Mary Bruno has always been a spitfire for the local arts community, propelling events like Shop Small Crawl and serving as director of the Visit Joetown convention and visitors bureau efforts, but what Bruno doesn’t normally share in much detail, is her own personal success.
From her ink-covered studio in St. Joseph the smell of fresh cotton paper and the whir and clank of the workings of the 100-year-old presses fill the air, carved wood blocks litter the windowsills and fill the letterpress drawers.
Bruno specializes in reduction block printing and as a subset, linoleum block carving. That means each color in one of her prints is the result of its own block. She puts the block into the press, makes the initial image, removes it from the press, carves it, inks it again, puts it in the press, makes an image and then pulls it back out again to continue carving. She never moves anything on the press so the images register perfectly.
“They’re exquisite but they’re also limited edition,” Bruno said. “That block, once I’m done, is spent.”
She typically makes no more than 30 prints of an image so they hold their value. The work is detailed and intricate and looks far more like the finished work was hand-painted rather than pressed.
“When you can see every color, every feather, every highlight in their eye – that’s what I want,” Bruno said. “
Bruno sometimes works from a photograph of a bird or animal, she places it next to her as she creates, figuring out how to capture every glint of sunlight, the highlights, the shadows and determining exactly how to render them in ink. She’s masterful at color theory as layer upon layer of color builds her images.
“The way I work, yes I have a plan, but in most cases, it reveals itself to me as I go,” she said. “It’s like my crack cocaine, I could never stop in the middle, I could never wrap it up for the day, I’ve got to see it through. “
Her process was the focus of classes she was asked to teach at various places including the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle, Washington, the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin and most recently, before the shutdown, Concordia College in Moorhead.
Her workshops are typically a day-long and focus on teaching a five-color reduction block process.
Bruno’s work has been featured in the book, “The Vandercook 100,” which showcases 100 of the most significant letterpress printers who use the Vandercook press today. Her press was handed down to her from her father, Don Bruno in 2003.
Mary Bruno learned in her father’s workshop and then went on to study printmaking at St. Cloud State University.
In addition to her fine art prints, Mary Bruno has made a living creating and selling snarky and humorous greeting cards. She’s so successful at it she sells them not only locally, but wholesale in up to 100 stores across the country. When COVID-19 closed down stores she shifted her efforts to retail and her website sales skyrocketed for awhile as people searched for inspirational posters and things that spread humor.
“There was a need,” she said. “People want to put sunny, happy things on their walls right now.”
While some artists have struggled to find their creative mojo during quarantine, Bruno has flourished. She ran 50 episodes of her “Quarantine Storytime” online, acting out kooky and zany storybook characters for kids.
She also threw herself whole-heartedly into a long-term collaboration with Richard Bresnahan, more information of which is expected to be released this fall.
She began a series of online classes starting with the School of Visual Arts in Seattle. The classes filled instantly and she had students from states near and far. She and the interns she employs who are dutifully learning her craft, working by her side, hooked up her laptop and suspended a camera over the area where she carves. The set-up was filmed much like a cooking show and allowed Bruno to interact with her students.
She gave them a tour of the shop, showing off her posters, her ceiling, her whisky collection and her presses. She’s expanding the class to Hamilton next and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. She also hopes to offer small classes in her shop come September as well as online classes run out of her own space.
For the artist who said she never gets overly lonely, she has found her going through social withdrawal during quarantine. Though Bruno doesn’t consider herself a people person she connects the Central Minnesota arts community and works to bring local artists together to support one another.
Right before quarantine shut down campuses nationwide, Bruno installed a show at her alma mater, St. Cloud State University.
The show went up in early March and she just removed it. It was never open to the public for viewing.
The show, titled “The Recollection,” covers the media and techniques Bruno has been working with for the last 15 years though the work in the show was created recently.
“I think my whole spiel about that show is I’m challenging (the idea of) this is what is art,” Bruno said. “(Some people believe) art is only art if it’s in a perfectly pristine frame or art is only art if it’s made by a certain person in a certain way.”
Bruno challenges those ideas by presenting a multitude of styles within one show. It’s the first one she’s had at the University since she graduated from there in 1997.
“I’ve spent my life redefining that art isn’t just for snooty old rich people, art can be for anybody and it is,” she said.
A Facebook live of Bruno’s gallery exhibit is available on her website at www.mcbrunopress.com.
Though nobody could view her exhibit live, she said her passion for teaching about art hasn’t been hindered.
“If I don’t pass this craft on, it’s going to die with me,” she said. “It’s my love of this craft that wants to preserve it.”
For Bruno, the teaching is all around her. One step into Bruno Press and visitors will see Bruno covered in ink and witness the giant iron presses and big wood type.
“It is an old process that was handed down to me from my Dad and it just clicks with me,” she said. “It’s just something that I’ve done forever but it just makes sense to me and it’s what I was made to do.”
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