“Hello, Princess.” Tacoma’s popular poster maker releases new work

Deep in a North Tacoma basement, the smell of paint is heavy. The walls are adorned with colorful posters, and a large 1952 printing press makes a mechanical swish and clicking sound as paper is run through and inked with poetry and yellow daffodils.

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Every month, two men print more than 100 posters in this studio, then race around Tacoma, stapling them to electric poles and handing them out to dozens of eager fans. Tuesday was no exception.

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The News Tribune’s late opinion editor, Matt Driscoll, long held a soft spot for Lance Kagey and Tom Llewellyn, who run the guerilla letterpress poster project, Beautiful Angle. Two posters were auctioned to help offset Driscoll’s memorial service costs in September 2024.

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This week Kagey and Llewellyn invited The News Tribune back to their studio, and this News Tribune reporter accompanied the duo as they drove around Proctor, 6th Avenue and Hilltop Tuesday night to put out their latest poster.

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It’s a yellow daffodil with accompanying text, “Hey there princess./A little shy, aren’t you?/Waving from the front yard/or riding along Pac Ave/with the other ladies./We know you look good./You’re feeling yourself./We’re all feeling it./Day’s a little brighter,/weight’s a little lighter,/every time you toss your head.”

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If you missed Tuesday’s drop (only about half of those waiting on the sidewalk were lucky enough to get one), as of Wednesday afternoon there were eight left in stock on Beautiful Angle’s website, for $167 each (the price offsets the cost of production, they said). Some rare posters are sold for as much as $1,500 each.

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Kagey and Llewellyn have been running Beautiful Angle for 24 years, and their posters are designed to be found at random, like Monkeyshines. Kagey, a 40-year graphic artist, usually designs the layout and Llewellyn writes the accompanying words. They’ll collaborate with local artists like Stan Shaw, Art Chantry, Jeremy Gregory, Curt Ashby and Deaf Boy Tacoma. You’ll catch them doing a big steamroller print at the annual Tacoma Wayzgoose printmaking festival on the first weekend of May.

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The pair uses a proof press originally used by a bakery in Ohio they found on eBay and shipped to Tacoma in the early 2000s. After painstakingly laying individual letters, punctuation and graphic designs into the machine, they turn its cylinders slick with ink, pressing the image onto the paper. Over the years they’ve saved engravings, once used by local print newspapers and advertisers, from dumpsters and antique stores, turning old images into new art.

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“What makes it a precious project, to both of us and the people who like it, is that it’s 100% analog,” Kagey said. “There’s no AI. It’s a hand-carved image and old wood and lead type, hand-cranked through a press. It’s very mechanical.”

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Many of the poster designs nod to Tacoma’s gritty, industrial history.

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“You have the Port of Tacoma belching steam. There’s just this industrial portion of your gene pool here,” Llewellyn said. “There’s [glass and] It involves fire and uses gears, cast iron, and paper. It has a Tacoma feel to it, so I use a lot of industrial imagery and words. ”

Tuesday’s daffodil poster references the annual Daffodil Festival and Parade, which takes place in Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner and Orting on Saturday.

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Kagey said Tacoma has probably the largest letterpress or book arts community “in not only the Northwest, but probably even the West Coast.”

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It’s apparent in the people who lined up around the block, darted across the street and cheered when they saw Kagey’s big blue truck pull up near the Tacoma Glass Gallery, The Red Hot and Tacoma Tofu on Tuesday.

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Llewellyn said the project has brought many strangers together to bond over art. One year they helped a man propose to his wife with a poster, a nod to when they would chase Beautiful Angle drops while dating. Others have shown them Beautiful Angle tattoos and many grab drinks and food with them afterward. Nearly 5,300 people follow them on Facebook.

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“We run out [of posters] “Almost every time I tell people, ‘Sorry, we’re out of stock,’ I feel a certain kind of joy,” Kagy said with a laugh. A lot of times I see people who are like, “I have a lot of this.” Here, you can eat mine. ” So we see a lot of such acts of kindness. In most cases. ”

Kerri Feider and Nils Wickman had been waiting for 15 minutes outside The Red Hot on 6th Avenue for a poster. Feider said she’s followed Beautiful Angle for years and considered the generosity of artists like Kagey and Llewellyn a “spot of joy.”

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“This is one of my favorite things about Tacoma,” Feider said.

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Linda McElroy grew up in Puyallup and has lived in Tacoma for about 50 years. McElroy said she was blessed to receive Tuesday’s poster because it reminds her of great memories of the Daffodil Parade.

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Outside Tacoma Tofu, artist John James Nelson — known for putting ‘TACOMA’ on pilings at Titlow Beach — said his girlfriend didn’t get a poster at The Red Hot, so they followed Kagey’s car to the next location. Nelson said the annual tradition of hunting for “great art” is “really good for the city.”

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“We need this,” he said. “It just brings the community together, brings everybody together because of art and ideas. Beautiful Angle likes to focus on … what’s going on at the moment. It’s a big deal to keep people in the now.”

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This story was first published April 2, 2026, 5:00 AM.