A Glimpse Behind the Scenes

Mar 15

This month we want to focus on the work of our Junior Designer & Copyeditor, Nicole Manganelli. Nicole is a letterpress printer and graphic designer who has also recently started to explore risograph printing (think screenprinting and photocopying combined!) She primarily focuses on making prints to support the work of social movements for racial, economic, gender, and climate justice. You can find her work at radicalemprints.com.

Before her art-making life, Nicole worked at a series of nonprofits for over a decade, mostly doing violence prevention education with young people across Maine and nationally. After taking her first letterpress printing class with David Wolfe at Wolfe Editions in 2012, she fell in love with the slow and intentional process of hand-setting type. With support and more teaching from Pilar Nadal--the creative and generous director of Pickwick Independent Press--Nicole became a member of Pickwick in 2015 and has been an active part of the shop ever since. In 2018, she left her nonprofit life to become a full-time freelance graphic designer and to focus on printmaking. With tremendous support and mentorship from LK, Nicole’s design learning has expanded exponentially in the last few years, and her thoughtful prints have garnered an international audience. Check out her Instagram feed for regular updates about her work.

At the end of March, Nicole is set to do her first “self-directed staycation residency,” as she’s started calling it. She wanted to see what it would be like to dedicate time entirely to printmaking, so she’s taking a little time away from digital design projects and focusing on print work for a week. Her goals for the residency include restocking some popular riso prints, printing a gift for her Dad, some riso color experimentation, and her first small letterpress-printed and hand-bound artist’s book (hopefully with a foil-stamped cover!) The book is a feminist retelling of the myth of Persephone, because Nicole is pretty sure that Persephone didn’t wait around for Zeus to rescue her from the Underworld--instead, she found her own way home. ;)

Thanks for reading about one of our own at PDC! We’re so glad to be connected to such a vibrant artistic community here in Maine.

Till next time, keep creating!
The PDC Crew

Credit: Elle Darcy

Credit: Nicole Manganelli