Yesterday, Danielle and Nicky went to the open house of the Carriage House, a lettepress studio run by the very talented Liz Kerner - a CCS alumni/illustrator/teacher/letterpress extraordinaire.

Her set up was an impressive one with a full inventory of letterpress hardware and an assortment of fully functioning presses. There was a big turn out of interested folks and everyone got a chance to try a hand at pulling their very own prints. Liz also gave a basic introduction of how to set type and a run down of the vocabulary that comes with it. It was definitely an inspiration to what kind of letterpess set up we can have at the CCDC. Liz was very open in sharing her knowledge and love for the art of letterpressing and for that we’re very thankful. Hopefully one day she can visit our space and give us more pointers.

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Last Saturday the CCDC kids got stuff done, son. We brought in expert builder Keith Kropfreiter, a friend and co-worker of Miss Esther J, to help us put up the frame and door for the darkroom. In less than a few hours, the empty corner with the lone lightbulb by the freight elevator transformed into a spacious darkroom full of possibility. We made the space bigger to accomodate room for not only the photo equipment, but also space to expose screens for the screenprinters.

Check out the process pictures of the construction in our Gallery.

Last Wednesday (Sept.14) was Esther’s bday. So naturally, we planned a big CCDC Fowling Party at the studio last night. Footballs were thrown, tiramisu, apple empanadas and decadent s’more pies were eaten and washed down with delicious beer. Best of all a dance party was had, led by the musical stylings of our friends Jordan and Kanakri with a special vocal appearance by our very own Nathan Hulsey.

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A month ago, Esther was contacted by a couple of French bloggers/photojournalists who wanted to come meet us and tour the space. Check out our feature on their blog, Detroit je t’aime

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Yesterday, Steph, Danielle and Nicky had a very productive day at the CCDC HQ. They cleared out the stage and cleaned it up to make room for the screenprinting studio and Steph and Nicky’s workspaces are taking shape. The wooden palettes found at Charlie Steve’s work proved to be very useful and are planned to be used to make work desks to do screenprinting on. Muscles are sore but excitement is a plenty. Good job ladies.

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We finally have a REAL website! A special thanks goes out to Kikko Paradela for helping program the site. He was a real trooper with the tight deadline and my very picky and demanding requests. Go ahead and take a peek around!

♥ Nicky

These past two weeks have been quite exciting for for our clay studio. Katie acquired a kiln and a wheel thrower while Matt acquired a glass kiln.

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