This past Saturday was the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine's annual HOPE Festival. The theme of this year's festival was "Art and Social Change". This sounded good to me...and I was able to participate by showing anyone interested how to make a drypoint print. After scratching their own drawing onto a prepared plexiglass plate, I would take them through the printing process (I brought in my small but wonderfully portable old Blick etching press), and in the end, they would walk away with their own freshly printed drypoint print, and plexi plate. Before the festival I had worried a bit that maybe not many people would dare to try...but after Mary Karensdaughter (pictured above) from the P&J Center gave it a try, I had no chance to rest (or eat lunch), as folks enthusiastically followed Kaen's lead and took the drypoint plunge!
Here are just a few of those who took that plunge, with their finished creations... At the end of the festival, I was tired, but very satisfied.