APPRENTICESHIP SUMMARY

This printmaking-based apprenticeship will do a deep dive into advanced fine art letterpress printing. Apprentice artist Nicole Manganelli wants to further develop her technical printing proficiency on cylinder and platen presses, while learning more advanced printing techniques, and also becoming knowledgeable on basic press maintenance and troubleshooting the equipment. This will help Nicole to contribute to the sustainability of Pickwick as a community printshop, while allowing her to cultivate a practice that helps her to leverage the power of print to support social justice work in Maine and beyond. She will accomplish this through 100 hours of guidance with mentor artist Pilar Nadal and extensive in-studio training at Pickwick Independent Press located in Portland, Maine, directed and operated by Pilar.

MENTOR

Pilar Nadal (South Portland, ME)

Pilar Nadal is a printmaker and educator based in South Portland, Maine. Nadal is the Established Printer,
Owner and Director of Pickwick Independent Press, a community print shop located in Downtown Portland.
Nadal has been a visiting artist, teacher, and lecturer in multiple organizations, colleges, universities and
community spaces, and has exhibited her fine art work nationally and internationally. She currently teaches
Printmaking at Southern Maine Community College and at PIP. Passionate about printmaking, community and creative entrepreneurship, Nadal considers her pedagogy, working life and fine art making as symbiotic and non hierarchical, allowing herself the space to create her fine art work just as she does her syllabi, financial budgets, and relational life.

“Nicole & I met while I was in my second year of apprenticeship with David Wolfe and she was taking his public workshops: then she became a Pickwick member in 2015. I’ve watched her print work grow alongside her community organizing & design career, and I’m continually impressed by her self- discipline & motivation. Without a formal/academic background in fine print, her practice has areas that could be supplemented as an apprentice, which could take her work into the realm of fine printing..“ – Pilar Nadal

APPRENTICE

Nicole Manganelli  (Portland, ME)

Nicole Manganelli is a letterpress printer, poet, and art worker based in the unceded Wabanaki territory known as Portland, Maine. She is a white queer femme, a cis woman, and a person who actively practices anti-racism — identities that deeply impact the content of her printmaking. The goal of her work is to nourish organizers of all kinds with fierce, beautiful words that keep people invested in social movement work for the long haul. She writes and prints reminders, calls to action, bits of insight, reflections, demands, groundings, missives on grief—all centered on the ongoing fights for racial & economic justice, gender justice, and climate justice.

Nicole found letterpress printing via a class taught by David Wolfe in 2012. In 2015, she became a member of the community printshop Pickwick Independent Press and began learning from the indelibly generous Pilar Nadal. She is also a junior designer & copy editor at Portland Design Co, where she has been mentored by LK Weiss. She is continually grateful for her design and printmaking teachers, as well as for the organizers that help us build toward a world in which everyone not only has what they need to survive, but thrive.

“Pilar is an incredibly talented & skilled letterpress printer, a deeply creative printmaker, an exceptional teacher, and a joyful community-builder. My informal experiences learning from her and working alongside her since 2015 have been critical to my development as a letterpress printer–I consider her one of my most formative print mentors. Her letterpress skills are vast, including her endless creativity, playful experimentation with print processes, and brilliant mind for press maintenance.” – Nicole Manganelli