Imagine two men selling or pawning most of their belongings and using the money to purchase a massive, 800-pound, 14th century-style woodblock printing press. Then picture them mounting it in the back of a pickup truck and touring the country in an attempt to teach college students about printmaking and expose them to art in general. While it might sound crazy to some people, that’s exactly what Joseph Velasquez and Greg Nanney did when they started Drive By Press in 2005.

Nanney and Velasquez visited Anchor Graphics in the Wabash Campus Building, 623 S. Wabash Ave., on April 28 to demonstrate and lecture about the art of contemporary printmaking. They stopped at Columbia on their way to set up a May 1 exhibition at the Happy Dog Gallery, 1542 N. Milwaukee Ave., in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. Drive By Press tours the country to emphasize the accessibility of printmaking and introduce art to people who might not consider themselves artistically inclined.

James Iannaccone of Anchor Graphics said Drive By Press stands out from other printmaking operations in the country because of the mobility and versatility of their work.

“They tend to sort of push it beyond just the art world and get involved in music and going to rock shows and other kinds of festivals,” he said. “They really sort of take printmaking to a broader audience.”

Drive By Press began as Velasquez and Nanney’s thesis project during the graduate program at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“What we wanted to do was mobilize printmaking—with this idea about the democratization of art and accessibility—by mounting an 800-pound Pelican etching press in the back of my pickup truck and driving around to local Midwest colleges and community outreach centers that didn’t have visiting artist programs or weren’t exposed to the arts, ” Velasquez said.

What began as a 13-college tour quickly turned into a full-time job. They continued touring colleges with their press after they earned their Master of Fine Arts degrees, even though the operation was self-funded.

“People used to ask us if we were a not-for-profit organization,” Nanney said, laughing. “We’d tell them, ‘No, we’re all for loss.’”

Velasquez said their success relied heavily on the kindness of the people they encountered across the country.

“It was a fantastic reminder of the generosity of everyone that was out there,” Velasquez said. “In such a cynical time when you constantly hear about how horrible things are, we had people open up their homes to us, feed us, give us a great opportunity to wash our clothes and use their studios.”

The duo began to print and sell their designs on T-shirts to support themselves financially. Nanney said the T-shirt format also lent itself to their philosophy of making art accessible to the average person. He said many people are intimidated by art and view it as something strange that they don’t understand.

“When we started printing on T-shirts, it kind of broke that barrier down for people,” Nanney said. “No one in this world is intimidated by a T-shirt.”

Of all the exhibits and demonstrations they have done, Nanney said his favorite moments come from elementary school demonstrations, where children are able to see the press in action and use it to make their own prints.

“They get so excited about it, and the enthusiasm I see on their faces is really awesome,” he said. “I don’t know what it is about it, but I like it a lot. Versus, sometimes we go to these colleges where these people are paying to be there and they’re supposed to want to learn it, yet the kids are so disenchanted and jaded. I’m putting stuff in front of them that I think is the coolest stuff I’ve seen in my life, and they just don’t give a s–t.”

Drive By Press’s visit to Anchor Graphics was one of Velasquez and Nanney’s last academic visits for the foreseeable future.

“This is kind of the end of Drive By Press, in a way,” Nanney said. “I know I’m a little tired of traveling around constantly, and I know for a fact my partner Joseph [Velasquez] is tired. I think we’re ready to kind of move on to some different projects with our careers and our art.”

Those projects include cataloging the collection of nearly 3,500 prints they have collected throughout their years of touring, and working on a book about their travels and the state of the printmaking industry.

“We’re kind of running out of schools, too,” Velasquez said, noting that they typically visit about 100 colleges per semester. “We need to let some kids graduate before we take it back out on the road,” he added, laughing.