At one Silver City workshop, visitors spread color across poster board, then printed bold letters over it. The point was to see what the inks did together and enjoy the result, not to chase perfect alignment. That was the spirit of “Intro to Bad Printing,” a drop-in session led by featured artist Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. during the Southwest Print Fiesta, the Silver City Daily Press reported Oct. 13.
The 10th annual gathering ran Oct. 8 through 12, with a public market and workshops spread across downtown Silver City. The organizer’s schedule set the free Printers’ Market for Saturday, Oct. 10, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Main Street Plaza. It described a Southwest-wide showcase of more than 40 artists, with printing demonstrations, food and drinks. The market page says it was open to everyone and included handmade work ranging from screen-printed patches to limited-edition lithographs.
The newspaper’s on-scene report described people of all ages visiting the market. Kyle Durrie, the festival organizer and owner of Power and Light Press, estimated that about 60 vendors took part, up from about 40 the year before. Those figures describe different things: the organizer’s advance page counted artists, while Durrie’s estimate described market vendors. Neither source gave an attendance total.
Some of the work happened at a scale bigger than a tabletop press. The official schedule invited visitors to watch steamroller printing at Main Street Plaza, where artists inked large linoleum plates and ran a steamroller over them. The Daily Press described volunteers carefully lifting the day’s first print by artist Mary Bruno.
Kennedy’s workshop offered a smaller press and a different kind of invitation. Visitors started with colored ink on poster board, then added lettering using large wood type. Kennedy explained to the Daily Press that bright backgrounds and layers made this a looser form of letterpress than the tidy cards or invitations many people associate with the method. Participants could try combinations and make a poster commemorating the 2026 fiesta.
Kennedy described “bad printing” as an approach built around experimentation and fun, with less emphasis on precision. The reporter noted children nearby preparing their poster boards as Kennedy talked. The article also describes screen printing, woodcuts and linoleum printing, supporting Kennedy’s point that the program included more than one printmaking process.
Another workshop brought bookmaking into the market. The Daily Press reported that a booth let visitors take part in cartonera, a Latin American bookmaking practice that uses recycled cardboard for book covers. Michelle Holdt, an Albuquerque art educator who participated in the workshop, described choosing a cardboard cover and a book, then rolling ink and printing on the cover. She said the process makes publishing more accessible by putting the tools in people’s hands.
The material had a local source: the newspaper reported that the cardboard for the covers came from the Silver City Food Co-op. Nine people took part in the Friday workshop, instructed by Adriana Sánchez Alexander and Isidro Pérez García. The nine participants created block-printing presses from rocking horses the instructors had salvaged, according to the report. That detail connected the festival’s interest in printed images with a practical question: how can someone make a book or a print without needing a traditional studio full of equipment?
The weekend’s schedule offered several ways to watch, try or learn. Across the festival weekend, visitors could attend a free risograph demonstration, a print rally where artists made a small edition from start to finish, and drop-in workshops. Some multi-day classes required advance registration; the schedule separately marked activities open to drop-ins. The fiesta’s workshops continued through Monday, the newspaper reported.
For a few days, downtown Silver City became a place where printmaking could be viewed as a finished work, watched as a process or tried by a first-timer. The Daily Press documented a market with vendors, a large print raised by volunteers, layered posters made with Kennedy and cardboard books made during a workshop. The organizers’ schedule shows how those pieces fit into a wider program. The record is modest and concrete: the reported activities offered visitors a chance to see handmade prints, learn how they were made and, in some workshops, make something of their own.
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