Come buy fabulous letterpress and artist-made cards in the Backroom Gallery throughout December. Featuring local (and a few far-flung) artists, printmakers and small businesses this show will raise money for cultural activities and events at Adobe Books while also benefiting artisans in the wider Adobe community. We'll also have a make your own card station, should inspiration strike.

If you'd like to contribute cards, we'd love it! Purchase price can be up to $2.50 ea. for resale at $5. You may also leave donations at the store until December 2nd. Please mark them attn: Eliza.

Yellow Owl Workshop

Christine Schmidt's art career began in primary school when she won a bike at the local grocer's coloring contest. This bike was red and had ten whole speeds! After a youth spent on the plains of Kansas City and art school in Washington D.C., she and her loverboy, Evan, moved west to a little place perched atop windy Bernal Hill in San Francisco. Fueled by too much black tea and public radio shows, she spent nights creating hand-printed cards and gifts. Seeking out local suppliers and working with fine, momma-earth loving materials, she began honing her line of wares. In 2007, after steeling her nerves, Christine took a box of her goods to some local stores, they placed orders and Yellow Owl Workshop was born.

Current day Yellow Owl Workshop now bustles with a team of hard-working ladies in a sunny Mission district studio. Though Yellow Owl Workshop has grown and can be found in stores worldwide, the original values of expert attention to detail, ecological awareness and premium U.S. made materials are evident in every product. Legend says if you hold a stamp set really closely you can probably still smell the Earl Gray and hear a "Radio Lab" episode.

Western Editions (Emeryville)

Western Editions is Erin Fong and Taylor Reid, two friends who met while living in San Francisco's Western Addition (...get it?) and have relocated across the Bay to an artist co-operative in sunny Emeryville, California. We're a letterpress printshop focused on custom designs and small run printing - we print cute shit.

Both Erin and Taylor have been printing since 2007 with a background ranging from commercial letterpress printshops to fine art letterpress and book arts. The stars aligned and they both landed in San Francisco at the same time, where they met and figured out…wait for it…that they had both learned letterpress in the same dusty old library at the University of Nevada, Reno! Though at different times, Erin and Taylor both fell in love with letterpress in the same room, on the same machine!

People I’ve Loved (Oakland)

People I’ve Loved is a few individuals longing for connection / a small printmaking workshop based out of Oakland, California. We specialize in hand-printed & assembled objects, in an Oakland farmhouse with a lemon tree.

People I've Loved 's works (or pressing issues) intend to facilitate the communication between real, tactile people. Not that we want to deny people their digital selves, we just think there can be room for both. We are “in search of the miraculous” yet tragic definition of what it means to exist, in this time and space. And feel that we should make time to share it.

Take a deep long breathe, things will turn out alright.
Love always, Carissa Potter & Heather Van Winckle

Jason Houck (SF)

Jason Houck is a San Francisco-based visual artist who works at the borders between things: materiality and abstraction; creativity and confinement; spontaneity and structure; thinking and feeling. He plays with pattern, color, illusion and material to make us revel in the act of seeing. At the same time, there is always an idea underneath - the essence of creativity, the power of opposites, the feeling of being bounded, the loosening of the mind.

Coffee N’ Cream Press (SF)

Coffee n Cream Coffee n Cream Press is a full service San Francisco-based company specializing in letterpress greeting cards, custom letterpress and artwork. Owner Leah Jachimowicz runs Coffee n Cream Press from her home-studio in the Outer Sunset of San Francisco, California.

Production for the stationery cards and wedding invitations happens here, on her Vandercook Letterpress SP-15, and inspiration comes from the rich history the city of San Francisco holds.

Safwat Saleem (Phoenix, AZ)

I am a visual artist, graphic designer and filmmaker. I use satire and art to bring to light stories of adversity and feel the most at home when making politically-charged satirical art.

My work has used a variety of media, including illustration, writing, animation, audio, film and sculpture. I often combines several media to create multimedia storytelling experiences that get his audiences talking - and laughing - about subjects that tend to otherwise make people feel uncomfortable.

Eliza Gregory (SF)

Eliza Gregory is an artist and educator. Trained as a fine art photographer, a writer and a social practice artist, Eliza mixes media ranging from images to text to relationships. Her work examines community connections, cultural identity, relationships across class, and families. In spring 2016 she was the lead artist for the Community Arts Internship Program at Southern Exposure, and conducted a project with Downtown Continuation High School and SFMOMA’s education department. She is currently collaborating with the Asian Art Museum to create a project about contemporary immigration in San Francisco. She graduated from Princeton University in 2003 and did her MFA in Art & Social Practice at Portland State University. And she runs the Adobe Books Backroom Gallery.

Nicole Lavelle (Bay Area)

I am an artist and a designer. I make site-oriented, project-based narrative work that engages people, place, language, and landscape. My practice incorporates methodologies from graphic design, journalism, and socially engaged art. As a critical component of my social practice, I facilitate the work of others by creating platforms for participation. Historically I’ve been a visiting artist to unfamiliar locations, but more recently I’ve been addressing my birthplace (and once-again home-place) of the Bay Area.

