Guzman-Lopez: Those prints resemble loteria cards, for the bingo-like carnival game popular in Mexico. To celebrate the shop's 40th birthday, the Ocon family commissioned 18 artists to create small poster-sized prints inspired by L.A.'s people and landmarks.Ĭary Ocon: And we wanted to do something that celebrated what we do and to leave something behind for the city of Los Angeles, to leave our mark on it. Now, high-end announcements with an artisan look and feel are the shop's bread and butter.Īardvark printed wedding invitations for actors Kevin Costner and Eddie Murphy, and announcements for the Golden Globe awards. He practiced law, but he didn't like it, so eight years ago he joined the family business.
Guzman-Lopez: Cary Ocon's brother and father struggled it out, while he went to law school. and, you know the culture differences, back then, to marry, to marry a white woman with four white kids, and to raise them. Guzman-Lopez: Ocon's eyes well up when he talks about how tough those years were on his family.Ĭary Ocon: Financially. You know, wait a couple hours for us to print their cards. Barely, says Cary Ocon.Ĭary Ocon: We used to get the mariachis who had been performing the night before, Friday night, then they'd come here Saturday morning all hung over needing business cards, they'd order the cards, and then they'd go across the street on the grass, crash out. At the time he bet there'd always be a market for letterpress.
Instead of modernizing, Ocon bought the century-old press. Guzman-Lopez: Computers were poison to printing shops all over. I sort of wonder if that offer was made with the guy knowing the typesetting business was about to die and he was selling my dad sort of a sinking ship. English classes, son Cary Ocon says, helped his dad land linotype jobs, eventually at Aardvark Letterpress.Ĭary Ocon: I mean, he worked for the original owner for many years, and then the guy offers him the business. Eventually they married and he adopted the kids. Guzman-Lopez: She was 10 years older than Luis, Jewish, and divorced with four kids. Helen Kaplan: He was handsome and good looking and what else, so our eyes met, and there was a fire and passion. There he met Helen Kaplan, a waitress and his future wife. and landed a job as busboy at a Fairfax district cafeteria. The pay was great, but the lure of the United States was even greater. Guzman-Lopez: He worked for newspapers and magazines all over Mexico. Ocon learned to master a linotype when he was 16 years old in Mexico. Before computer menus empowered people to choose their font sizes, typefaces, and the number of copies they wanted, this was the only way to print. Another machine rolls them with ink, then presses them onto paper. Guzman-Lopez: Human hands remove the letters and arrange them into words. The machine melts and molds lead ingots into letters. On it, 70 year old Luis Ocon hunches over a metal keyboard and cranks a metal handle. Its leather seat resembles a worn saddle. Guzman-Lopez: Aardvark's one-ton linotype machine, as tall as a basketball player, stands across the pressroom. It's one of the shop's workhorses, and it's a youngster compared to the century-old Chandler and Price hand press next to it. Guzman-Lopez: A 60 year old Heidelberg windmill press sits in front of the storefront window. If it weren't so busy, a visitor could easily confuse the place with a printing press museum. KPCC's Adolfo Guzman-Lopez has the story.Īdolfo Guzman-Lopez: In a mostly Central American section of MacArthur Park, hot type rules at Aardvark Letterpress.
AARDVARK LETTERPRESS SERIES
The owners are a Mexican immigrant and his family they're celebrating the shop's anniversary this week by launching a series of Los Angeles-inspired art prints. It's a printing technique that computers nearly killed off. For 40 years, a print shop near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles has kept the letterpress alive.
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