Leaning against a wall in Richard Tetrault’s crowded studio is a large fibreboard panel, carved with the image of a grizzly bear. It’s a jazzy West Coast grizzly, standing on its hind legs and playing a harmonica. Created by Toronto artist Barbara Klunder during a recent stay in Vancouver, it awaits its full realization as an immense woodblock print. Along with the equally oversized works of 11 other local and national artists, Klunder’s Coastal Harp will undergo a very public birthing as part of this year’s Big Print project. Each impression will be made not on a large-bed printing press but beneath the wheels of a steamroller. Yup, a steamroller, the kind used for paving streets. The event is scheduled to take place on Granville Island over the Canada Day holiday weekend.

Tetrault, an acclaimed muralist, printmaker, and workshop leader with a history of involvement in community cultural initiatives, says that steamroller printing is a way of “inverting” the printmaking process, making it public and collaborative.

“Printmaking is traditionally a more insular activity,” he says. “It’s indoors, for one thing.…And you’re often working on your own piece, exclusive of everybody else.” In an outdoor public location, he says, as soon as you fire up the steamroller, an audience forms. “It’s dramatic. One writer described it as making the asphalt of the city the press bed and the steamroller the press, so it really is a way of integrating it [printmaking] with the urban landscape.”

The process beautifully suits the “music in the city” theme of the first of two Big Print projects this summer. (The second, sponsored by the City of Vancouver and involving artists of both aboriginal and Chinese descent, will take place in Chinatown over the B.C. Day long weekend.) Organized by Creative Cultural Collaborations Society (which was cofounded by Tetrault and his partner Esther Rausenberg) and the Society for Contemporary Prints on Paper in conjunction with the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society, it complements the final weekend of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Some of the graphic artists it has recruited—mostly printmakers and designers—have created posters for the jazz festival in past years. Klunder, for instance, has produced a number of memorable images, using collage techniques to make faces out of musical instruments.

Pouring cups of mint tea in the little garden behind his studio, Tetrault recalls that in 2013, master printer Peter Braune approached him with the idea of combining their expertise to oversee the creation of steamroller prints, a process that is popular at community events and arts festivals in the United States but was previously unknown in Vancouver. “Peter could see that I liked working large and that I also do a lot of collaborations,” Tetrault explains. Braune, he adds, enjoys thinking outside the box—or, in this case, outside the studio. Using a steamroller “is a way to push the boundaries of printmaking”.

The first Big Print project took place in 2014 and Tetrault admits that the results were not as pristine as they would have been within a more controlled environment. “But that aside, we have managed to pull off some pretty excellent prints,” he says, “and part of that I attribute to working with Peter, because he is a master printer and he’s a perfectionist.” Prints and blocks eventually find homes through a silent auction, benefiting an array of nonprofit groups as well as the artists.

For Klunder, speaking to the Straight by phone from her home studio on Toronto Island, there’s excitement in the entire oversized process. A multidisciplinary artist whose practice ranges from painting, drawing, and papercuts through textiles and parade art, she says, “The scale spoke to me…because of my history doing street theatre and street protests with giant puppets.” She also loved the potential of the prints on cloth, which could be used as flags or banners in future parades or community events. “When Richard told me after a coffee meeting that these eight-foot-by-four-foot plywood pieces would be printed, two on paper and two on cloth, my brain just kicked into gear.”

The Big Print project takes place next Friday to Sunday (July 1 to 3) in the Micon Products parking lot on Cartwright Street, opposite the False Creek Community Centre, on Granville Island.