episode thirty-four | joseph velasquez

Published 3 March 2020

Miranda Metcalf  Hello print friends, and welcome to the 34th episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. I'm your host, Miranda Metcalf. I release an episode every two weeks, and on the off weeks, I publish an article on the Pine Copper Lime website, which features images and maybe a bit more information about the artist I'm going to interview. Happy March, print friends. I hope you're doing well, enjoying spring or autumn depending on what hemisphere you're in, and washing your hands regularly with soap and water. You're supposed to do it for as long as you can sing the Happy Birthday song, but that's a terrible song. So please keep in mind you can also do it for as long as it takes you to sing the chorus of Dolly Parton's Jolene, which I'm usually singing once a day anyway, so you may as well do it at the basin. This episode, like all episodes, is made possible by Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend)'s amazing Patreon supporters. Supporters like Adam Finkelston. Adam, as well as being a gosh darn hero for supporting something he believes in, is an artist and the co-editor of The Hand Magazine. If you're not familiar with The Hand, it's a beautiful, in-real-life publication featuring photography and printmaking from around the world. You can check it out, learn more, purchase copies, or see about being featured in it yourself at thehandmagazine.net. One last little bit of housekeeping before we dive in: in case you haven't heard, Pine Copper Lime will be at the vendor fair at the Southern Graphics Council International Conference in San Juan. That's in just about a month's time. And this year, I'll be doing that, as well as hosting a live taping in front of a live audience. And I would very much love to see all of your beautiful faces there. Follow Pine Copper Lime on Instagram (@helloprintfriend) for more details, but I cannot wait to see everyone. Printmaking forever, shun the non believers, join the party. And speaking of SGCI in San Juan, I am very excited to share this week's interview with you, featuring Joseph Velasquez. Joseph has created a registry for print shops and art spaces in Puerto Rico, where they can list items that we as printmakers descending on the island can bring with us. There's a link in the show notes to this, and I want to make sure to point this out to you at the top of the show so it doesn't get lost in our chat. Joseph is an incredible storyteller. And in this episode, we get into his growing up traveling throughout the Southwest in Texas with his father, his early influences of Chicano art, his time in the Air Force, traveling as the printmakers on call for the band Spoon with Drive By Press, and so much more. Joseph has nothing but good vibes and community building, and it is certainly everything that we need to hear right now. So sit back, relax, and prepare to believe in the power of print with Joseph Velasquez. Hey, Joseph, how's it going?

Joseph Velasquez  It's going great. How are you, Miranda?

Miranda Metcalf  I'm really good. Thank you so much for joining me. I know this is a busy time for you with SGCI on the horizon and everything.

Joseph Velasquez  Yes, it is busy. But it's absolutely my pleasure. I've been a longtime listener, and it's really a great opportunity and I'm excited to share what's been going on and what's happening with SGCI in Puerto Rico.

Miranda Metcalf  I know, I feel like we have so much to talk about. But as you know, as a longtime listener, I always like to get a little bit of background on my guests for people who aren't maybe familiar with them. So would you mind answering the who you are, where you are, and what you do question?

Joseph Velasquez  Absolutely. I am Joseph Velasquez. I'm an Assistant Professor of Printmaking at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, where I've been for the past three years. Previously, I toured as a traveling printmaker with Drive By Press, I'm one of the co-founding members, and an alum of UW Madison. Go Badgers.

Miranda Metcalf  Excellent, excellent. So where did you grow up and what role did art play in that part of your life?

Joseph Velasquez  Art played a giant role. I grew up... I lost my mom at an early age, at five, and my father raised me. And we moved back and forth between San Fernando, California and Los Angeles to the Austin, Texas area. Through my [formative] years, going up through middle school, we lived in LA and I grew up in the barrio, in Pacoima. Seeing the muralss, the Chicano art - I am Chicano, and what that is, for the listeners that aren't aware of what a Chicano is - it's really an activist, a woke Latino, that grew up in Southern California. And many of the roots that I have there are indigenous to that area. And it's a prideful, proud people that likes to iterate, we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us. Fist in the air, it was for the proletariat. And my grandma was an artist, she sang, she played the organ, and she liked to draw. And growing up with my father, my grandmother would give me art supplies all the time. And you know, she would always, in the States, we would have these commercials, like 'Do you like to draw, paint, or doodle? You could be on your way to being a serious artist!' And they'd send you this test to draw this pirate, or a turtle. 

Miranda Metcalf  I remember those!

