Rik Olsen hits the Road in San Francisco

Sonoma County's Rik Olsen pulling up fresh print

The San Francisco Center for the Book’s annual Roadworks Street Fair is a day-long arts festival showcasing printmaking and the art of the book. Using a three-ton construction steamroller and an unlikely letterpress bed- the street- a team of artists and printers print large-scale linoleum carved block prints. In addition to the steamroller printing centerpiece, there are artists vendors, and organizations presenting an assortment of fine and affordable wares. In 2010, Roadworks attracted more than 5,000 attendees.



The festival will be held on Rhode Island Street between 16th & 17th Streets with a steamroller press, letterpress demos, art sales, food vendors, and more. Free tours of the Austin/Burch Gallery and studios plus free letterpress, bookbinding, and other mini-workshops will be offered at SFCB during the festival.

The gallery-quality 3 foot by 3 foot steamroller prints will be for sale at SFCB at 6pm with a reception featuring music and drinks.

We are pleased to welcome the following five featured artists to our 8th annual festival: Chandler O'Leary's Anagram Press and Jessica Spring's Springtide Press are two Washington-based printing presses that collaborate together on the immensely popular Dead Feminist Broadside series. Both artists have professional and educational histories in graphic design, illustration, and storytelling, making their collaborative work a unique and beautiful mix of art, imagination, and history.

Rick Olson is a Sonoma County illustrator, wood engraver, printmaker, and Roadworks veteran. He is known for finely crafted illustrations in both black and white and color in scratchboard, pen and ink, acrylics, linoleum cuts, and other media. His work is on display at the Graton Gallery in Graton, CA and many other fine art galleries.

Bay Area artist Rigel Stuhmiller specializes in printmaking, illustrating, design, and storyboarding. Her diverse body of work includes elegant vegetable prints, farm logos, Comic from Real Life, and more. She also helped design the iPad app “Animal Creator.” She is one of SFCB’s Imprint Small Plates artists of 2011, with the publication of Sideshow.

The Lonely Robot, aka Eric Rewitzer, is a painter, printmaker, and blogger living in San Francisco. Strong believers in the collaborative process of art, he and his wife run 3 Fish Studios, a facility offering linocut printmaking classes and a gallery for original and affordable art. His newest work includes sketches of Sutro Tower and taco trucks.

Nora Aoyagi is a Bay Area artists and illustrator with a fondness for fairytales and fearsome creatures. Her drawings, painting, and prints are influenced by traditional children’s books, Japanese wood block prints, folk art, and the punk DIY aesthetic. With a diverse portfolio of color, black and white, and silhouette, her narratives often portray strangeness and beauty together as one.

Visit our blog for more information and interviews with each of the artists

Art and other merchandise will be sold by the following vendors:

The Poetry Store, Ginger Burrell, RKG, Industrial Fairytale, Raven Erebus, February Stars, M & H Type, Doug MacNeil, Gold Dust Studio, Blockhead Press, Sirima Sataman, Maureen Shields, Rae Trujillo, Melissa West, Ron Wolter

email to roadworks@sfcb.org.
Let the good times roll!