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Arts News: Greenhouse Print Space offers community access to printmaking

The Print Club, a group of print/design/typography people, at their monthly gathering at Greenhouse Print Space (photo by Thayer NG Bray)


Here are two things to know about Thayer Bray, founder of Greenhouse Print Space. 1) He’s been hooked on printmaking for a very long time — ever since the Shawnee Mission Summer Enrichment art classes he attended as a kid. Painting and sculpture were fun, but printing his own T-shirt design lit a spark that’s never gone out. 2) He likes to garden. Getting plants to grow, Bray explains, is an apt metaphor for helping someone build their business. Hence the name of his community access printing shop in the West Bottoms.

“Being a leader is not something that suits me well,” Bray says, “but I heard somebody define leadership as getting people in the right places, so you don’t have to do much stuff.”

Of course, there’s always plenty of stuff to do with a room full of printing presses and drawers packed with type. For nearly 20 years, the basement at 1414 W. 9th Street had operated as the Center for Ink and Paper Arts. In 2024 Bray opened the Greenhouse Printing Space, offering a menu of studio rentals, access passes and classes. On the last Tuesday in April, he’s prepping for Print Club — a monthly three-hour window when the facility is free and open to all.

“It’s the antithesis of Fight Club,” he says, “because I want everybody to know about it. It’s informal. It’s really a way of community organizing more than making prints.” But make no mistake, this artist still wants to make prints.

Bray graduated with a BFA from the University of Kansas in 2009. Soon afterward, he took a job at Kansas City’s Lawrence Lithography Workshop. Working with Master Printer Mike Sims taught him a lot about creating prints for publication. But after nine years, he realized that “something was missing” — the interaction and community he’d felt during his days at KU.

“So much of printmaking is group work, and so much of printmaking is collaboration,” Bray explains. Even though you’re working on your own private pieces, you’re working right next to other people.

Traci Guhr printing a hand carved linoleum block on a vintage Vandercook Letterpress Machine at Greenhouse Print Space (photo by Thayer NG Bray)

“You’re thinking ‘I mixed this ink great, but when I wipe it on the copper plate, it just turns black.’ And someone says, ‘Did you try this?’ or ‘Did you try that?’ It’s a sharing of skills that doesn’t happen very much elsewhere.”

While the idea of owning a community print space spoke to his heart, Bray realized that his art training hadn’t readied him for a world of spreadsheets and payrolls. So he headed back to school — to get his MBA at UMKC’s Bloch School of Business. He took part in the Regnier New Venture Challenge and learned to look at art with an entrepreneurial eye. Degree in hand, he and his wife, ceramist Kate Schroeder, took the plunge into making Greenhouse a reality. How’s business been so far?

“I knew I’d need X amount of studio spaces and X amount of access passes and X amount of classes,“ he says. “I was expecting the classes to be more lucrative. But it turns out that studio spaces and access passes are far more lucrative.” That’s just fine with Bray. The chance to make his own prints while providing a place for others to hone their skills fits this gardener like a glove. “This is a safe space to take risks,” he says. “A safe space to ask questions. And to develop your ideas, your imagery, your ability to make a business of your own.”

CategoriesVisual
Randy Mason

Randy Mason is best known for his work in public television, but he’s also covered Kansas City arts and artists in print and on the radio for more than three decades.

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