Stamp making with your friendly neighborhood mailperson Greg Labold

Old stamping ground

“It feels like I’m coming out of retirement,” Labold says. The workshop will guide one through the process of making a rubber stamp: drawing a design, carving it onto a rubber block, and imprinting it on flat surfaces like postcards and artwork. “It's like cutting into butter,” Labold says of the rubber medium for stamp imprints. “It's a very enjoyable, relaxing process of carving.”

Just be prepared to buy a postage stamp if you plan to mail your rubber stamped artwork, Labod says. The stamps are for decorative print only. Labold, 43, worked as an artist for the past two decades, focusing on hand drawn illustration and silkscreen printing. Originally hailing from Newtown, PA, Labold relocated to Fishtown after graduating from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in 2005.

Silkscreen printing, or serigraphy, appealed to Labold, because it presented an easy method for him to transfer his illustrations onto tee shirts, posters, and just about any flat surface that a squeegee can be slid over. “It takes a little bit of time to expose a screen and prepare the screen, but once it's set up, you can make hundreds of prints very quickly,” Labold says.

Labold created a prolific body of work in the aughts through the late 2010s: He printed a small batch tee shirt line with his brother, featuring their original art work and his silkscreen designs. He drew and inked a black and white semi-autographical cartoons in magazine form under the Bald Spot Comics name. And he still occasionally makes noise drumming and singing for music acts with colorful monikers such as Ape!, Band Name, Guitarculese, and the Bloody Stool Band.

“I also did a karaoke night at the Abbaye,” Labold says of his past exploits.

Signed, sealed, delivered

Funding these creative habits meant lots of part-time work and odd jobs for Labold. One of his longest tenured jobs was painting faces at the Philadelphia Zoo for nearly a decade, in addition to working for silk screen printing businesses around Philadelphia. Even before Labold’s second career as a mailperson, he recalls being attracted to civil service jobs in his treks through Philadelphia.

“I always wanted to either be a garbage man or a mailman or like a street sweeper in Center City, or something like that,” he says. “Being broke and fantasizing about trying to sign up for a more normal, career-driven, not alternative lifestyle, but just being a working-class citizen.”

Labold would get his chance to pursue that dream in 2021. Labold, who had been a stay-at-home “Mr. Mom” to a young son, was in need of a new career. The printmaking endeavors had dried up.

“I guess it was kind of like everybody reassessing their situation during the COVID time,” Labold says. “My wife was sort of working her way out of teaching, and I had been primarily taking care of my son in the first year and a half of his life while she was the main breadwinner.”

The USPS caught Labold’s attention with the lure of being hired quickly with part-time work. Within a few months of applying, Labold was thrust into the wild world of the postal service.

His very first assignment led him to delivering mail through opioid-user encampments in the Kensington-Alleghney neighborhood, a route he would stay on for two and a half years, before landing his current route in Fishtown.

“I think in my past lives as an artist or a musician or any of the creative bubbles that I was living and working in, it's a lot easier to kind of ignore that stuff or not really go to those areas and pay attention to the situation,” Labold says. “But with work, it's like that's part of your route. You've got to walk that street. You have to go down that block and experience what's on that block, and you have to work through it.”

With a sort of comically tall build and a soothing bassy voice in his manner of speaking, Labold embodies the figure of the affable neighborhood mailman. Aside from career stability, Labold says he enjoys all the quirks of the delivery route: meeting with neighbors and their friendly dogs, being outside, and getting lots of exercise.

As for Labold the artist, his stampmaking workshop on November 9 harkens back to his silk screen printing days, albeit in a more streamlined and accessible process to both newcomers and seasoned artists.

“There is sort of the instant gratification of carving and printing, and then sending it in the mail to somebody,” Labold says. “I hope that might open their minds to make more prints or make more things with their hands.”

Featured image: Greg Labold is teaching how to make rubber stamps this week. (Photo by Allison Hammond.)

Image description: B&W portrait, Labold in casualwear sits on a small bench outside, during daylight, wearing sunglasses looking to his right