Impressions - January/February 2025 - 10

pr ep
wo r k
overheard
To read more industry news,
visit ImpressionsMagazine.com/news.
Ink Kitchen, Impressions Expo
Poster Printing for a Good Cause
Squeegeeville's Andy MacDougall holds up a
partially finished Queen Mary poster at the 2024
Impressions Expo in Long Beach, California.
Photo courtesy of Impressions Expo
Brian Potash, of Philadelphia's Devilfish
Ink, hard at work at last year's Expo in
Atlantic City, New Jersey. Photo courtesy
of Impressions Expo
Th e relationship between apparel decorators and the communities they
serve has long been a close one, and nowhere is this more evident than
in the eff orts of the INK KITCHEN'S Rick Roth and Pam Ikegami.
In recent years, in addition to the Shop Talk panel discussions the
Ink Kitchen (inkkitchen.com) runs as part of each Impressions Expo,
(impressionsexpo.com), the organization has raised tens of thousands
of dollars to help a number of not-for-profi ts in the cities where each
expo takes place. Recipients have included organizations involved in
protecting the environment and helping various at-risk populations,
including the homeless.
Central to these eff orts have been a series of live poster screenprinting
activations taking place on the Impressions Expo show fl oor,
with the posters being made available to attendees for a donation. Th e
fi rst of these came in 2020, with veteran printer and Squeegeeville
founder Andy MacDougall (squeegeeville.com) working the Impressions
Expo show in Long Beach, California, followed by Brian Potash, of
Philadelphia's Devilfi sh Ink (devilfi shink.com), doing the printing in
2021 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Th e posters themselves were designed
by Aaron Draplin to benefi t the Surfrider Foundation (surfrider.org),
which works to preserve the marine environment, a pressing concern
in both cities.
In 2022, Potash kept things going printing posters at both the Atlantic
City show and at Impressions Expo Fort Worth. Th e Atlantic City poster
featured a rendering of and raised funds for the restoration of Lucy
the Elephant (lucytheelephant.org), a historic piece of building-sized
statuary in nearby Margate City. Posters printed at the Fort Worth expo
raised funds for the job-placement not-for-profi t UpSpire (upspire.org).
Since then, Potash and MacDougall have continued creating
their custom-designed and printed posters at each show. In 2023,
MacDougall printed a daytime version of a Queen Mary cruise ship
poster designed by Texas-based artist Alyx Spurrier (alyxtheartist.com) to
P.10
ImpressionsMagazine.com Jan./Feb. 2025
benefi t the local Care Closet LBC
(careclosetlbc.org) foundation for
the homeless, while Potash printed
a second Lucy the Elephant poster
with the money raised going to
Adelaide's Place (adelaidesplace.org).
More recently, in 2024
MacDougall printed a " nighttime "
version of the Queen Mary in
Long Beach, and Potash printed
a diving horse poster in Atlantic
City (another Spurrier design),
with proceeds again going to
Adelaide's Place. After that came a
Spurrier-designed armadillo poster for Impressions Expo Fort Worth.
All good fun in addition to constituting an integral part of the
Alyx Spurrier's iconic long horn
cattle design, which he created
for the Impressions Expo in Fort
Worth, Texas. Image courtesy of
Ink Kitchen
Ink Kitchen's fundraising eff orts, which include gathering up unused
blank apparel in the wake of each show to be donated to charity as
well. Equally important, Ikegami says, is the direct fi nancial support
provided over the years by literally dozens of diff erent companies from
across the industry. In 2024 alone, the Ink Kitchen raised $17,500
for Care Closet LBC; $8,000 for Adelaide's Place in Atlantic city;
and $5,976 for UpSpire.
" Th ere are many generous companies in the industry who work
with us to make this happen...we certainly haven't done it all on our
own, " Ikegami says. " What I really like about it is that we are...a
community, not just a bunch of businesses trying to sell things as
we come together for the benefi t of the communities we visit for
the expos. "
Great work and kudos to all involved. Can't wait to see what's in
store for Impressions Expo's three 2025 shows! - A.C.

http://www.ImpressionsMagazine.com/news http://www.careclosetlbc.org http://www.inkkitchen.com http://www.impressionsexpo.com http://www.adelaidesplace.org http://www.squeegeeville.com http://www.shink.com http://www.surfrider.org http://www.lucytheelephant.org http://www.upspire.org http://www.alyxtheartist.com http://www.ImpressionsMagazine.com

Impressions - January/February 2025

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - January/February 2025