By Maria Shaplin
Applied Mechanics has lots of amazing friends in the Philadelphia area. Few are quite AS AMAZING as our dear friend Adam Woods, the proprietor of Camden Printworks right across the Walt Whitman bridge in Camden, NJ. His business employs a crack team of local superstars, and provides high quality screen printing jobs for clients all over the world. I visited the bustling garage on a hot and sunny Wednesday in August. Django Unchained was on the tube, keeping the busy printers entertained as Adam and I chatted about inks, cranky shop turtles, and the business of printing. We stood surrounded by hundreds of thousands of tea towels, destined for souvenir shops across America. Camden Printworks has been busy these days, but Adam generously took an hour out of the day to show me their operation. I wanted to watch our small batch of spanky new Applied Mechanics shirts roll off the presses. We had them printed for our upcoming show FEED, which debuts at the Philly FringeArts Fest on September 9th. After our initial catch up, Adam passed me off to the team. Ayisha showed me how to activate the inks, Demitre showed me how to prep, burn and power wash the screens, and Kevin showed me how to print. Check out the step-by-step gallery below. The team did a fantastic job of showing me the ropes. Its clearly a pretty badass place to work. Their mission is great too. From their website:
We are intentionally located in Camden, NJ, a city that has largely been left behind by the American economy and all levels of government. Camden is generally considered to be America’s poorest city, and we really think that small business can bring it back.
We are intentionally staffed by a diverse workforce, whose diversity in race, background, life experience, and sexual orientation makes Camden Printworks a place of respect for everyone. Because Camden Printworks is a place of respect, we are also committed to paying well above the prevailing local wage.
We are intentionally innovative. Specializing in discharge inks and unorthodox printing practices, Camden Printworks pushes the edges of what’s possible with screenprinting, with an eye towards products that are better-designed, more fairly-made, and less impactful on the environment.
Check out the photo diary, and if you ever need t-shirts or tea towels, please consider giving our friends at Camden Printworks your business.
