About me
I'm Ryan, a Pittsburgh-based printmaker dedicated to handset letterpress and relief printmaking practices. I print the old school way using vintage metal & wood type and antique cuts to create original prints. My printmaking practice draws on my past experience as an editor and writer, as well as the years I spent working in the arts. The prints and artwork that I make are place-based and grounded in narrative and story, designed and set by hand, and printed on my antique presses.
I’ve been apprenticing under the guidance of Gingerly Press since 2020. I’m the designer and printer for the Lefty Blondie Press Letterpress Series and my print work has been featured as part of Ecotone magazine’s Bradford-Niedermann Broadside Series. I’m a former managing editor of Autumn House Press and a former fiction editor of Ecotone magazine. I earned a B.A. in English writing/creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Interested in a collaboration?
About letterpress
Letterpress is a relief printing process that dates back to Gutenberg. It’s a traditional method that requires human hands to set individual letters, numbers, ornaments, and image blocks, align the form properly on the press, ink it up, and create a printed impression of a design. It is a craft, and one that deserves to be honored.
My studio is dedicated to this craft. My designs are not digitally created or enhanced, and they are not polymer plate prints. There’s nothing wrong with those methods, but to me the joy of a letterpress print comes from tapping into the history of the process.
If you work with me, you can trust that your carefully crafted words will be held with the same careful consideration.