An empowering quote from Bell Hooks is printed in a black serif typeface on a brown handbill-size poster card.

The statement from the late author reads, “If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.”

That motivational proclamation is one of numerous type-driven messages hand-printed on 3,000 vibrant 8-inch-by-6-inch poster cards by Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.

The Detroit printmaker’s renowned letterpress work is featured as part of Random Thoughts on Poster Cards, an exhibit running at Eastern Michigan University through December 14.

“People give me quotes, I read things, and then I just compile a list. And depending on the mood I’m in, I print what I want to,” said Kennedy alongside fellow letterpress printer Gerald Schulze during the exhibit’s November 7 opening reception at EMU’s University Gallery.

“It’s just a matter of someone telling me something, and I’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, that would make a good poster,’ or I’ll read something and think, ‘That would make a good card,’ and then I just print them.”

Kennedy’s extensive collection of colorful poster cards is randomly scattered and affixed to the gallery’s walls from floor to ceiling with nails and paperclips.

A quick scan of the exhibit from a distance—whether standing in the room or sitting at a bench in the center—shows mosaic-like patterns spread throughout the gallery.

Up close, those patterns reveal individual poster cards inked with quotes, aphorisms, and statements in Lydian, Cooper Black, and other typefaces from notable civil rights heroes, creatives, activists, and indigenous people.

A quote from Frederick Douglass printed on a blue, purple, and green background states, “Once you learn to read, you will forever be free.”

Another quote from Rosa Parks reads, “It is better to protest than to accept injustice,” on a silver and red background.

A Lakota proverb printed on an orange background states, “When a man moves from nature, his heart becomes hard.”

The compelling quotes featured throughout Random Thoughts on Poster Cards range from inspirational to enlightening to witty and include messages about social justice, Black power, race, capitalism, history, politics, nature, and more.

Each quote is printed in a different typeface on a separate poster card against an iridescent, multicolored, or single-colored background.

“Everything you see here is random,” said Kennedy, who operates Kennedy Prints!, a letterpress printshop in Detroit. “There are some times when I have a lot of text that I have to use smaller type. I will definitely use a background that’s minimal, but what I normally do is … print backgrounds in different colors. I start with a solid background, I print them in different colors, and then I just take a pile of them.

“[Next,] I take a linoleum cut that I’ve carved, and I print 200 [poster cards] in some color and then I put them back in another stack and just keep doing that. That’s why if you [see] some of my work, you’ll see that no two posters are really the same.”

Kennedy also wanted the installation team from EMU’s School of Art & Design to embrace that randomness when they created the exhibit. No specific instructions were given for installing it.

“I’m impacted by it because I realize how much work is involved, and I wonder if they started out and thought, ‘Oh, we’re gonna do [it] this way and we have this plan,’” he said with a laugh. “And about halfway through it, they said, ‘Oh, you know what, we’re just gonna put this stuff up and we’re gonna go home.’”

To create the exhibit, EMU gallery program director Danny Baskin and graphic design professor and letterpress printer Ryan Molloy ventured to Kennedy’s printshop in Detroit to retrieve the poster cards. Then they enlisted a student-run organization called Intermediate Gallery Group to help install them.

“[Ryan] proposed the exhibition and then he and I worked together with the help of Amos to come up with an exhibit that is thoughtful, and hopefully impactful, especially right now,” Baskin said.

“We reached out to [Intermediate Gallery Group] to get the extra hands of folks that were interested in helping install it. And we took a week and just hammered and nailed the poster cards to the wall.”

Kennedy also insisted the names of the eight students who helped with the installation be printed on the exhibit’s title wall: Jared Barajas, Laurence Bourdeau, Toren Clause, Chrissy Kuiper, Amelia Meadows, Namrata Patel, Marissa Nowicki, and Paris Stinson are listed along with Baskin and Molloy.

“It’s a really kind thing for him to have them added there because a massive part of the show is just the installation itself,” Baskin said.

“He’s making this work to put out information and ideas that are important into the world. He’s interested in the content, sharing these ideas, and adding power to the voice of the many.”

In response, gallery visitors have been captivated by the powerful voices channeled throughout Kennedy’s work in the exhibit.

“We’ve gotten thoughtful insight about it from students and faculty members,” Baskin said. “People are spending 30 minutes to an hour to sit and read through cards and take some time to consider what the words are and why they’re there and who they’re speaking to.”

During their analysis of the exhibit, Kennedy wants visitors to know that each poster card he creates represents the ongoing practice and repetition he puts into his craft.

“What I try to do is put ink on paper every day because … the bare minimum I can do is take a putty knife, dip it into a can of ink, and run it across a sheet of paper. I have put ink on paper; I have done all that I wanted to do today,” he said.

“Sometimes I put five layers of ink on the paper and sometimes it’s just that one little mark and I’ve met my goal. I feel good and I can sleep at night.”

Kennedy started letterpress printing in 1988 after seeing an 18th-century printshop and book bindery demonstration at Colonial Williamsburg.

He soon left his corporate job and studied printing at a Chicago community-based letterpress shop. By 1997, Kennedy earned a Master of Fine Arts in graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later taught graphic design at Indiana University.

“When I came to letterpress printing, it was dying as a commercial way of printing. It had been overtaken by offset printing primarily,” Kennedy said.

“The [people] who [had] learned letterpress printing in middle school or junior high school … they were excited to have a young person—someone 35—interested in letterpress printing. They were very open and generous with the knowledge that they had and the materials that they had.”

Kennedy quickly found a sense of community and camaraderie with other letterpress printers that are devoted to the craft.

“When you get into a craft or when you get into anything that you’re interested in, you create a community,” he said.

“And one of the things that community is known for is sharing because you love this discipline—this craft—and you want to share it with other people even if they know it already. You want to share the fact that you’ve learned it as a way of having them recognize where you are.”

Kennedy also shares his love of the craft in his latest book, Citizen Printer, which includes 800-plus reproductions of his letterpress prints along with a manifesto, essays, and photos. He recently completed a nationwide tour to promote it.

“I print negro,” writes Kennedy in Citizen Printer’s manifesto. "I use printing to express negro culture. I seek to do to printing what the blues did to music. I do not put blackface on so-called fine printing or artists’ books. I make books negro. I do not make negro books. I call for a better world through the power of the poster.”

Lori Stratton is a library technician, writer for Pulp, and writer and editor of strattonsetlist.com.

“Random Thoughts on Poster Cards” runs through December 14 at EMU’s University Gallery, 900 Oakwood Street in Ypsilanti. Located on the second floor of the Student Center, the exhibit is free and open 10 am-6 pm Monday through Friday and 10 am-2 pm Saturday. For details, visit the EMU Galleries website.