Music and Mysticism with Oregon-Based Printmaker Anne Pick

Anne Pick is a printmaker and lifelong music and art lover from the Pacific Northwest, currently living in Portland, Oregon. She uses the reduction block printing technique to create music-inspired, hand-printed posters. From a young age, she knew that whatever she did in her life, it had to involve music. Anne started collecting screen printed, limited edition posters at concerts, and 20 years after attending her first show, she learned how to print her own.

Anne attended the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communications from 2004-2008, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism with a focus in Electronic Media. She also received a certificate in Film Studies. Anne grew up watching romantic comedies with her dad and loves the storytelling of film and television – almost as much as she loves music.

As many can recall, 2008 was a rough time. Anne graduated from college amid a recession, and then in the fall her dad suffered from a stroke and passed away. Anne went back home to La Pine, Oregon, to live with her mom and returned to the pizza restaurant she worked at in high school. Eventually, she was also hired as the Calendar Editor at The Source Weekly, an alternative weekly newspaper, in Bend, Oregon.

From Calendar Editor, to film reviewer, and music writer, Anne worked her way to one of her dream jobs. She left the paper to work full time at a digital marketing agency, where she built websites and wrote blogs and copy. Anne comments; “I still kept my toe in the journalism pool as the music writer at The Source and got to interview the writers of the songs that were helping me through my dark days. Meanwhile, collecting beautiful concert posters year after year.”

Anne left Bend and moved 3.5 hours northwest to Portland, Oregon, in 2019. Her paternal grandparents lived in Portland, so she had visited often with her family. This was the first time she would live in the city where her family had settled nearly a hundred years ago. Anne tells us; “For the first time in years, I wasn’t writing newspaper articles or delivering pizza in the evenings, so I wanted to take an art class. When I started looking, there was nothing that appealed more than block printing.” She took part in one workshop, and then dove head first into learning this new skill.

When the lockdowns happened in 2020, Anne was working as a freelance writer from home. The isolation allowed her the time to focus on learning as much as she could about block printing. She experimented with a variety of methods, printing with multiple blocks, challenging herself to learn one technique or another.

During this time, stickers were incredibly popular, and during her walks through her southeast Portland neighbourhood she saw incredible works of art stuck on phone poles, stop signs, and hidden on fence posts. This inspired Anne to learn how to digitise her block prints, and she started sticking her new street art persona, Space Fox, everywhere she walked in Portland.

Anne’s journey eventually led her back home to Bend for a couple of years, where she started vending in maker’s markets and focused on perfecting her full-colour, reduction-printed posters. During this time, Anne saved up and bought a Woodzilla press, which changed the game for her printmaking process. She split her time vending between Bend and Portland, and had small solo art shows in both cities in 2022.

“I came to block printing and art as a continuation of my healing,” says the printmaker. She left an emotionally and financially abusive partnership at the beginning of 2018 and has used block printing to tell her story and process her feelings. One steady theme in Anne’s art is the contrast of bright colours against the darkness – fireworks, outer space, stars, concert lights, neon – the light fighting to be seen through the darkness.

Anne states; “I have always believed a better world is possible and it is through love we’re going to create it – by being strong and facing our fears together”. Her purpose with her printmaking is to inspire others to heal from the abuses, traumas, and blockages that are preventing them from showing up as their authentic selves.“When we show up as our authentic selves, it gives those around us permission to be their weirdo selves, too.”

Anne’s mantra posters; Dive Deep Within, Explore Inner Space, Feed Your Own Fire First, and Who and What are Meant For You Won’t Pass You By, have got her through some of her darkest days and are the designs that other people have connected with most. She states; “I have always adorned my walls with posters, from The Lion King in the third grade to my own Strength tarot card featuring the lion – what can I say, I’m a Leo. I’m hoping that seeing those messages of hope, the determination for the growth and expansion of the soul, makes a difference in the world, even for a few people.”

“I started block printing because I wanted to become a concert poster and band merch designer,” says Anne. And she’s off to a good start! At the end of 2023 she completed her first band t-shirt design for one of her favourite synth pop bands, Glass Spells, who are based out of San Diego, California. Next up, she is working on an album cover for her friends TEB (Travis Ehrenstrom Band), an Americana jam band based in Bend, OR.

Anne’s first vending dates of 2024 will be this weekend, Friday – Sunday, January 12-14, at Portland’s Folk Festival at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon. Her past and current lives will come crashing at this festival as she’ll be slinging her original art posters and bands she interviewed in her music journalism days will be on the stage. She comments; “I am looking forward to all of the music, art, and growth to come in 2024 and beyond”.

In 2023, Anne started block printing tarot posters from the Major Arcana as part of her self-reflection and healing journey. She entered six of the seven designs in a tarot-themed art show in Portland. She recently completed the sketches for the rest of the major arcana, all 22 cards. Anne plans to continue onto the minor arcana and will be launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to print the posters and create a full tarot deck you can hold in your hands later this year.

As an out and proud lesbian, it’s important to Anne to continue showing up as an example of what’s possible for young queer people. Representation matters, and Anne hopes to lead by example by becoming the woman she needed as a teenager.

@annepick.art
www.annepick.art

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