paul hornschemeier / jay ryan book tours

jay learned to screenprint beginning in 1995, working under steve walters at screwball press. jay printed posters for his own band (dianogah), his friends' bands, and the clubs they played at. slowly, work from other clubs and other bands came in. in 1999, jay started the bird machine print shop in the basement of his apartment building, and soon hired mat daly to help with the printing responsibilities. mat worked with jay until the end of 2007. in 2002, the bird machine moved to proper commercial space in chicago's ravenswood neighborhood, during which time the national poster community really took off, as reflected by jay's constant travel, showing posters and talking to students around the country. during this time, the crew of people working around the shop included diana sudyka, nick butcher, dan grzeca, kevin duneman, nadine nakanishi, sue demel, alana bailey, jack ryan, and, of course, mat daly. in 2007, the bird machine moved a final time, to a small building in skokie, a near-north suburb bordering chicago, where the print shop runs now. Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas. Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. It is also known as silkscreen, seriography, and serigraph.