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Long Beach Poster: An Update

By Rick Roth

This year’s poster printing at the Impressions show in Long Beach did not go as planned. Not even close. And yet, thanks to the extraordinary generosity of our sponsors, we were able to donate $15,000 to Care Closet LBC — which for a charity with almost no overhead, does a great deal for homeless folks in Long Beach. We’ll be able to sell some posters now online but all of those fifteen thousand dollars came from sponsors who stepped up despite no live printing.

Here is what happened.

Andy MacDougall — for those who don’t know Andy, he is one of the great flatstock printers on the planet. Based on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, he has spent decades pushing the craft of screen-printed posters further than most people thought it could go, printing everything from concert posters to ceremonial First Nations drums, teaching the craft to communities in some of the most remote parts of Canada, and generally being one of the most generous and knowledgeable people in this entire industry. He was elected to the Academy of Screen Printing Technology in 2007. He literally wrote the book on screen printing — and people use it. He is also, as anyone who has had a beer with him will tell you, one of the most fun people around and a good lefty guitar player.

This SHOULD have been Andy, slaving over a hot squeegee.

Andy was set to fly in from Vancouver Island to print the posters live on the show floor, as he has done for us before. Instead of flying down and getting a nice big head start before the show printing the posters, Vancouver Island was fogged in for the entire week and he could not leave. Not a little fog. A week of fog. Andy tried daily — hourly at times — to get out. He couldn’t. After a few days they promised to get him to LAX on Saturday night three hours after the show would be over. Thanks for nothing, airline. Instead we took orders at the show with a promise to mail the posters out later. We had all the inks, screens, helpers, and equipment ready, but no Andy, no posters.

A foghorn, very much in play during this sad tale.

Then a month later, Andy came to us. He flew to Rhode Island and came to Mirror Image to print the posters. No fog, but then a blizzard hit. Rhode Island issued a travel ban and nobody could get in to the factory. Andy had to leave before a single print was pulled.

Andy getting some keeners into screenprinting. “Keener” is a great Canadian word for folks that are really into it, real keen on it. In this case, some little kids, you can’t start’em too early. Andy got to some teaching but no Long Beach posters thanks to the snowpocalypse.  And note, in the end, no child labor was used on the eventual Long Beach printing…

So: no fog, no blizzard, no posters. But $15,000 to Care Closet LBC.

Care Closet LBC is a nonprofit founded in 2019 by Sylvester “Duke” Givens in Long Beach. The model is simple and brilliant: enlist unhoused people to clean up their own communities — removing graffiti, collecting trash — in exchange for food, clothing, sleeping bags, and basic necessities. The relationships built through that work lead to longer-term help: health services, mental health support, drug treatment, job placement. To date they have collected over three million pounds of trash in Long Beach. They were named California Nonprofit of the Year in 2024. They are the real deal, and Duke Givens is the real deal and we are proud to help him. The sponsors who have travelled out to some of the worksites will tell you, this is tough work and they do incredible work in trying circumstances.

Our sponsors knew all of this and donated anyway, without a poster to show for it at the show. That says everything about the kind of people in this industry.

Please consider these sponsors for your screen printing and decorating needs. They deserve your business.

But the story has a happy ending. With Andy MacDougall tutoring from afar, the crew at Mirror Image printed the posters themselves. And they are beautiful. Note the beers in the background, used as counterweights, just the way Andy taught us.
You can buy one HERE. 

All proceeds go to Care Closet LBC. You can also donate directly to Care Closet LBC at careclosetlbc.org.

 

Stay tuned soon to hear about the poster printing to be happening at Impressions Atlantic City.

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