In 40 years of painting, Sisters artist John Simpkins has dabbled in nearly every style, medium and subject matter. So when he was offered a chance to add an entirely new element to his art — a 10-ton steamroller — he jumped at the opportunity.

“At my age, it’s really fun to be a kid again. It’s child’s play,” said Simpkins, 58. “How often do you get to play with a steamroller?”

Simpkins was among 10 artists at Atelier 6000, an art gallery and studio in the Old Mill District, gathered for a day of steamroller printing on Saturday.

Another 10 will be making prints today.

Artists prepared sheets of Masonite, scratching designs into the surface with putty knives, or building up the surface with glue, cardboard and wire.

Ink was applied to the Masonite plates, and in the parking lot, the steamroller flattened each plate against a sheet of heavy paper, leaving behind an inked and textured print.

“You put it on, and you take it off,” said Bend artist Pat Oertley, as she scraped blades of grass into her plate. “It’s sort of like buying a dress.”

Atelier 6000 owner Pat Clark said she sought out experienced painters to participate in the event, and nearly everyone was excited at the opportunity to try something completely different. As best as Clark can tell, steamroller printing got its start six or seven years ago in England, and slowly began spreading out from there.

“It just sort of got going, and now a lot of people are trying it,” she said.

Explaining the print he’d made of a coyote pursuing a rabbit, Simpkins said steamroller printing allowed him to experiment with new materials.

While he’d cut out the animals from posterboard, the hill they ran across was created with a combination of pine needles and coarsely ground coffee beans, and the sky with strips of gauze. A pinstriped sun was crafted from a circle of cardboard cut from a box, with one side peeled away to expose the corrugated interior.

“You just think about texture,” Simpkins said. “Texture in painting is important, too, but here, it’s really important.”

Lyn Rothan, of Sisters, was at last year’s steamroller printing event, but said she didn’t even start thinking about what she would do Saturday until Friday night.

What she came up with was an abstract image of a bucking bull with rider, crafted out of a snarl of fencing wire. Aside from a few twists, the shape was already there when she found the wire sitting in the road near John Day, she said.

Rothan said the day was a nice change from the often solitary life of the working artist.

“It’s fantastic,” Rothan said. “The coolest thing is being around so many talented artists. The artists hardly ever get together and do something like this.”

Bill Hoppe, of Bend, an art teacher at Central Oregon Community College and one of the participating artists Saturday, said he based his plates of a tumbleweed off a sketch he’d drawn as part of a series on plants. He said he’s made plenty of prints using more conventional techniques, but didn’t see any point in over-thinking how the use of a steamroller might change the process.

“There’s no need to because I don’t know what I’m doing,” Hoppe laughed. “It would be a waste of mental energy. I’m here to make as many mistakes as I can.”

If you go

What: Atelier 6000’s second annual Steamroller Printing Event

When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. today

Where: Atelier 6000, 389 S.W. Scalehouse Court, Suite 120, Bend

Cost: Free

Gallery: Prints made Saturday and today will be shown at the gallery Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through September.

Contact: 541-330-8759