Author: Tom Virgin

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Thank You Give Miami!

Thank you for your generous gift to Extra Virgin Press during Give Miami Day. We are beyond grateful for the outpouring of support from donors, friends, and our letterpress loving family, near and far.

Thanks to you we raised $2,772 raised by 42 donors, letterpress lovers, and book arts affectionados!!

Our plan is to print more and make more books, the old fashioned way, in the new year. Thank you for helping us share more free books.

Meanwhile, look for Extra Virgin Press at Book Fair, our favorite gathering of the kindest, most polite and informed residents in our fair city.  We’ll be at the Miami Book Fair all weekend, with a big surprise at the Gala tonight!

Visit when you can. Come say hi. We’d love to thank you in person. Call me a “Pollyanna” if you like (Google Disney, young’ns), but on this cool, cloudless, glorious Friday morning I am feeling major GiveMiami love is moving our city in the right direction.

With love and gratitude,

Tom

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Give Miami 2024 Book Fair

Miami Book Fair brings together writers, art, food, and books for everyone. If you are at Book Fair you will find the most articulate, engaged, and hospitable people in Miami. The photo documents one of the first Gala Honorees, Edwidge Danticat, receiving “The Road Less Traveled” designed and printed at Extra Virgin Press. Mitchell Kaplan and MDC President Madeline Pumariega were the presenters at Miami’s first Book Fair Gala. 

https://www.givemiamiday.org/organization/Extravirginpressmiami

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Acquires Two Books

I am delighted to share the news that the Met has acquired two of my artists books. Conversation Too (2013)  and This Is My Body, Of Food and Freedom (2023) for their permanent collection. I am grateful to each of my collaborators for their contributions of words and images (Convo2: Kari Snyder, Laura Tan/ Artwork; John Dufresne, Michael Hettich, Yaddyra Peralta/ Prose & Poetry. This Is My Body: Edwidge Danticat/ Essay, John Ermer/ Research).

Convo Too was assembled at the Anderson Center at Tower View with our combined work in writing and images. The book was printed during my Helen M. Salzberg Artist in Residence Program at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University, and bound at Extra Virgin Press in West Coconut Grove, Florida.

This Is My Body, Of Food and Freedom was printed and bound at Extra Virgin Press in Little Haiti (Miami), Florida.

I am grateful to Lin Lougheed, Cherese Crockett, and Oolite Arts for their part in bringing this work to the collection.

book cover
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Give Miami 2024 Kids Jamm / Nick

The sun is up, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
As always I will give early to the organizations that work for kids.
Please keep letterpress printing alive in Miami.
Ink on paper is for everyone, no batteries or screens required.

https://www.givemiamiday.org/organization/Extravirginpressmiami

Printing with kids is one of the most rewarding aspects of dragging heavy presses around town. That smile that breaks out bounces from kids to parents to printers.

Friend, colleague, and printer Nick Gilmore joins us at PAMM regularly. The lines get long with only one printer. The four variations on the right: Flying Manatee- Nick, Hummingbird- Tom, Griffin- Russell Beans, and Dragon Cat- Miguel Mendoza AKA Miggs.

Aside from my two antiques (a 1949 Vandercook 4 Proof press and Challenge 15KP Proof press) most of what I use is ink, paper, and things to clean the press. Old school printing takes time, but it rewards those who are patient, take good care of their equipment, and clean up promptly & thoroughly. My days often are simply print and make a mess… Clean everything up and put everything away again. It works.

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Last Weekend for Walgreens

Greetings all, been sewing books and hanging out with printers.

If you are not living on the Beach, its a trek.

Still… 120 feet of printing, books and book arts are quite a sight.

This is the last weekend for A Public Education

@oolitearts @extravirginpress