Joseph Velasquez  Yeah, I feel like a lot of listeners will remember that too, and be like, 'Dang! You know what, I did that too!' I'd get those in the mail. And it kind of started off with that, you know, I can really, to this day, I can still nail that turtle, man. I can draw it so well. And that was kind of honestly the hilarious beginning of it all. But then I also really got into portraiture. And my grandma had these images that she would put up of all my family that had served in the military, and I come from a long line of veterans that have fought for the States, it's really wild about how many conflicts and my family, the history that we have. And I would actually draw them and, you know, I look back and I'm sure they look like bad tattoo drawings, but for a little eight year old kid doing them, I can see - you know, my grandmother still has them - and I can see kind of where I came from with that, or how I was captivated in my own family's personally history. And the narrative would affect my later work, and what a big influence that portraiture had, and what I would get into later on. And so that was kind of the start, along with, and I would say with printmaking, one of my big influences was designing tattoos for my cousins. We would also get this engraver that we would engrave on the back of the windshields of my cousin's Monte Carlo. I would do them on what was, I thought, or what we all called, Mexican letters. But it turned out to be old English. I remember drawing on the side window of his Monte Carlo the praying hands by Durer, having no idea who Albrecht Durer was. That's just so funny that I ended up becoming a printmaker after all that.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, it's funny how I see the the Durer praying hands just everywhere, and you're just like out and about, and you're like, 'I don't think anyone knows that that's one of our early printmaking heroes.' Yeah, so it sounds like just kind of what you're saying about the decals on the cars, and the tattoos, along with activism, that art and visual culture and visual communication is a big part of Chicano culture. Would you say that's true as well? 

Joseph Velasquez  Absolutely, yes. Yes. 

Miranda Metcalf  And then I know, you're saying like you moved around quite a bit, and a lot of people will talk about using art as a way to connect with people, especially if they were like a new kid at a school or anything like that, they were the kid that could draw the turtle or something like that. Did you find that as well?

Joseph Velasquez  Yeah, I mean, altogether, I think I went to 15 different schools before I graduated high school. And I was kind of the perpetual new kid, and the way to - and I think it really affected my social skills, my communication skills, later on. You won't be shy for long. And it also gave me the opportunity to to see how, you know, a change of perspective and a change of place often gives you the opportunity to reinvent yourself. I looked at it as a superpower instead of a disability, whenever I would have friends that knew each other since kindergarten, and you know, I'm like, 'Wow, and you guys are dating and you're in high school? That's almost gross.' For me, like that constant change, it required me to use what skills I had to, I don't know, kind of fit in right away. And going to school in the '90s, in the early '90s in high school - I guess even my sister's boyfriends who all had like mullets and big into Guns n' Roses and Metallica - what I began doing was using one of my grandma's cross stitch hoops, and I would pin a pillowcase over that. And then I would just draw like an Iron Maiden, or I'd do like a Motley Crue goat or like the rock and roll hands, or whatever. Something evil looking. And they would cut it out, and they would put it on the back of their denim jacket. And they would be so punk rock. And they'd [go to school, and their friends would be] like, 'Who did that?' And it's Joseph, that quiet nerd. Like, alright, you get to sit with the seniors now. And I'm like, 'Yeah!'

Miranda Metcalf  I love it. Yeah. And I think that just speaks to that wonderful universality of being able to communicate visually, is that it's something that sort of instantly lights up anyone. Being able to see someone who can draw well, or can just express themselves outside of that verbal world that so much of our life is taken up in, it's really incredible.

Joseph Velasquez  Yeah, it is. And it's so unique that like, an image can speak, beyond language, and that you can make somebody laugh, you can make somebody smile, with just something that you draw spontaneously. And just to give somebody that kind of emotional reaction, I think, is like, hey, that's kind of why we become artists. We want the response, you know? I like it.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. And I think the way visual culture has that kind of, for the most part, images can have this way where they have almost an instantaneous sort of pop of understanding, in the way that when you're trying to speak to someone, it's always going to be linear. You're always going to have to be using building blocks to make, you know, first ABC, okay, now we're at D, now I understand. And the way we can just take in, especially images that are kind of in the realm of pop culture a bit, or pop art - which I think we'll get into, but I think that a lot of your body of work shares some of that pop art kind of aesthetic, where you understand it intuitively and at once, and it's a bit like a lightning bolt. And it's such an incredible way of communicating and connecting with people. Once you graduated high school, did you know you wanted to go to art school? Was that something that, since it had been such a big part of your life, that it was something that had been on the horizon for you for a while?

