How I Fell Into Risograph Printing

I was interested in Risograph printing long before I even knew the word “Risograph.” Looking back, it feels like everything I loved about making art was quietly steering me toward it long before I ever met one of these strange, wonderful, temperamental machines.

I have been drawing and making things for as long as I can remember. And the older I get, the more I feel myself drifting away from sleek, instant technology. In a world built on quick rewards, everything comes fast and everything disappears just as quickly. We humans were not built for constant speed. We love the thrill of waiting, the anticipation of earning something through our own effort. That is part of why childhood felt so magical. You waited for Christmas. You waited for mail. You waited for the thing you wanted most. The waiting built the wonder.

In today’s world, where everything can be summoned instantly, art has taken a hit. You can stream any song, print a thousand copies of a Van Gogh on your home printer, or tell a computer to make you something that looks convincingly “handmade.” All of it is convenient, but it lacks that spark of life. And I think plenty of people feel that absence, even if they cannot put words to it.

So here is the question that kept rattling around in my brain as I began creating screen prints, block prints, and wanted to make my artwork more accessible,
Is there a middle ground?
Can we make art efficiently but still keep the soul? Can we have speed without losing the joy of the process?

That question is what led me to Risograph printing. I did not want to use an inkjet printer. It felt too clean, too perfect, too distant from everything I loved about printmaking. So I started searching and very quickly, I stumbled into an entire world of artists who had already found the answer: the Risograph.

Not to be confused with the dusty beige office copier sitting forgotten in some church basement (though many Riso machines do, in fact, live sad little lives in church basements), the Risograph is something else entirely. An antiquated, finicky, art-loving robot with a cult following. These machines were designed to print hundreds of copies cheaply and quickly, long before anyone thought to use them for art. Although they became obsolete in many parts of the world, artists realized that these machines could do something magical. They could print fast, in real ink, with beautiful textures, in colors that looked nothing like standard CMYK. The drawback? They broke constantly. They needed parts imported from across the world. And every color lived inside its own drum that had to be swapped by hand.

When I first discovered all of this, I was instantly hooked. I loved the grain, the softness, the little misalignments, the unpredictability. And I loved the idea of having an ill-tempered old robot in my house that needed constant attention. A machine that required you to scan your artwork manually, adjust it, coax it, and hope for the best. It felt “analog enough” for me. The perfect balance of efficiency and humanity.

However, I wanted to try it before I committed to hunting down a machine. Fate stepped in on a trip to Florida. My partner and I stumbled into Print St. Pete, a Risograph and letterpress studio that happened to be offering classes. The very first time we ran a print through the machine, I knew there was no going back. I needed one of these.

Luck struck again when we found a broken Risograph with three color drums at a nearby university for six hundred dollars. After a month of taking it apart, putting it back together, and coaxing it back to life, I was officially in business. I started with fluorescent pink, green, and black. I had big dreams and absolutely no idea what I was doing and honestly, in many ways, I still feel that way. But I kept going.

Northwest Arkansas has a strange creative ecosystem. There are tons of artists, but almost no places to get art printed outside of standard inkjet services. So I slowly became one of the only small Risograph studios around, printing for local artists who needed something beyond glossy, digital perfection. I have said it before and I will say it again that there is no higher honor than being trusted with someone else’s art. To hold a piece of work that someone poured their heart into, and to be the one responsible for giving it a second life in ink, is the kind of magic I never get tired of.

Today I print on an RZ220 with six colors, red, green, blue, pink, black, and yellow. I mix them, overprint them, and sometimes let them collide in ways that feel wonderfully unpredictable. Every print that comes out of the machine is a little different, a little imperfect, and entirely alive.

I love everything about Risograph printing. I love the noise, the mess, the dust, the alignment wheels, the experimental layering, and the way the ink sits on the page. I love the way people react when they hold their first Riso print and realize that it feels like something real, something made, something touched.

Perhaps that is the point. Maybe I got into Risograph printing because I wanted a technology that still made room for the human hand. A machine that lets me work fast but never lets me forget the joy of waiting. Of trying. Of messing up and trying again. A process that keeps art a little strange, a little stubborn, and full of life.

Just the way it should be.