DIRTY WORK STUDIO BRINGS RISOGRAPH PRINTING TO KW
Waterloo Region now has its first risograph print shop, thanks to the team behind Dirty Work Studio.
The four studiomates, Sid Drmay, Elise Glaser, Shalaka Jadhav and Natalie Vuong, came together through what they describe as a mutual interest in creating a space where visual artists can gather to develop their printing and publishing skills with peers.
The initial idea for Dirty Work Studio came about when Jadhav and Drmay attended a studio sale put on by the previous tenants—a pair of artists who have since moved out East.
“Sid and I, at different points in the afternoon [had come] by. We saw the space, sort of had the same idea and got really excited about the potential,” Jadhav said.
Around the same time that the studio space became available, Drmay was also in the middle of acquiring a SF5130 risograph printer via a connection in Montreal.
“Risographs are a print method that uses an ink drum and soy-based ink, that basically uses a stencil method to push ink through the stencil and print onto the page, and you can do a lot really quickly,” Drmay said.
“It’s really popular with art prints, because you can do so much to add depth to your print,” they said.
“For example, with inkjet printing, it combines the different colours as it’s putting it on, whereas with [risograph printing], each [ink] drum is the colour. So, you can get really vibrant colours that you wouldn’t get with traditional print methods,” Vuong said.
Outside of Dirty Work Studio, all four studiomates are heavily involved with local arts organizations and community groups within the region.
Glaser manages the independent magazine collection at Disko Coffee. Drmay runs KW Zinetopia and the Hamilton Zine Machine. As part of her freelance graphic design work, Vuong handles design and social media for Roux Bakehouse. Jadhav is a member of the Creek Collective, KW Zinetopia and is also a writer-in-residence for CAFKA.25.
“I was coming from Seattle, and within the first month, there was a zine fair that Sid was running which was just right up my alley,” Glaser said.
“I feel really lucky to have met everyone. There’s a really vibrant arts community here,” she said.
Beyond its function as a print shop, the studiomates hope to cultivate Dirty Work Studio as a catch-all space to support programming and events.
“All of us, we come from print, community organizing, makerspaces,” Jadhav said.
“It started off as a co-working space and a print studio, but the past few weeks [there has been] a lot of programming. Having informal spaces for creative community [to] get together is how interesting work and collaborations can happen,” they said.
“On average in a month, we’re looking to have at least five or six events. I’ve got a monthly cyber-thriller movie night, [Elise] has her monthly lecture series, there’s a deplatforming series going on right now. At this point we have a few things lined up where we’re providing space for folks doing different things, working with them to make their events successes too,” Drmay said.
“As much as we love working here and having that workspace, it is also really important to all of us to be able to have folks in here and run fun things, bring people together, because I think we’re all very passionate about having that kind of space here,” they said.
The studio is not currently categorized as a non-profit and is therefore operating without any public funding, although they are eligible for some grants.
“This is a labour of love. We currently don’t have any funding to this work. We were very lucky at our launch to get donations,” Jadhav said.
“For this to be more sustainable, it would be amazing to have more support from the community.”
Dirty Work Studio is open for risograph printing as of this past February and can be contacted for quotes at [email protected].
News about upcoming programming can be found on their Instagram
@dirtyworkstudio.
This article has been updated to reflect the following facts : It was Drmay, not Jadhav who purchased the printer; the earlier version of this article stated that the studio cannot be categorized as a non-profit—this is incorrect as they could be classified as one after going through the legal process.
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