Joseph Velasquez  No, actually, and this is something I don't share that often because it's been just a different chapter in my life, but at the time I was playing music. And I was playing guitar, and I had a pretty nice mullet coming in. And when I lived in Austin, everybody was in a band. So I was in a band too. And I was putting in, honestly, like my senior year of high school, I was putting in like 10 and 12 hour days over the summer just playing guitar. Just practicing scales, learning, actually doing the entire Beatles and Rolling Stones sound book, trying to learn as much as I could. And I wasn't any good at that time. And it took me a while. But I had the desire, you know. And at the time, I kind of reached a crossroads where I was like, 'All right, well, I am a horrible student, and I'm broke.' And I was working at a welding shop at the time, and I was just grinding off these metal cabinets that would hold forklift batteries. And I'm there and I'm working with a few other guys, and my friend Efrain, and he's talking to me in Spanish, and he says, 'Puedes leer?' And I said, 'What?' He asked me if I could read. And I say, 'Yeah,' and he said, 'Well, fool, you should be the boss, because you shouldn't be holding that thing right there where it says not to put your hand.' And I seen another guy do the exact same thing, and his hand got smashed. And it just terrified me. And I'm like, 'Oh, man, I'm never gonna play guitar again.' And that startled me, and right next door to the material transport company where I work, was an Air Force recruiter. And I said, 'You know what, this could be my chance.' And I have this, like I said earlier, the family history was service in the military. And I enlisted, and I served four years in the United States Air Force, and I got to spend a little time overseas and a lot of time in San Antonio, Texas, and it was towards the end of my military tenure that I was in a couple of bands. And one of the bands - this is insane - one of the bands got to, and this is like 1994 or '93, we got to play during the Lollapalooza where the Ramones and Soundgarden and Metallica were touring on it, and we got to go to a few stops, and my band won the battle of the bands in San Antonio. We got to go on the radio station and play a Christmas special. It was like a dream. But there was so much infighting and so much collaboration and ego and bands that it's just... I honestly began having a greater time making the flyers for the shows we were doing. And I honestly began having this draw and pull into printmaking, screenprinting in particular, because of that. I was like, 'How are they making these stencils, and screenprinting super punk rock looking stuff?' And, yeah, that was one of the things that really got me going into printmaking. And so it was at that time when we reached a point after when I got out of the military, like a year after I had gotten out, I had just decided, 'You know what, the band stuff is great. But I want a softer landing pad, I'm just going to go to school as a backup.' And I went to school as a creative writing major. And I got a scholarship for writing. And as I was going, and as I was learning, I was drawing pictures to the stories I was writing about my family's history and about these narratives. And I was urged by the English department that, 'Hey, you might want to consider pursuits in Visual Arts, because your pictures are a little bit better than your written words.' And that caused me to go to the printmaking lab where I was going to sign up for a class, and I walk in and I see this guy that looks very similar to me. And he's standing at a press, but I didn't know what it was. And he's pulling up the blankets, he's grabbing a paper, and I just walked up to him and I was like, 'Whoa, what is this?' And I saw him pull the print off a relief block. And he sets it over and he said, 'This is a woodcut.' And I was like, 'Wow.' And he said, 'You can have this.'And I said, 'I can have this?' And he said, 'Watch, I'm gonna make another one.' And then he began rolling the ink out and did it again, and my mind was blown. And that person was John Hancock from the amazing Hancock Brothers, one of the big daddies of the Outlaw Printmakers. And I signed up for his class and I'm drinking his Kool Aid. And here I am now.

Miranda Metcalf  That's incredible. And so yeah, you kind of just stumbled upon it in a classroom. And so was that just kind of it? Were you like, 'Okay, this is this is my life now. This is what I want to do.'

Joseph Velasquez  Yeah, it's one of the things that really captivated me about printmaking. When I decided that's what I wanted to do, it was because of how democratic it was in its way that it was accessible. I was painting at the time, too. I enjoyed painting and I was selling some paintings in Austin. However, I felt like those were precious objects that just went to one person, then they were gone and they were out of my life, where woodcut was more sculptural, I was changing this thing. I was changing the surface, I was interacting with it. It was kind of a dance because I had my intention, but sometimes woodgrain and happenstance or a slip hand or a dull tool makes you follow instead of lead. And so I love that interaction with it too. And so the blocks were something personal to me, but the range of what I could do with the woodcut... and the fact that I could print a woodcut on a piece of beautiful Rives BFK, and I can enter it into a call for entry, and it could be exhibited in a gallery, and that same woodcut, I can print up on some cheap paper, and I can go out in Austin, and I can wheat paste it under a bridge or someplace, and then I can also get that same woodblock and I can print it on a T shirt. And so I love the idea that a kid wearing a T shirt of the woodblock I made, passing the wheat paste on the wall, on the way to a gallery to see it behind glass, of it all coming from the same matrix. That really captivated me, that printmaking was this one medium that could really ride the elevator of social attainment, from the bottom floor to the top of the ivory tower.

