by Cori Hilsgen
news@thenewsleaders.com
Mary Bruno, letterpress printmaker and owner of Bruno Press, taught Kennedy Community School third-grade students the art of print making.
Teacher Jodie Kragness said Bruno taught students about her job.
“The students were eager to learn about Mary’s profession through this artist-in-residence experience,” Kragness said.
In their science class engineering unit, third-graders had studied how agricultural engineers design and improve technologies for agriculture. After studying about pollinating insects and how technology can imitate nature, they used the engineering design process to design hand pollinators, for various flowers. They studied shapes and sizes of flowers and created and tested pollinators which would both pick up and drop off pollen.
Bruno then assisted students in designing and creating posters for their hand pollinators. Each student then had a chance to print their hand pollinator poster on Bruno’s printing press.
“It was really fun to use all the different utensils like the printing press and learn about the process of printmaking,” Brielle Rothstein said.
“I learned about how Bruno Press uses tools to make awesome posters,” Liam Zenner said. “My favorite part was printing our own posters for our hand pollinators.”
“The third-graders learned a lot from this wonderful opportunity,” Kragness said. “The posters are on display in the hallways at Kennedy. The third-graders and their teachers would like to extend a huge thank you to Mary Bruno and Central Minnesota Arts Board.”
Bruno Press is a small letterpress print shop in St. Joseph. Bruno uses traditional methods of printing, such as setting wood and lead type, carving linoleum blocks and printing on very old presses more than 70 years old.
Bruno offers internships and teaches poster and card-making workshops, sells cards and prints wholesale and retail items.
Bruno’s artist-in-residency was funded by the Central Minnesota Arts Board.
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Left to right: Isaac Diehl, Sofia Ploof and Mary Bruno print on Bruno’s printing press.
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Letterpress printmaker and owner of Bruno Press, Mary Bruno, teaches Kennedy third-grade students how she carves pictures to create a template to be used for printing.
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Left to right: Sebastian Novak, Danielle Spiczka and Mary Bruno print a poster on the printing press.
ress printmaker and owner of Bruno Press, Mary Bruno, teaches Kennedy third-grade students how she carves pictures to create a template to be used for printing.
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Left to right: Jaden Lopau, Mary Bruno, Morgan Bissett and Emma Bergwall print a hand pollinator poster.
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Yoseb Brewer puts ink on the printing press as Mary Bruno instructs how to ink the press.
