The Devil's Artisan

A ROGUES' GALLERY
OF THE CANADIAN BOOK AND PRINTING ARTS

Rick/Simon

Rick/Simon's earliest graphic arts experience was with his Nana. She taught him how to write and suggested he could use pictures if he didn’t know a word. He's been doing something like that ever since.

Rick was at Rochdale College in early 1968. He sauntered down what is now bpNichol Lane to check out the coach house where the printing facility was going to be. He found someone there running an AB Dick 360 odset duplicator. The person asked Rick if he could watch the machine while he went out for codee. Rick has been working at Coach House Press on and off ever since, experimenting with film-grain and other innovative production techniques.

In 1978 Rick had an opportunity to write a prospectus for a printing and publishing program at the Banff School of Fine Arts. Eight months later he was at Banff. He acquired some `obsolete' equipment in Toronto in exchange for tax write-offs. A fire in Banff over Christmas burned his studio and ten years of photographic negatives. Rick moved to Edmonton and found work in the printing industry, including operating a Hell Chromagraph DC 300 laser scanner and a blowback camera for making forty-eight-inch-wide photo murals.

Rick returned to Toronto after a visit to Japan and made a design/performance piece about the CN Tower. He worked at Coach House and also with VideoCabaret and Shadowland Theatre. Soon he was at the BamBoo Club and Caribana and doing stilt dancing, which led to work with Peter Minshall at the Trinidad Carnival and later gigs at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Burning Man festival.

Rick continues to use scanners to provide high resolution/magnification images of objects that he has collaged. See the Journal of Wild Culture: www.wildculture.com/article/digital-artists-invention-story/1484 and www.instagram.com/richardsimpley/