Miranda Metcalf  And one of the reasons I was so keen to talk to you is that you've had this whole side of Drive By Press, you're touring with bands, the gig posters, the T shirts, the wheat paste, but you're also a professor at a university as well. And so you seem to have been someone who hasn't seemed to had to make that hard choice, which I think a lot of students and people feel that kind of pressure, that as you're saying, you know, either I can be the sort of free working artist that answers to no one or I need to start writing a 20,000 word thesis where I make sure to reference Foucault to get my work up in a gallery behind glass.

Joseph Velasquez  I think that the only pressure that I've ever had has been self imposed to do that. And I don't think that's any different than what any other artists goes through. I'm a little bit exposing myself here. But again, this is great in case any students listen to it. When I was traversing new waters, I constantly would have doubt. I would doubt myself, I would doubt what I would be going through, I'd go through depressions. I'd suffered through, you know, "I'm not supposed to be here" -isms, 'They're gonna know I'm not supposed to be here!' The truth is, the proof is in the pudding with what you do and what you've done. And there's the beauty and the value of the journey. And now, if I just want to satiate that interest and like, alright, push, and I'm going to go through this direction, that's fine. But I would hope that my own practice would lead me there and not be dictated by a professor. I think that one of the models that is changing within schools right now is that schools are really pushing a lot more of this realization that they need to have more community engagement. The schools need to be way more inclusive, after so many years of being so exclusive, and they need to do that. So schools are kind of looking for new approaches for that and representation. And, you know, when I saw the ad for this school, I said, 'Man, this would be a dream.' And one of the things that I'd always looked at, as a Chicano artist going to school, I've always been the underrepresented, like, there'd be like one Latinx person there. And that would be me. And I oftentimes would make the joke about my time in Wisconsin - which I loved, loved, loved my graduate school experience. I loved my school, Wisconsin. - But I would often make a joke that growing up in Southern California and Texas, when I moved to Wisconsin, I quickly found out that the snow wasn't the only cold white thing there. 

Miranda Metcalf  Oh gosh.

Joseph Velasquez  I would say that, but you know, I saw exactly why I needed to be there. And I saw that I needed to not represent other Latinos and being like an emissary for us, but to be a groundbreaker. Like, 'Alright, I'm one of the first, but there's gonna be a whole bunch after me.' There'll be more tomorrow. I think there's a line from Hamilton about that. There'll be more of us tomorrow. That's proven true. It's proven so true, when I just see on Instagram today, and how beautifully represented the Latinx community is now, it honestly wasn't there 15 years ago when I went to grad school. And so not to stray too far away from the subject and the question you had asked about that pressure, but those are the kinds of things that have constantly been considerations of mine about engagement, about having that reaction or having that intent with my work. And I think that it still leads there. And I think that that's important for students to know, that you don't have to follow anybody else's formula. You can be aware of a path that they've taken, but you can also just say, 'Screw it, man, I'm going this way. I'm going to jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down.' Now one thing I will say about my work is that from the military to undergrad, I took a year off, and then I went to grad school in Wisconsin. And it was there that I founded Drive By Press with Greg Nanney. And we proposed it as a thesis project, to just go to 13 schools, we wanted to mount a press in the back of our vehicle, we wanted to go to places that didn't have printmaking programs, and we wanted to give a demonstration on the history of Western printmaking and bust out the press, leave them a few demonstrations, interact with the public, put the printmaking press in a place out of context to where it would usually be seen, that kind of interaction and community engagement. And, man, fine art printmaking, this is something that has stayed within, kind of in pocket, and you don't get an opportunity to really engage in the general public like, let's say, painting. Maybe screenprinting does. But you know, you can't be taking a mezzotint and a giant press and going out to the strip mall and showing somebody. But Greg and I did that. We were able to captivate a different audience. And at the same time, we were kind of defining our progression, our interest and focus, of artists, of the work we were going to do. Being around all these amazing artists as we progressed beyond the 13 schools, beyond the 50 schools. And we did it for eight years. And we met all these different printmakers, we saw all these demos, and Greg and I would just put them in a little toolbox, like, 'Alright. I learned how to do this, I learned how to do this.' And it was incredibly influential. Because on the road, we would stay in these printmakers' homes, and we would see the generosity that they have with their time, their passion, their knowledge, and their willingness to share all of that was extremely influential. And it just kind of fueled our tank to keep going to the next place where we would just do it and do it. And unfortunately, this was before Instagram, and nobody really looked at our MySpace that we had rockin with that at the time, but now I'm like, 'Man, if we would have done this, we'd have so many more followers!' That was kind of the jump off point. And now as a professor, that's something that I do here at my university. And I'm really gracious, and I'm really fortunate to be at a place that welcomes that and really wants more of that. And I got some big, big plans with doing more of that, in hopes that other printmakers can do it in their areas, too. Just to quickly share one of the things that I have on my plate, and this again, this comes and stems from the influence of Drive By Press and doing these community visits, is that when the dean asked me, 'Hey, how's recruitment with printmaking from local high schools or regional areas?' I'm like, 'Well, they don't really offer printmaking in their programs.' And he says, 'Well, what can we do about that?' And then I came up with the idea of like, hey, what if my school buys me a tabletop press that I can then loan out to local schools for periods of study, and take it to them, where I can have my grad students or my undergrads give a presentation, like Drive By Press would. And then we leave the press there for six weeks. Then following that six weeks, we take the press and we go to a different school, then we go to a different school, and we're able to go around the area introducing the students that don't have the space, or the instructors don't have the space or the materials for a unit on printmaking. But what if we could provide that? And so it's kind of like a library system using a press around areas that don't have presses. So that's one of the upcoming things that I'm working on. That is still, like I said, there's these little things that are branched off from Drive By.

