2024 Workshops

I am teaching two printing workshops in 2024 with Maine Media Workshops, including one brand new one! In July I’m teaching my traditional printing course, The Craft and Art of the Fine Digital Print, and at the end of September/beginning of October, I’m teaching a brand new course called Mastering the Fine Digital Print. This new course is more advanced, covering many topics we do not have time to cover in the first workshop, and the first workshop (or equivalent experience) is thus required to take the advanced course. You can read more about the courses here.

Studio Closings in April 2023

I’ll have very limited availability from April 3rd-7th as I’ll be teaching an in-person workshop at Maine Media. Please contact me if you have any specific questions, needs, or issues. The week of April 17th I’ll be out as well on a family trip (college visits with our daughter!), but I’ll be back to normal operation on Monday, April 24th.

Recycling Ink Cartridges

A long-time annoyance for me with inkjet printing is the environmental impact of using consumables such as ink cartridges. Ink cartridges are a complicated mix of computer chips, heavy metals, electronics, plastic, and other materials and generally cannot be recycled at traditional recycling facilities. It is estimated that less than half of ink cartridges are recycled, and over 375 million cartridges per year end up in landfills in the US alone.

One desirable solution to this issue would be to use reusable ink cartridges. Alas, here in the US, none of the manufacturers of printers provide such cartridges. Some third party ink providers do provide reusable cartridges, but many printers (including myself) prefer to use OEM inks provided by the manufacturer.

So, how to recycle these things? Retailers like Staples do recycle cartridges, even ones that they do not sell, but I really have no idea what happens to giant Epson P9000 cartridges like I use — I would not be surprised if unusual cartridges such as these end up in a landfill.

Luckily, the three big printer manufacturers provide a recycling program for ink cartridges. Epson recycles both printers and cartridges —and will pay for shipping for printers themselves, but not the cartridges. Canon has a great recycling system and provides free shipping labels for exhausted cartridges, as does HP.

Green Printing: On Paper Rolls

If you are someone who makes prints larger than 17”x22”, you probably often use roll paper. On my printer, I can use rolls up to 44” in size, allowing me to create very large prints, such as 40”x60”, and very long prints (I think my record is about 25 feet long).

Independent of the chosen paper, the packaging of roll paper has an environmental impact. Most papers I’ve used include the long roll of paper wound around an inner core tube and encased in plastic. Two roll holders help the wound roll fit in the protective cardboard box. You can see the box, inner tube, and plastic in the picture on the right, and the roll holders in the picture below.

Until recently every roll I’ve used has had essentially the same packaging with minor variations, but I’m happy to report that Canson Infinity has taken important first steps in reducing the use of plastic in their materials. In recent rolls I’ve noticed the traditional plastic paper roll holders have been replaced by cardboard ones (see below). Thank you Canson Infinity for taking this step!

Typical packing material for a roll of inkjet printing paper

Kudos also to Canson Infinity for being one of the many manufacturers making 50’ rolls of paper. Hahnemühle makes lovely papers and I happily use them, but their 39’ rolls result in a 20% or so increase in the use of packing materials.

Note on recycling: Where I live, I can recycle all of these components except for the inner core (which is burned by our town facility). Given that most “recyclable plastic” is not actually recycled, I find cardboard greatly preferable.

New Canson Infinity roll holder on the left, random examples of plastic ones on the right

Nickelson Editions, now with 100% solar!

We’ve just expanded our solar array, making our home (and my home studio used for Nickelson Editions) 100% powered by solar energy over the year, including hot water and heating and our new electric vehicle.

Way back in January 2020 I posted about how I was going to start talking about environmentally-friendly printing (The Environmental Print Studio)…and, well, much happened right after that which caused a bit of delay in this series. But I am back on the case so I hope to start posting more soon here on this blog and our my new Environment page on this website.

Fifteen Years

I’m two months late on the anniversary, but January 2022 marked 15 years of making prints for clients. Three big 44” printers over the years and crazy amounts of paper and ink. What a wonderful journey this has been (and continues to be!), and thank you to all of my clients for trusting me with your work.

Upcoming Time Away

I will be on a family vacation from July 29th to approximately August 12th, and then also the week of August 16th. I will have email access but responses may be delayed. Please contact me regarding your specific needs and I will do my best to accommodate. Thank you!

Back to Normal Operations (mostly)

I’m now back at something resembling normal operations. I’m still happy to meet with people in whatever fashion makes people comfortable (with masks, meeting outside, and so on), but my studio is now also open to people who are fully vaccinated for COVID. If you are not vaccinated, I’m happy to meet with appropriate precautions (including masking) — please let me know if you have any questions.

New Online Printing Workshop and March 2021 Update

I hope all are safe and well out there! My operating procedures are still the same as my last post in October but hopefully things will start to change in the coming months. I have new online workshops scheduled with Maine Media, including The Craft and Art of the Fine Digital Print the week of June 7th (five days, via Zoom).

I also have a photography workshop coming up, too. Entitled The Sense of Wonder, it runs one day a week (on Mondays) via Zoom for five weeks - April 26th-May 24th.