Carving out a community of artists

The Lansing Area Printmakers’ Collective, or Lino Ladies for short, recently finished its latest project: an alphabet.  

“Maybe two months ago, Laura came in and said she had an idea: We would each take a few letters and design them,” group member Cindy Lounsbery said.  

Laura DeLind, the group’s founder, couldn’t be happier with the result.  

“It’s so much fun to see how everybody’s style comes through and how nicely the letters work as a complete piece,” she said. 

Group member Martha Brownscombe agreed.  

“That's the joy of it, that everybody comes to the same material but gets very different results,” she said. 

Each letter was created on a 5-by-5-inch block through the process of linoleum cutting, or linocut, a method of relief printing. According to the groups website, relief printing, considered to be the oldest form of printmaking, involves cutting areas away from a smooth surface, leaving an image that forms the final printing surface. Ink is applied to this surface, and it’s then pressed, much like a stamp, onto paper, fabric or other mediums to obtain a printed image. The finished print is a mirror image of the original carving. 

Group member Kate McNenly took printmaking classes in college and returned to linocut after a career as a graphic designer. Although she also sketches and paints, she said she loves the linocut process “because it introduces simplicity and the recognition of what I think good composition has to be: the line, the dark, the white, the value. And when you do it in black and white, it's pretty obvious.” 

Like the rest of the Lino Ladies, McNenly joined the group after attending DeLind’s beginners’ linocut classes at the now-defunct Grove Gallery in East Lansing. 

“When the classes were over and I had taught them all the basics, I still wanted to work with them,” DeLind said. “They inspired me. Everybody had a different approach to the materials, and we did a lot of laughing and chatting. It was so good for the soul. It not only helped emotionally but artistically as well.” 

The finished tiles are aligned and glued to a base.

Rollers of different sizes are used to apply ink to the raised sections of the tiles.

“One day, I left a print on her windshield,” DeLind said. “She saw it and responded with a poem. We played back and forth, doing a call and response, just for the fun and joy of it.”  

This collaboration resulted in a book featuring Skeen’s poetry and DeLind’s linocut prints of birds, “The Unauthorized Audubon,” which was published in 2014. Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Skeen and DeLind began collaborating again. 

“This time, she started with a poem, and I responded with a print,” DeLind said. “That gave me a purpose and a connection and an enjoyment that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”  

The pair traded poems and prints for two years, resulting in a new book, “Even the Least of These.” They’ll celebrate the release of the book from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday (June 1) at Everybody Reads and 5 to 7 p.m. June 5 at Bestsellers Books & Coffee Co. in Mason. 

DeLind said artistic collaborations “can be serious, but they also have to be joyful.” She’s been delighted to see how the rest of the Lino Ladies have evolved their artistic practices over the last decade.  

Brownscombe came to the group as an accomplished weaver. She began printing on textiles and eventually started creating large-scale prints on items she created on her loom.  

“It’s a way bigger scale,” Brownscombe said.  

Other members described how they’ve experimented with different mediums throughout the learning process. Lounsbery said, “I’ve always been dabbling in art of different kinds: eco-printing, hand-painted silk scarves and now lino-printing on the silk. I’ve tried weaving, pottery, a little bit of everything. My work is definitely influenced by graphic design. I like to stylize things.”  

Lounsbery said participating in the group has been an important part of her artistic life.  

“I just can’t believe I found this group. It's been the most wonderful thing. We all get along fabulously, and during some of our meetings, we just laugh until we’re almost rolling on the floor. We share ideas, and it's a great way to learn new techniques,” she said. “We have to give kudos to Laura for starting this group, keeping us going and finding space for us to work.”  

The Lino Ladies meet regularly at the upstairs portion of Bestsellers Books & Coffee Co., where they’ve been printing for about five years.  

“Bestsellers has been the catalyst as to why we continue to exist,” McNenly said. “There’s no way that anybody wants to dedicate their home to making linocuts because it requires so much cleanup. But Bestsellers has done so much to give us a home and get us involved in the local community.” 

Numerous members made sure to mention the hospitality of the bookstore, which hosted the printmaking event Mason INK! last summer in partnership with the Lino Ladies. The main event featured large-scale printmaking in the street, accomplished with an asphalt roller. The pieces were sold at a silent auction in the bookstore, and proceeds benefited an art scholarship for a Mason-area high school student.  

This year, the Lino Ladies decided to take a break from putting on a large event, but they’re considering hosting something again next summer. 

Although the group isn’t open to the public, DeLind occasionally invites others to “laugh and carve” with the ladies or teach them a new technique.  

“We keep evolving,” she said. “We’re always ready for a project, an enterprise. Sometimes they’re big. When we work together, remarkable things happen.”