Miranda Metcalf  Not to force that kind of academic lens on it, but it seems like what you're talking about really is relational aesthetics. To sort of divorce ourselves from what is a very old and privilege driven idea that the object is the end goal, the end all be all of art making are these privileged objects that can be sold and can be put behind glass where no one's supposed to touch it. And only certain people in certain circles have access to it. And only certain people in certain circles can own it. And that's what art's about. That is an old idea. And everything you were talking about with that community engagement, and the practice and the research and all of that comes from that interaction, and that transfer of knowledge, and that building of community. That's where the juicy bits are.

Joseph Velasquez  Yeah, that's the fun stuff. I mean, I really glossed over what we did really quickly with Drive By, but there was a time time that when we were at, like the height of it, and let's say we were in year six or seven, we went to revisit a couple of schools. And there was a grad student there that goes, 'Hey, y'all are Drive By Press.' And I'm like, 'Yeah!' And he was like, 'You guys came into my school three years ago. And you guys are the reason why I'm in grad school for printmaking.' And that just blew us away. We were like 'What?' And they're like, 'Yeah, you showed us this artist, and you shared who Leopoldo Mendez was with me, Joseph, and that person changed the way I carved,' and you know, there was little moments like that that aren't lines that you can put on your CV, [but they're like] printmaking Medals of Honor, being like, oh, thank you, that is a beautiful thing you just sent me that just really fulfilled me and made me feel like, oh man, that's better than an award right there. To hear that someone still has that same excitement or I was able to share my passion that they too now share, to have that as a part of the body of work is something beautiful.

Miranda Metcalf  With Drive By, you went to universities, but you also did some touring with bands? Like Spoon and White Rabbit, how did that come about, and what was that like?

Joseph Velasquez  You know, there's so many weird coincidences that happen in life. Things come together, and the way that the world turns, and you're like, 'Oh, this is a weird coincidence.' And one of the things with Drive By... and this was after like our first or maybe our second year, maybe our third year, we were in our pickup truck and the shocks were going out because we had a, man, it was like a 1500 Rembrandt Pelican etching press in the back of the truck, and it had a solid steel bed. And this was the heaviest press. We should not have been traveling the country with this thing. And we had just went to the IFPDA print fair. We met with the print publishers there, we met with Bud Shark. We met with Sam Davidson, who you know. And Sam Davidson, he was such a towering figure.

Miranda Metcalf  Literally, at six foot seven. Yeah.