The Aesthetic Union (SF)

At its roots, The Aesthetic Union is a letterpress print shop specializing in custom work and original editions. We offer artisanal printing, in-house design services and bespoke typefaces for those seeking one-of-a-kind results.

But we’re more than ink on paper. We believe in a well-appointed desk and an inspiring workspace. We believe in collaborative projects and community involvement. We believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That’s why we’re proud to carry locally made cards and notebooks along with a curated selection of writing accessories and studio supplies. That’s why our gallery features collaborations with local artists that push the boundaries of letterpress printing. We invite you drop us a line, visit the shop and come join the union.

3 Fish Studios (SF)

Eric Rewitzer and Annie Galvin are printmakers and painters, husband and wife, and founders of 3 Fish Studios. The Outer Sunset hub is home to their workshop and studio, where art happens daily and visitors are always welcome; they love collaborating, making, and sharing creative projects with cool folks.

Liana Allday (SF)

Liana lives in Oakland with her hubby, Robb, and their puppy, Camper. Every weekend Liana wakes up, puts on an old hat, and goes outside to paint. A 4th-generation California native, her favorite subject matter is naturally the California poppy. During non-weekend hours, you can find her at Creativebug — an online art + craft video site where she is the editorial director.

And incidentally, Creative Bug has a suite of card making videos available as part of its free trial here.

Just Seeds Collective (All over!)

Just Seeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized network of 30 artists committed to social, environmental, and political engagement.

With members working from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, Justseeds operates both as a unified collaboration of similarly minded printmakers and as a loose collection of creative individuals with unique viewpoints and working methods. We believe in the transformative power of personal expression in concert with collective action. To this end, we produce collective portfolios, contribute graphics to grassroots struggles for justice, work collaboratively both in- and outside the co-op, build large sculptural installations in galleries, and wheatpaste on the streets—all while offering each other daily support as allies and friends.

Colpa Press (SF)

COLPA is the collaborative art practice of Luca Antonucci and David Kasprzak. We work together as a publisher, designer, printer and curator. COLPA PRESS publishes art books, limited edition prints and art objects, often working with artists on unique projects.

Jamie J

I've been in the stationery industry in the Bay Area since 2007. I started out as a print broker working with local prepress and printers as well as national vendors, such as Crane, Julie Holcomb and Dauphine, to name a few. I was in charge of the social stationery, and worked with a variety of clients on helping them create everything from business cards to personal stationery to wedding invitations. After taking letterpress and graphic design classes, and a training on a Heidelberg Windmill letterpress, I began creating my own line of greeting cards. I do the design, digital printing and letterpress printing on my own.

Ladybones

Annemarie Munn is the owner/main press operator of Ladybones Print Shop. While growing up in rural Northern California, she was lucky enough to live in a house replete with broadsides and chapbooks both letterpress and otherwise, mostly poetry, mostly printed in the Bay Area during the 1960s and 1970s.

Although she spent years in academia studying philosophy and creative writing, in late 2008 Annemarie finally gave in to the siren call of ink and paper, and was lucky enough to begin her printing career as an intern with the San Francisco Center for the Book's Imprint division, where her first project was to print the Small Plates edition of Reparations, an accordion book by former Black Panther Minister of Culture Emory Douglas.

Lewie Louise (SF)

LEWIE LOUISE is a collaborative paper goods line by Alexis Louise Joseph of Case for Making and James Lewis Tucker of The Aesthetic Union.

Their shops brought them together on a winter day in 2015; a week after meeting, Case for Making popped up at the Aesthetic Union and a month later they had produced and released their Watercolor Postcards, which sold out almost immediately. Four months later LEWIE LOUISE was launched as the platform for their ongoing collaborations.

Hammerpress (Kansas City, MO)

Hammerpress is a letterpress print shop and design studio located in Kansas City, Missouri. We make all kinds of letterpress cards, stationery, ephemera, show posters and art prints here in our studio in the Crossroads Arts District.

Owner Brady Vest established Hammerpress in 1994 after graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute. At the time, the shop consisted of one old press and a cabinet of type. Vest quickly earned recognition by creating distinctive record covers and show posters for independent bands and printing letterpress jobs for local design firms.

20 years later, Hammerpress has grown to a small team that produces lovely letterpress products and strives to continue the craft of letterpress printing. Now one of the most widely known letterpress studios in the the United States, Hammerpress has garnered much attention for our distinct approach to typography and design.

Jennifer Linderman

Jennifer Linderman, a.k.a. Origami Mami, is a self taught multi-media artist and published origamist who teaches an origami after school program five days a week for children throughout the East Bay. In addition, she enjoys drawing and watercolor painting and is an all-around crafty gal. She just published a coloring book entitled "Botanimals, a Coloring book of Flora and Fauna,” soon to be available at Adobe Books.