Sitting in the Riso Room in the Fine Arts Building at the College of Arts & Science is a specialized printer called a Riso Digital Duplicator. Its applications and promises caught the eye of the UM System, which provided a $20,000 investment grant to support  Travis Shaffer’s research conducted on multi-color Risograph printing and workflow.  

Shaffer, an assistant professor in the School of Visual Studies (SVS), is doing leading-edge research that makes Mizzou one of only a handful of universities in the country that can offer students educational experience with a Riso. MU’s support helped expand SVS’s program and cast a spotlight on this unique and highly demanded specialty. 

The benefits of Shaffer’s research include international classes on Risograph printing, community art workshops, possibly putting Columbia on the map as an art center, an in-house resident program, and more. 

International Draw 

When Shaffer speaks about the Risograph printer and his pilot, online, and international six-week workshops, he describes the printer as a campfire: “It is the warmth around which we huddle.” 

“It’s a bit cute,” he laughs. “But I used to be a camper and also there was a Canadian scholar named Marshall McLuhan who talked about a global village with technology. This machine is like the role of a campfire in a village community – that communal place that people gather around.” 

The approximate 30 students in his most recent course, CMYKinda, logged in from coast to coast, as well as from Canada, Europe, Qatar, Tokyo, and the United Kingdom. Classes were held mornings and evenings to accommodate time differences. Many in attendance were professors or graduate students at art or design programs or have a Riso printer on their campus but need more information on how to use it. Others included independent artists or individuals who run their own print shops. A Riso class for MU students is also offered this summer. 

“The workshop helps individuals understand workflow to have more predictability of their outcome,” Shaffer explains. “You can’t really predict the outcome on a monitor or what’s going to happen because it’s based on layering. So, my course offers attendees tactics for more predictability and offers a quicker workflow.” 

The Riso Room 

There are three Riso printers on campus – one for MU use and the other two for Shaffer’s university research – the latter located in his faculty studio.  

The private Riso machines are used for Shaffer’s creative research and publishing activities. With a background as a digital artist, publisher, and educator, his primary interest is pursuit of freedom through technological and visual exploration, he says.  

The communal machine, which arrived on campus in 2020 funded by the School of Visual Studies, churns out up to 150 copies a minute and is on rollers so it can travel from room to room. An MFA graduate student/teaching assistant, Connor Frew, and five undergrad fellows supervise use of the machine and the Riso Room. 

One of Shaffer’s goals is that his pilot teaching program will reach beyond the classroom. For example, he aims to be able to offer other artists the opportunity to conduct art workshops. He also hopes to send students to artist book fairs to represent the university with their original artwork to places like LA, London, or New York.  

“These are really interesting dynamic events,” Shaffer says. “They are international events that draw people from all over the world to see the latest art publications to share ideas and work.  It’s a really broad-reaching and impactful way for Mizzou to announce ourselves to the world.” 

What is a Risograph? 

A Riso Digital Duplicator, invented and produced by a Japanese company, is similar to a copy machine, except it uses cold-printing technology to push ink through stencil-wrapped color drums onto the paper. Unlike a conventional color printer that uses black, magenta, yellow, and cyan inks, a Riso can be loaded with one or two colors. 

“You can only use one color at a time,” explains Shaffer. “Riso produces approximately 75 different ink colors, and you make prints by layering color. To print more than two colors, you need to run the prints through the machine multiple times.”   

The benefits of a new $20,000 Riso machine over other printers is it is more cost-effective than a commercial printer for small-press print jobs, such as literary, photo, or professional journals producing 100 to 500 copies, and offers the individual a reasonable way to maintain control over the printing process. It is also more environmentally friendly – energy efficient, and uses natural rice-based products for the ink. “It’s green in multiple ways,” Shaffer explains 

Shaffer’s Vision 

On the books is an artist-in-residence program so an artist can visit campus for a week in the summer to work with students. Another goal is to one day see the university promote, help fund, and create a center for artists’ publishing or experimental publishing. The Riso Room could even work as a commercial small printing press operator.  

“My vision is to produce a dynamic and relevant space for professional engagements, like publishing artists’ works on campus,” says Shaffer. “My mission is to establish at Mizzou a national, if not international, center for discourse, with either retail printing or artists publishing at large – trying to create a nationally significant place here to engage with artists.” 

While all his desires for the university and the MFA program are “new territory,” he says he has his eyes on grants to help him achieve his goals. “I’m thinking about a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to fund a facility because right now the Riso Room is a faculty office, about 10 feet by 14 feet. Just big enough for one person.” He also hopes to apply and be funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Grant (more than 1,000 grants are awarded annually to organizations, individuals, and curators in the U.S.). 

“Mizzou is remote in relationship to art centers,” Shaffer explains. “And there’s a longer conversation that could be had about that. As an institution in the center of a state close to two large cities, with nationally significant museums … Columbia is an art community, but we are not by any means an art center.   

“I guess I would say that one of the ways our students can gain engagement to a broader art world is through work which is more easily disseminated and distributed. And so, to establish a center for them to engage art through publishing and then also establish a space where I can create collaborative relationships with them to work on publications … or to start a residency program where we can use the funds we generate through workshops to bring national and international artist to Columbia – that would be amazing.”