Joseph Velasquez  During that, Greg and I were giving him the pitch about what we're doing with Drive By, because we asked the galleries and publishers if they would share slides with us that so we can add it to our contemporary printmaking lecture on our tour. And both Bud and Sam were just tickled with us, and I remember Sam, like he actually touched the top of my head and said, 'You guys are the printmaking Lewis and Clark. We'd love to support you guys.' And we went out for dinner. And Bud asked us, 'Hey, is there anything we can do for you?' And I was like, 'We just need slides, any images you can send, we would be so appreciative.' And we left the print fair with just ear to ear smiles, Greg and I were just like floating. And then our truck broke down. The transmission went out, and we were going uphill. And then we stopped. And Greg goes, 'What's going on, man?' I said, 'You smell that?' And there's a distinct smell whenever you burn your transmission. And the truck had it. And we were at the end. And, you know, we weren't in school anymore, we were afraid, we're already putting off the phone calls from Sallie Mae trying to talk about student loans. And we're like, 'We're gonna have to go adjunct somewhere!' And we just saw the end. And we towed the car home, we're sad. And then we get this box in the mail. And it's a FedEx box with some amazing, amazing blue chip prints that the publisher sent us, along with a few checks that just said, 'Go, Drive By, go.' And altogether we had like $6,000 in checks that were given to us by publishers and gallerists to help us, that we bought a brand new van - well it wasn't a brand new van, it was a new van to us. And it was a white van with no decals, it had one slight dent in it. And we had enough money to install a flat file and a new sliding mechanism for the press. And we're like, 'Man, we're gonna hit the road, we're gonna do it again!' So one of the first steps we hit was at LSU. And we were in Baton Rouge, and it was during a career day. And Baton Rouge has this little place called Free Speech Alley. And they have, I guess it's like at any other school when they have the fairs, and they have these different marketing companies out there. And there were some marketing reps there from a company that represented RJ Reynolds. They approached us, because I mean, we would literally have - like, get this. We were funded by small honorariums, the school would give us like 250 bucks or whatever. But when Greg and I had recognized that with this culture, with our culture nowadays, where people wear their beliefs on their sleeves, like literally on their chests with graphic tees, when we made the mix that allowed the oil based ink to stay, and we would tell kids, we would tell students, 'Hey, it's $10 for one of our shirts, bring your own it's $5.' And all of a sudden, we would be making anywhere from $500 to $1500 a school, and we'd be doing three schools a week, we were turning a pretty good dime once we had the van. At LSU, we have this line, it is a ridiculous line of about 75 kids with T shirts in their hands. And they're looking to get wood blocks, and the marketing rep saw this and said, 'Whoa, what has that demographic so captivated?' And they walk over to us and you know, the event was over, and they said, 'Hey, could you guys do this for a corporate client?' And I honestly said, 'No, I don't think the impetus is pure. Like there's a reason why we're doing this. We take the money from the big schools, and this enables us to go to a small community college.' Then the rep slid a card over and it had how much money he was talking about. And I'm like, 'Man, I don't have insurance right now. We absolutely can do this. When and what bands are you talking about? And what client?' And he said it was for a cigarette company. And I'm like, okay, I don't know. And I'm like, 'What bands?' And he said, 'Spoon,' and Spoon, that just blew our minds. Because they have a song called "30 Gallon Tank." And in that van that we bought, it had a 30 gallon tank. And Greg and I used to blast that song over and over again when it was the other one's turn to drive. And the thing is about a 30 gallon tank is you can drive 16 hours on a 30 gallon tank. And every eight hours, Greg and I would switch. If we were driving from Miami to Portland, Oregon - which, we once did that ridiculous trip. So ridiculous. 'Can you be here in three days?' 'Yes, we can.' Nonsense. - So to have that opportunity to work with Spoon, it just really blew us away. And we were quite nervous about it because we were from Austin, I was, and I actually went to the same high school as the lead singer. And then to come to find out that the keyboardist, the pianist, actually went to painting school there at UT in Austin, and then the bassist studied printmaking and art in Kansas City. And so like, they all knew what we were doing. They were well aware of printmaking. And it was so different, with the Drive By stuff, we were making our own designs. We had autonomy of whatever we made, there was nobody saying, 'You can't do this, you can't do that.' But when you work for a corporate entity and you work for bands, not only does it have to go through personalities, it also has to go through legal. And so there has to be this verification of, where did your idea come from, you can't use this, you can only use this, they don't like this, change this, have this. And that's a totally different hat to wear. And I think Greg ended up wearing that hat a lot better. It was a better fit for him than it was for me. But that was a different thing. But it was something incredible to go from our brokedown truck, to the van, to being on a couple hundred thousand dollar tour bus. Being on the tour bus was fantastic. I mean, there's rules, you got to lay with your feet a certain way. There's etiquettes of the things you can and can't do on the bus or in the bathroom. Buttons you can't be pressing on the console of the driver. Reggie was this driver that we had for them. And we were in front of a venue, just to share one quick story, and I pressed the button to equalize the hydraulics so we'd be level, and I think I released the septic tank under the bus in front of this venue in Oregon where these kids were waiting in line to buy their tickets for The Walkmen. And the bus driver just freaks out, we just have to make the block and park somewhere else.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh my gosh!

