). An 18-colour linocut is no easy task, because there's no going back once you carve a section out, you can only move forward... He also had two paintings from a recent show in NYC with him. I thanked him for showing me around, I got the prints and made my way to the nearest LCBO! No road trip is complete without a souvenir and some alcohol! Happy weekend everyone!