STEAMROLLER PRINT PROJECT

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The Ninth Annual Steamroller Print Project

We just finished our Ninth Annual Steamroller Print Project.

This year we printed 50 different blocks setting a new record.

Students and faculty from the university participated along with students from Hellgate High School, Rattlesnake Elementary and students from Montana State University.

Prints completed were carried in Missoula's annual Day of the Dead Parade, and also exhibited at the Rhino Bar downtown, the University Center Atrium.

Next year will be our Tenth Anniversary, so get ready of a big one.

For more information on this project please contact:

James Bailey at james.bailey@umontana.edu

Dia De Los Muertos

Day of the Dead

Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, is also known as Fiesta de los Muertos. It is a holiday (or festival) which is celebrated in México, Central and South America, and in some areas of the United States, especially, the southwest. This holiday originates with the indigenous native pre-Hispanic peoples of México. These early people believed that the souls of the dead return each year to visit with their living relatives. When the Spaniards arrived in the early fifteen hundreds, they found well established native religions. The Aztec people held rituals that included the use of skulls. To the Aztec, skulls were used to symbolize death and rebirth. The Spanish priests perceived the rituals to be barbaric and pagan. The priests made an extreme attempt to assimilate indigenous people into the Catholic Church. Assimilation occasionally proved difficult when these people already had their own holy days.

The Aztec ritual was originally held in summer during the Aztec month of Miccailhuitontli, approximately corresponds to 24 July through 12 August. The Catholic Church moved the ritual to the beginning of November to coincide with two Catholic holidays, All Saints’ Day, a Christian Feast that honors and remembers all Christian saints, kept on the first of November, and All Souls Day, the commemoration of all the faithful departed, celebrated on the second of November.

The early Spaniards merged the ritual within the two Catholic holidays, in the hopes that Día de los Muertos would disappear forever. What has happened is that the traditional native holiday has become intermixed with the Catholic tradition but still exists.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

9th Annual Day of the Dead Steamroller Print Project

Meet Your Printmaker

The Ninth Annual Steamroller Print Project

10th Anniversary Day of the Dead Steamroller Print Project (2010)

Dia De Los Muertos

2008 Steamroller Print Project

Articles and Images (Missoula's DOD)

Day of the Dead Links

Other Folks doing Steamroller Projects

Image by Shepard Fairey

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