Joseph Velasquez  We got ink on the interior on the leather seats, and Greg and I had to figure out ways to clean it up. One of our first gigs that we did with Spoon was at Webster Hall in New York, and The Walkmen were opening, and we had to carry this giant press. Again, we had the Pelican etching press. The crew, they hated us. They were like, 'Oh my goodness, this heavy press again.' And we had this apparatus where it would sit on it like Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark, you know, like Raiders of the Lost Ark. They had to lift it up like the Ark of the Covenant where there'd be like four people on each side. And they were walking up the stairs at Webster Hall. And they were so mad. And before the tour, the marketing company says to us, 'Hey, can you guys print 300 to 500 shirts a night?' And Greg and I were like, 'Psh! For this? Hell yeah, we can, no problem.' Man, we had never printed 500 shirts in one night. And that show at Webster Hall, we printed like 480 shirts. We had some Popeye arms that were swollen. We were exhausted. We looked like we were working in a coal mine. Greg had ink all over his face. We were a printing mess. But the people absolutely loved it. This was an audience that had never seen printmaking, and we would seriously have people come up, these kids would come up and be like, 'Did you guys invent this?' And we're like, 'Absolutely not. No, don't think we did.' And they were just blown away. We'd have kids that were like, 'Will you just press the block on my shirt or my chest?' I'm like, 'What? What weirdness? New York hipsters - Alright, fine.' And we would comply, and people just loved the interaction. And we would print the shirt, we'd put a piece of newsprint on it, and we would roll it tight. And we would seal it with the tape that said, 'Don't open for 48 hours.' We had our dryer mix in it. And at the time, we didn't have the deal that we have with Gamblin right now producing our textile ink. So we were making our own, and we'd have to make it on the spot. And it worked. And I remember a few weeks after that, being in Brooklyn, and I'm walking down in Williamsburg and I see this kid's wearing the shirt that I made. And he points right at me, and he goes, 'Hey, man, you made my shirt!' And he looks at me and gives me a high five. And I'm like, 'Oh, this is a great moment.' And not five minutes later comes another guy and he's wearing a shirt again, another one that we made. And I just point, and I said, 'Hey, man, I made your shirt!' And he looked at me. And he looked and he said, 'And it looks good on me, too.' And he rolled his eyes and walked away.

Miranda Metcalf  Ew! Fucking Williamsburg. I think, speaking of this kind of community involvement and engagement, I'd love to chat a bit about your involvement in SGCI 2020, which is going to be in Puerto Rico, because you've been involved in really pushing this idea of the ways in which this conference that so many of us attend can be more engaged in the communities that we're just kind of landing in for a weekend, or really a week, and taking over. And particularly having heard your practice and how it tends to all stem around this engagement, I think it's a great opportunity to hear about how you're taking that interest and hopefully changing the face a little bit of the Southern Graphics.

Joseph Velasquez  Yeah, well, it first began at the last SGCI in Dallas during the members meeting. And I at that time gave a proposal about making a site visit to be able to establish some connections to have Drive By Press type visits by our members that we could engage, so that way we could have more participants going to the conference, as opposed to just attendees, and how we can also affect local printmaking recruitment for the schools by going to high schools and giving demonstration supplies and materials so they can do units of study within printmaking and those areas. And just to also take an assessment of current printmaking status and needs of all shops. I had expressed that I felt that the conference would just stay in one fancy hotel, and we would only go to the best schools of the printmaking area. And what I proposed is that we go to other institutions that offered courses in printmaking, workshops in printmaking, or other printmaking studios that might be in need. And perhaps the people going to the conference could bring that screw or that spring from that Vandercook that they have for their SP-20. Or they can have this extra blanket or this ink or this roller that they don't use that somebody is really in great need of, and kind of create a registry for those, for each upcoming conference. Everybody said, 'Yeah, we're on board!' And everybody got excited about it. Then the rubber hit the road. I made the visit with John Hancock to Puerto Rico and we did our assessment, we met some amazing printmakers and learned about the rich history that printmaking has in Puerto Rico and San Juan in particular, and how many presses that were there. But we also learned about the damage that they had sustained because of the hurricane, and now the earthquakes, that have kind of frozen a lot of printmaking budgets, how that also affected some ability to repair some of the existing presses that were in need. And I wrote a report when I came back, I proposed, 'Hey, what if we create a registry? I found some schools for some visits, and I found a school that I felt that the press was in such bad shape that maybe we can get together and come up with an idea and how we can fund it.' And I asked around for help. And Hannah March Sanders and Blake Sanders joined me, and we were like a triumvirate where one would do something, the other one would match, and then the other one would match. And so our efforts were constant. And like I said, none of us were SGCI board members, we were just members that had put together the registry. Hannah did a great job in researching and finding that out, Blake and I began to call out to artists for the Indiegogo campaign that we had come up with. We said, 'Hey, we're going to ask artists in print shops for work that we can use as perks for the press.' And you know, the first thing I did is I emailed Bud Shark, and Bud Shark said, 'Absolutely!' And he said, 'What print do you want?' And I picked out this Enrique Chagoya print, and that print went so fast. And I asked some of the Madison alum and faculty from there, I asked Jack Damer, and without hesitation, he sent a print. In the registry, we had prints by Katherine Polk, we had Nicole Hand, we had John Hitchcock, you know, the list goes on and on of these amazing printmakers that have donated prints to the cause. And they went. And we asked different vendors, and McClain's sent us all kinds of tools. Gamblin sent us some ink. In our registry, Speedball sent ink. Everybody has done such a part in having this. And the community responded, and they backed it. And to be totally candid, I really thought that we might only raise $5,000 and we'd end up giving the person in need of a press, like 'Hey, we couldn't raise enough, but here is a gift to get other printmaking supplies. Because the press is like a really giant thing and I don't know how we're gonna get here.' I thought maybe we'd find a used one. We got three quarters of the way, and we'd raised close to $15,000 in just 60 days. We were then contacted by Takach. And they said, 'How close did you get, Joseph?' And I talked to David and he said, 'You know what? From the Takach family, we'd like to fill in the remaining amount and send a 22 by 48 floor model handcrank litho press, brand new, to San Juan.' And I was literally floored by that.

