Artist Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. in Conversation
Letterpress printer and typographer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. discusses using printmaking as protest and his new book Citizen Printer on Black printing and resistance.
Why we picked this
Kennedy discovered letterpress printing in his late thirties, quit a corporate career, and made the press a political instrument. Citizen Printer is the theory behind the practice.
Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. came to letterpress printing late—he was nearly forty, had a graduate degree and a corporate career, and found in the physical act of pressing type to paper a way to make political speech that felt true. He founded Kennedy Prints! in Detroit and has spent the decades since making work about race, capitalism, and history that exists at the intersection of craft and argument.
Citizen Printer examines the longer history of Black printing as political practice, tracing the entwined legacies of the printing press and Black resistance in America. Kennedy’s own work is a continuation of a tradition—and the book makes that lineage visible.
He joins Tanner Woodford, founder of the Design Museum of Chicago, for a conversation at Co-Prosperity. Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Bridgeport festival day.