My urban sketching group had the amazing opportunity to sketch at the Star Tribune printing plant in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago. This newspaper originated as the Minneapolis Tribune in 1867, and through various changes and mergers over the years became the current Minnesota Star Tribune. According to Wikipedia: “as of 2023, it is Minnesota’s largest newspaper and the seventh-largest in the United States by print circulation, and is distributed throughout the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area, the state, and the Upper Midwest.”
The printing plant, a giant industrial building, was sold and will be closing in a few weeks, and the printing will be outsourced to a plant in Iowa and shipped up to the Twin Cites for distribution.
Sixty sketchers showed up to document the plant through sketches in the print room, mail/advertising room, area where rolls of paper and ads were stored, among a few. As we toured the facility, we were instructed to put in our green foam ear plugs to block out the noise of all the machines that whirred, rumbled, roared, and hissed around us. Conveyor belts with hanging newspapers snaked around above our heads to various regions of the plant. It was all noisy and overwhelming to know where to start sketching, so I began in the mail room where ads are stuffed into the paper by machines with human helpers. I stood several feet away from one of the workers and sketched her at her station, waiting to feed in ads.
I watched as workers drove small fork lifts with pallets of wrapped advertisements and unloaded them by work stations. After I finished the ink lines in this sketch (I was standing), a forklift driver saw what I was doing, and wanted to see my sketch. I showed him and he liked it. He asked if I could sketch him. His name was Perry, and he stood proudly on his lift for several minutes as I did a quick sketch of him. I later found out he had worked for the plant for 13 years.
As I was adding watercolor to my sketches, a photographer with a huge camera lens wandered around and took pictures of us sketching.
After sketching people, I decided to look for something else to sketch and went through the hallways and stairs to get back to the print room. Huge blue printing presses filled the room as steam was blowing down near the ceiling. There was ink of various colors on rollers in different presses. The sheer size of the space blew me away. I had about 45 minutes left to sketch, so I went to the Color Ink room, which was smaller and quieter. Ink-covered equipment was everywhere. Tanks of ink stood on shelves and I saw the bright blue garbage cans on wheels with black ink (I think it was ink?) oozing down their sides. It looked like tar. I just had to sketch those!
The cans sat on ink-splattered brown cardboard. I also sketched a cluster of other things I saw in the room into a collage-style sketch.
Our sketch group gathered for a throw-down, where we sat our sketchbooks on the floor against a wall and we walked around looking at the amazing things we had captured. We could donate our sketches if we chose and some where chosen by the host to make scans of. The organizers were thrilled and amazed at all the sketches, this was documenting history, as their beloved plant was going to close soon. I donated my two people sketches, which would be given to Perry and Delphine as gifts. I’m excited I could share something I created for them to keep as a memory.
I sketch a lot of fun things and places, but seeing the Minnesota Star Tribune printing plant before its doors close was new to me, and one of the highlights of my year!