printmaker

Rebecca Gilbert, printmaker

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A Conversation with printmaker Rebecca Gilbert

Rebecca engraving at Jim Horton’s studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Horton gave Rebecca her very first lessons in wood engraving in 2013. Photo: Tony Drehfal, another master wood engraver.

Rebecca Gilbert is a printmaker’s printmaker—impressively knowledgeable about printmaking history, and historical and contemporary print processes. Rebecca astounds with her joyful commitment to a seven year long project based on Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death. Rebecca’s own dance demonstrates an insightful perception of humanity delivered with generosity, depth, and a fresh lightness of the creative spirit.

This conversation took place under a large oak tree during a summer printmaking residency at In Cahoots Residency in Petaluma, California.

Nanette: How did you come to art?

Rebecca: I pretty much always wanted to be an artist. Since elementary school at least. And I was actually just thinking about this the other day. I met my best friend in elementary school, Bobby Riefsnyder, on the first day of kindergarten. We would play together every day after school. I would pretend that I was an art teacher and he would pretend to be a music teacher. We probably played that every day for a couple of years, and it never got old, so I feel like I always knew I wanted to be an artist and I always knew I wanted also to be an educator. Even then, I thought of those as two different things that you could merge into one, and they are two totally different sets of skills. When I went to college, I started as an art education major, because that seemed like the most obvious way to pursue both. I don’t know what art education programs are like now, but at that time, I found that learning about art and making art weren’t very important in that major. All of the focus was on teaching, and art barely even felt secondary, so I changed my major to printmaking.

Nanette: As an undergrad?

Rebecca: As an undergrad, yes.

Nanette: And why printmaking? They actually had a printmaking major?

Memento Mori (Skulls) by Rebecca Gilbert, Reduction and multiple block color woodcut, 26.25″ x 37.5″, 2019

Rebecca: Yes. I made my first print in high school. It was a monotype. I was thinking about this recently, too. I forgot that monotype is what made me fall in love with printmaking. I was hooked after the very first one, and I very rarely make monotypes these days. My high school had one little press that they would wheel out of the closet every now and then so we could make some prints, and I loved it.

In college, I had taken a bunch of printmaking classes, even as an education major. Besides the process involved in making a print, I just love all the tools and gadgets and presses, and all the printmakers seemed a little dangerous, edgy.

Nanette: More edgy than the other artists?

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

That was part of what initially drew me to it. There’s such a long list of everything that I love about printmaking that keeps me drawn to it now.

Nanette: So, you were a printmaker right off the bat?

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Christopher Hartshorne, printmaker

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A Conversation with printmaker Christopher Hartshorne

During the summer of 2025 Christopher Hartshorne and I worked directly across from each other, at a printmaking residency at In Cahoots Residency in Petaluma, California. We were each at lovely large etching presses where daily I found myself appreciating the gift of being able to observe his process of pulling richly beautiful, futuristic moons—a memorable highlight of my own residency experience.

When we noticed the local blackberries were in and ripe, Chris picked a bunch to bake us a blackberry crumble. It was almost as delicious as Chris’ prints.

This conversation took place towards the end of our residency in the etching studio.

Christopher Hartshorne printing the Graphic Myths series

Nanette: How did you come to art?

Chris: I always made art as a kid. I was so shy, I didn’t try other things. Very introverted. It was like an escape, or something that I could do. And I got a lot of positive reinforcement as a kid. I was known as an artist as a kid. So I kind of stuck with it.

Nanette: Like drawing?

Chris: Yes, drawing. I’ve tried to do other things, but I always come back. I’m like, I’m an artist. I’ve got to keep making art.

Nanette: Why printmaking?

Chris: I was painting and I went to school for illustration, never did any printmaking in school, like in college, but when I discovered woodblock printmaking, I liked the process. It was a very definite process. You transfer an image, you carve the image, you print it, you kind of know what it’s going to look like, very graphic. A painting to me was too mysterious. Maybe I didn’t know how to paint. I was a painter, but I didn’t know when a painting was done. There was something really crisp and clear about printmaking and the way I was using it. I latched onto the process immediately. I loved how you could make an expressive, almost random mark on a piece of wood and it looked so defined and intentional when you printed it, because it’s so graphic and bold. That was really cool to me. The marks you can make and how bold they are compared to painting. But now I’m thinking of printmaking differently, actually. A print can be more mysterious, like a painting. So now my views are broadening. That’s how I latched onto printmaking, the process.

Nanette: How long have you been printing then?

Christopher Hartshorne: TempleGRAM, Multiple block woodcut installation, variable dimensions, 2019

Chris: Probably 20 to 25 years. I just started doing it on my own.

