Why I Ride
An opportunity arose to take part in a letterpress workshop at Glasgow Press and it was one of the most rewarding and relaxing things I have ever done. I have always loved letterpress printing, and have had a fascination with wooden printer’s blocks for what feels like ever. I have collected a few, I have been given some, I have given some as gifts – to me they are wonderful objects. So real, so tactile, so far from the digital age we live in; where real skill, craftsmanship and technique is lost to easy fix technology.
I created an A2 print that I wanted to be bike related. It would have been easy to rehash an old Albert Einstein quote (I’m not ruling that out, by the way), but for this first one I wanted to find something different.
“I don’t ride a bike to add days to my life, I ride a bike to add life to my days” is a quote that I loved. The source of the quote is unknown (so can it be a quote?) but that made it all the better. For me, it summed up the joy of riding a bike, not necessarily being ‘a cyclist’, just riding a bike, which for me, personally, is what it is all about.
I made the original print and have subsequently had it reproduced as a giclee print. There are limited numbers available from Campbell Bike Workshop. Get one while you can!