Deborah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you ever had an amazing boss, mentor or leader leading you? Can you us a story or anecdote that helps illustrate why this person was such a great leader and the impact they had on you or their team?
In my twenties, I worked for this very cool woman in Western Massachusetts who had her own business making ceramic tiles for chimneys, kitchens, bathrooms, and other purposes both functional and decorative. I did all of her finer, hand painted work which often featured images of wildflowers and pastoral landscapes. Her live /work setup was located on a beautiful farm, so my job often included birthing goats or helping a sheep get unstuck from the fence. We had fresh eggs pulled from her chickens each day for lunch. She kept the cleanest, most organized ceramics studio I have ever seen. One of our jobs was to vacuum up ceramic dust daily. I learned that art studios don’t need to be a horrific, cluttered mess in order to foment creative use. She played great music on her stereo while we worked and she meditated every day before we showed up, often in proximity to her warm kiln that was firing up someone’s commissioned backsplash or other decorative tiles. I would say she lived a full creative life, and the lessons in the way she ran her creative business have stuck with me all these years.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Making stuff has been my passion from day 1. As an undergraduate sculpture major, welding giant pieces of metal, carving wood and grinding stone, I loved the materials but missed the act of drawing. I took a class in printmaking, which involves incising imagery onto etched metal plates, drawing onto lithography stones and carving wood relief blocks and was immediately hooked. Printmakers tend to be socially comfortable creatures because of the need to share equipment and resources, and they tend to cluster around whoever has a press. Because teaching has also always been an important part of my career, nurturing others to pursue their artistic goals, it was only a matter of time before I opened my own printshop. Creating community around the medium of fine, hand made printmaking has been my focus for over 35 years.
I was a professor of printmaking at Indiana University/Fort Wayne before moving to Chicago in 1989 and initially sought a teaching position. At that same moment in time, the stars aligned and an old defunct print shop became available for sale. I jumped on it and sunk all my cash into birthing the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative. I didn’t know anyone in Chicago besides my architect husband (a good sport if ever there was one), and wondered if this crazy thing I was pouring my heart and sweat into would actually happen and if anyone would ever walk through the door of a 2nd story walkup warehouse in Ukrainian Village where the only retail in the neighborhood was a Cut Rate Liquor and a Wendy’s (along with the occasional late afternoon chorus of gunshots). We had a couple of ancient presses plus a new lithography press and stone purchased with the money left to me by my beautiful grandmother in her will. The name of the press is Edith, in case you were wondering.
The Chicago Printmakers who did finally walk through the CPC’s doors have been the lifeblood of the studio ever since.
Throughout the years, the CPC has regularly hosted both local and International exhibitions, Visiting Artists, touring shows, Master Classes, free Open Houses, and has collaborated with organizations as varied as the Chicago Park District, Gallery 37, and Target Corporation to get young adults excited about all things inky. The shop has participated in exchange collaborations with similar institutions such as the Hard Ground Printmakers Studio (Cape Town, South Africa), Galerie La Hune-Brenner (Paris, France), Open Press Studio (Denver, CO), and more recently with Chav Printmakers (Tehran, Iran) and Milano Printmakers (Milan, Italy). Exhibitions in the CPC Gallery have included traditional prints as well as work that challenges the notions of traditional printmaking to expand the boundaries of the medium. The CPC has completed six collaborative suites and published several editions, including a six-color lithograph and many etchings by Tony Fitzpatrick, along with etchings by Marc Hauser, and a lithograph with Kyrin Hobson. In 2019, CPC launched its BLOOM Residency, a program for women or non binary artists of color. The studio has been honored to host Octavia Ink, Juana Hernandez, Alexandra Antoine, and Delia Touché.
CPC’s member artists hail from all over the world, but most live in the Chicago area. The workshop is home to 7 Resident Artists, hundreds of students, and scores of professional printmakers who work on the presses 24/7 with keyed access.
In the spring of 1999, the CPC moved from its original shop in Ukrainian Village to an expansive studio space in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. Shortly after the move, CPC was awarded the Columbia College (Chicago) Paul Berger Arts Entrepreneurship Award honoring the workshop as a forerunner and innovator among arts organizations in Chicago. CPC also received the Arts Advocate Award from Ravenswood ArtWalk in 2007, and The Cultural Contributor of the Year Award from the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce in 2003. In 2015, the shop moved to it’s new, custom built, permanent location just 4 blocks north of the old. This is definitely Edith’s final resting place.