Nanette: After school?

Chris: Yes, I was hand pressing, with no community yet. I just started doing it and then kept doing it. I eventually went to grad school for printing, because that’s all I was doing.

Nanette: Many of the artists that I’ve met go in through painting, because painting is seductive and it’s elevated. It used to be, you were a painter or a sculptor. And that’s all there was for fine art. So I think it’s normal to go in through the magic of painting. What grad school did you go to?

Chris: I went to Tyler School of Art.

Nanette: How was your grad school experience?

Chris: It was good. I waited ten years in between BFA and MFA so I was older than everyone. I really wanted to immerse myself in printmaking and school for printmaking, but I actually did not really feel like going back to school. But it was good because they have a program in Rome, through the school, so the whole second year I was in Rome and it was more like a residency, which . . . why am I going to school if I’m just doing an artist residence? But it was really amazing. I would never have gone out of the country back then if it wasn’t for the program. It was my first time out and it was pretty cool. I had a small cohort of five other grad students from Tyler and a bunch of undergrads that were from a lot of different schools, just getting some international school experience. It was good.

I was scared to leave the country. I don’t know. I’m a homebody, but it was really, really amazing for me to leave, and see more than just the art experience.Just to see how other people live, non Americans, [laughs] was very good for me to see as an artist and a human, or an American, I guess, so that was pretty cool.

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Sophie Loubere, visual artist

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A Conversation with printmaker Sophie Loubere

Sophie Loubere stands out as an artist invested in the conceptual nature of historical imagery while exploring materials and processes. She moves deftly through a range of studio practices — working with wood type on a Vandercook, hand working intaglio plates, exploring natural dyes, papermaking, creating multimedia installations, book arts, and writing. We met during a summertime printmaking residency at In Cahoots Residency in Petaluma, California. Our conversation took place in the etching studio towards the end of our residency.

Sophie Loubere giving a printmaking demonstration at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in Washington state. Photo by Laura Zander

Nanette: How did you come to art?

Sophie: I started in elementary school, and it was just something that I was good at. I started using chalk pastels, making pastel paintings, getting positive responses, and then I just kept on going. Eventually it was just one of those things where it just felt like it was what I needed to do, which I’m sure a lot of artists can relate to.

Nanette: Did you go to art school right after high school?

Sophie: I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and I was an art major. But while I was there, I was just feeling like the curriculum wasn’t really serving my needs, so I wound up transferring to Rhode Island School of Design in their illustration program. 

I’ve always been interested in words and books and writing . So for a while, I thought that I would potentially become an illustrator. But then my interests just wound up being a little too noncommercial, a little too artsy fartsy, more interested in material, more interested in concept, and making artist books as opposed to illustrations for editorial and things like that. 

When I went into the illustration program, I didn’t fully understand that the conventional commercial way of making money doing illustration would be to make illustrations for editorial magazines or for working in animation and designing characters for game studios and things like that.That just was not really where my interests lay. Then one winter session, I wound up taking a printmaking course, Painterly Prints, and I learned aquatint and monoprinting. 

Sophie Loubere: Relics, Cyanotype, letterpress, archival imagery. Partial view of 20′ x 6′ installation of literary vignettes, cyanotypes, and audio and video based on historical research, 2022

After that I was really into etching. I spent my senior year mostly doing etching projects working on this extended sort of book project. After I graduated, I set up my own studio in Seattle. I was working as a graphic designer and publications manager at a nonprofit art school. I had a little studio and I wound up getting some grant money so I was able to get a little press. Then I basically just explored varieties of ways of doing printmaking. I was feeling a little bit frustrated because I didn’t have a conventional printmaking background because I hadn’t majored in it when I was an undergrad. I was trying to learn from books, YouTube videos. I taught myself how to mezzotint, and eventually I just felt like I needed some more specific background. I applied for grad school. I got into a grad school that had a pretty in-depth printmaking program and that’s where I honed both my practice as well as my printmaking skills.

Nanette: So you’re primarily a printmaker?

Sophie Loubere: Relics, detail

Sophie: At this point, yes. I’m open to making in pretty much any particular way. I have worked with fabrics before. I’ve done installation. I’ve done audio and video work to go along with the prints. But I think that primarily when I’m thinking conceptually, the majority of the time it winds up being a print in some way or other, and print doesn’t necessarily mean something that is like a letterpress print. I also have done things working with cyanotypes and alternative photography. I view those things as prints as well.

In my view, there’s a lot of different meshing that goes on between all these different artistic media. I would say that printmaking falls into a lot of different categories.

Nanette: Are you still making books?

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