Proceed and Be Bold
a film about Amos Kennedy, printer

Members of the Chesapeake Chapter got a great treat when they attended a showing of the film Proceed and Be Bold and an exhibition of two dozen of Amos Kennedy's posters at the Government Printing Office in Washington, DC on Friday, August 21.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is a letterpress artist internationally known for his controversial posters and book art. The film Proceed and Be Bold! talks to the people who "understand him even better than he can," as Amos puts it, in an effort to learn about what caused him to quit the corporate world to become a “lowly Negro printer,” live in rural Alabama towns, and dedicate his life to creating his charged works of art.

Photo supplied by Brown Finch Films.

Amos's website explains his printing process to potential clients.

Printing is what we do. You send the text and a check, and go home and pray. We do not know what will happen until we are at the press.
The design of your poster is determined in real time. Sometimes we produce beautiful posters and at other times we produce BEAUTIFUL posters. Our posters are printed letterpress on 12.5"x19" chipboard. We use oil-base inks and mix colors by sight.

Lead Graffiti has a collection of approximately 30 of Kennedy's posters which were on display for everyone to pick up and investigate. Often the technique that had been used was difficult to pinpoint.

As always when we are in the area the group gathered at Kelly's for lunch and a great conversation about Amos's work.

The film was produced by Brown Finch Films a filmmaking collaborative based in Chicago, Illinois producing transformative documentary films that inspire, evoke, and enliven.

Lead Graffiti also produced a keepsake for the attendees.

Chris Manson (left) and Jill Cypher / Ray Nichols of Lead Graffiti who supplied the posters and the keepsake.

A bit of the display at the Government Printing office.

A few of us gathered up posters we especially liked for a group shot.


This is Jill Cypher showing the package our first dozen posters came in. The Post Office refers to this stamping process as 'wallpapering'. It is a bit hard to see, but every stamp has been put on individually, alternating right side up then upside down with mostly 1 cent stamps. The pattern has to be pretty seriously thought out. Our address is in that small space at the bottom near the right and his return address is in that little space at the top near the right.

We bet the post office down there would like to see him move to a new zip code if he does this very often. The stamps were cancelled with a china-marking pencil.

Here are a few of Amos's posters we had on display.


All event photos by Chris Sweterlitsch.