Miranda Metcalf  I'm, like, crying over here on this side of the microphone. It's so amazing.

Joseph Velasquez  Yeah. And I didn't think we were gonna get there. So it was really fantastic, the way our community would come together, and it just... and then there was a lot of people who had a hand in a role, not just the people giving us the perks, the people buying the perks, but the SGC behind the scenes people, Charles and Kate, our local hosts there in San Juan that would answer questions for us when we were going. So there has been so much work and emails, but it got done really by standing on the shoulders of giants. You know, by asking these printmakers to give these perks is what really made these giant chunks of, you know, leaps to get to that final goal. And I'm hoping that it really sets precedent for something that we can do as a community when we come together like that. And again, it just argues for that big central thesis that I like to say about the power of print and the democratization of art and what we can do with the power of the multiple.

Miranda Metcalf  That's super beautiful. I love it. It's, you know, printmaking forever, right? Printmakers are just incredible, incredible people and incredibly generous. It's amazing that you were able to take the lead on that and really give everyone an opportunity to come together. It's amazing.

Joseph Velasquez  That's one thing I did not want, is I didn't want anybody to think that, hey, this is the Joseph show, this is a Drive By Press thing. There was nothing that connected it to anything that we've done with Drive By, other than Drive By providing some ink and some shirts that we made. And I also wanted to include as many people in the community that wanted to come aboard, you know, and sell in a Puertografico with the rest of us.

Miranda Metcalf  It could be a really beautiful note to end on here. I'd love it if you could tell people where they can follow your work, where they can learn more about you, maybe learn about coming and studying with you, if they're a young listener thinking about studying printmaking? Where can they find all of that?

Joseph Velasquez  Right. Well, you can find me on Instagram, and I am @dbpjoseph. You can also find me on josephvelasquez.com and drivebypress.com. And I welcome any and all direct messages about students interested in my program. But I also am putting together a PDF for many of the students in Puerto Rico about selecting a grad school and things you should know before or questions and FYIs before you apply to grad school and things to be aware of. Pros and cons of big schools, small schools, that kind of stuff, and tips about funding. And I love to share that, because that's a continuation of what I did with Drive By. So I welcome that. Also, please visit @letsleaveapress on Instagram. And you'll see a link to the So Kind Registry, and that is the printmaking registry where we're asking for supplies for the shops that could benefit from those supplies and materials. There's a few places there that we are assisting with supplies. One is called La Liga that has been there for 50 years. And they're actually sending printmakers out to the southern part of the island to give workshops in printmaking, it's kind of relief, like humanitarian relief, just to get the students' and the kids' minds off the disasters from the earthquakes. And they were in need of all kinds of art supplies, even outside of printmaking. And so that's all connected on to one of our posts on the Let's Leave A Press Instagram. And I'm really looking forward to meeting as many people as I can at the conference. So anybody that does hear this and wants to come up, I'm not as mean as I look, I am rather approachable. I have dad jokes, and yeah, I love printmaking and I love to share it.

Miranda Metcalf  Amazing. I love it. So yeah, I can put links to everything that we've talked about in the show notes, and maybe get involved in helping with some of that community building and can come and harass you at SGCI in Puerto Rico.

Joseph Velasquez  Miranda, thank you so much. It's an honor and a pleasure. I love what you've done as well for the printmaking community, and how you've bridged the gap and really connected us to a lot more. I mean, I'm really enjoying listening to your podcast and it's really a pleasure to be a part of this.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, thank you, and thank you so much for joining me. It was super delightful to hear all the stories and I love your worldview on printmaking. It aligns so much with mine and why I love it and what I think it can do. Well, that's our show for this week. Make sure to check out that registry through the link in the show notes. My guest next week is Jessica Marie Mercy in what will also be an SGCI leadup special episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend). Jessica's printmaking practice is about documenting and celebrating queer spaces, and this year, she'll be hosting an Inkubator session with another PCL alum, Opal de Ruvo. We'll talk about her growing up in a conservative small town in eastern Washington, learning to fall in love with queer spaces, and what you won't learn about drag from RuPaul. This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, with editing help from Timothy Pauszek and music by Joshua Webber. I'll see you in two weeks.