About Us
Inkspot Press is an artist led organisation, dedicated to the production and promotion of original prints as a fine art medium. It is a not for profit community based organisation all earnings are put back into the continued development and running of the studio.
The workshop operates on an open access basis providing, an inexpensive print studio where artists and members of the public, students and community groups can use the equipment and source technical expertise in order to develop their hands on printmaking skills.
We run courses in screen printing, intaglio, and letterpress .
Jane is an artist and printmaker with a special interest in screenprinting and photographic imaging. Her unique style incorporates paint and pigment, collage and textiles. Her passion for printmaking is apparent in her practice and she promotes the use of printmaking as a graphic art form without boundaries.
She exhibits regularly and currently shows at Bellis Gallery, Brighton and with Liberty Gallery at art fairs all over the UK. She has recently shown work in the Netherlands and in Dubai.With a background in fine art, art history and commercial printing she is well known as a knowledgeable and inspiring teacher. She has been passing on skills for over 25 years as a visiting lecturer in art schools all over South East England. Currently she works part time at Brighton University and teaches the occasional short course at Westdean College (the Edward James Foundation).
In 2000 she set up and co-directed Brighton Independent Printmaking ltd., Brighton's first open access printmaking studio.
John Packer
Brighton born John Packer was an apprentice compositor in the printing industry. He worked on local newspapers and trade journals before engagement with London shipping daily ‘Lloyd’s List'. He later joined the International Publishing Corporation group. Continental companies included Central Trikeriet, Norway’s leading print publisher in Oslo. John Packer has been involved in all stages of letterpress printing until its demise as a mass commercial technology before it was superseded by offset-lithography.
From the mid 1980s until his recent retirement, John Packer was responsible for the letterpress workshop at the University of Brighton and taught students at all academic levels. Being compos mentis, and still in retention of 75% of his original teeth, John Packer regards it as ‘super cool’ to impart his knowledge and techniques to the starry-eyed, new aficionados of that obsolete 15th century technology.
Les Ellis
Les was invited to run letterpress workshops following retirement from the Faculty of Arts & Architecture at the University of Brighton, where he had worked for 25 years, latterly with students in Graphic Design and Illustration. Following his apprenticeship as a letterpress printer he thought he had the right to sit on a beach in Spain for the rest of his days. However, the need for money lured him back to the ‘black art’. He worked for several printing companies including JohnEnschede of HaarlemHolland and the Cambridge University Press before a move into teaching. After 7 years teaching apprentice printers at Matthew Boulton Technical College in Birmingham he was fortunate to be offered the post in Brighton and the prospect of working near the sea, in the warm South, was too tempting to refuse.
Dan is a Brighton based artist and illustrator. Last year his work was included in the And'Art festival in Marrakech, Morocco and the Islington Exhibits festival in London. In January his work was shown as part of the Open Day Book group show at LACE in Los Angeles. Daniel's work is featured in the 'Open Day Book' in the USA, The Stool Pigeon music newspaper in London and 'A Graphic Cosmogony' from Nobrow press.
He is currently working on his first full length graphic novel to be published by Nobrow.
I am interested in the simplicity of our diagrammatic language, which allows for slight variations in line, color and format to describe a great variety of different systems; the movement of peoples, changes in climate, the progress of disease. This flexibility speaks to our need to connect, to find patterns, and to place ourselves in a world we can understand and explain. In my work I attempt to describe two things simultaneously using the same vocabulary; first the physical realities of an environment, and second our emotional relationship to that environment.
