Artist Series №35: Michael Wertz x The Portland Stamp Company
Michael Wertz is a noted illustrator, printmaker, educator, and Friend of Judy. He is the Assistant Chair of Illustration at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where he teaches portfolio, screenprinting, and digital tools classes.
We first were introduced last year by Lea Redmond when we produced his RBG and vote stamps as part of her postage stamp protest project. We also made stamps with his designs for The Library Collective. During the course of these many projects we invited Michael to be part of our artist series. The result you see here is the amazing Spider & I set.
He has collaborated with clients like the DeYoung Museum, BART, Scholastic, Peaches Christ, Nike, Oaklandish, and the Oakland Museum to create vivid imagery that tells a story and delights the eyeballs. His work starts with a pencil and paper and ends up as digital collage, hand-pulled prints, books, and all manner of products.
Read more about Michael’s process, history of stamp making, and taking inspiration from Brian Eno below.
Have you designed a stamp before?
Not an actual USPS stamp (not yet anyway), but I’ve designed plenty of cinderella stamps, most notably for the Erstwhile Philatelic Society.