35 years later, the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative is the longest-running, independent community printshop in the city, and continues to provide Chicago-area printmakers with a facility and community in which to pursue their work. Promoting the art of the handmade print through shop access, classes & workshops, artist lectures and exhibitions, the CPC accommodates a diverse range of printmaking media, including etching, lithography, screenprinting, relief, monoprint, letterpress and book arts. Workshop members contribute to the culture of the studio as they make prints, teach, volunteer and share techniques and resources.
In our new home, we have continued to attract folks wanting to get their hands inky with this age old medium that has survived hundreds of years since Johannes Gutenberg first ran a page through his press. Our bright storefront and gallery walls sport gorgeous works-on-paper curated from around the world, and buyers are thrilled with the general affordability of prints, many of which can be produced as limited edition multiples. When folks happen in during our open hours, they may catch an artist pulling an etched image off the press or drawing on a stone, as the gallery shares space with the active workshop. Interns and staff are always on hand to answer questions about printmaking, sign people up for classes, and sell prints from the vast selection in our flat file drawers and on the walls.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I believe in living a creative life, which extends beyond the physical objects and pictures that populate my studio. It’s the idea that one can create somethings from nothings. Like community. Or a song. A printmaking workshop. Or a really good meal from things you grew in your garden. A conversation grows out of an exchange that might lead to discovery, and end up in a piece of music. Like composing your outfit, or a film sequence. I feel like my “practice” encompasses ALL of these things. Starting a small business like CPC was a creative process, in that it did not exist before I thought it up!
Letting go of a small business can also be a creative endeavor. I am currently in the process of bringing in a new Director to take the studio in its next direction. I’m so excited to give a young person the opportunity to experience the joy I had in creating a space for collaboration and printmaking. I’m building a new studio on the back of CPC where I will continue to nurture my own various artistic pursuits and still utilize the shared workshop as needed. I am a maker, and I do not need to know where my new creative journey will take me. I prefer to be surprised by it.
How did you build your audience on social media?
As mentioned, The Chicago Printmakers Collaborative provides a place for accomplished printmakers to make prints, for students to learn printmaking, and for the public to buy affordable prints. We operate as a small business, and I often tell people I’m “Self Unemployed”, since this type of operation would only be run by people passionately nerdy about this art medium. Printmaking has a rich and varied history, and that we continue to now use its techniques in the service of fine art makes it somewhat of a niche along the lines of hand bookbinding, calligraphy, harpsichord construction and wagon wheel repair.
All kidding aside, the CPC is known world wide despite the fact that we employ the same etching techniques used by Rembrandt. This is because of the wonders of social media. Printmaking communities around the globe can now come together on Instagram, Facebook, and google groups and can share dialogue, technical information and images in a global arena. CPC has over 30k followers on Instagram, where we regularly post videos of our members and students inking up plates, pulling screen prints, and graining stones. When print enthusiasts from Asia or Europe visit Chicago, they know where to go to find their people.
So yes, we are specialists in our little corner of the world, and the studio is proud to provide a home for people who enjoy etching copper plates in acid, printing band posters and t-shirts by hand, drawing gorgeous images on big heavy hunks of limestone, and carving relief images into linoleum tile or wood. The CPC has increasingly renewed its commitment to serving both local and International artists. We have participated the past 2 years in EXPO Chicago, one of the most prestigious Art Fairs in the world, where our booth showcased the work of printmakers from Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Mexico, and the United States. Bringing the best of fine art printmaking to the international stage has been a huge but very fruitful undertaking.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://chicagoprintmakers.com/ https://deborahmarislader.com/home.html https://sonsoftheneverwrong.com/
- Instagram: @chicagoprintmakers @debmarislader @sonsoftheneverwrong
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoPrintmakers https://www.facebook.com/deborah.lader/ https://www.facebook.com/sonsoftheneverwrong/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC858e6iw8rd8GhIe9Zu4xdQ
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/chicago-printmakers-collaborative-chicago-2
- Other: Sons of the Never Wrong youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bsotnw7/videos
Image Credits
Photo credit of CPC facade : Monica Kass Rogers all other photos by Deborah Maris Lader