Artist Spotlight
Lettie Jane Rennekamp
Rennekamp is an Oregon-based artist who co-owns Ulna Art Studio in Portland. She has participated in BIG INK at Whiteaker Printmakers on multiple occasions.
Life In the Arts
I’m a self-employed artist who makes a living painting murals, teaching art classes at a studio I co-own (Ulna Art Studio), and selling original artwork. I live and work in Portland, Oregon. I have always made art; I was one of those kids who couldn’t stop drawing, but I have agonized over prioritizing and capitalizing on my practice throughout the years. I earned a bachelor’s degree in art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 and created and showed work casually in the following decade. I became more serious about making art after I had a kid in 2014, and I have increasingly prioritized my art practice until it’s become how I make a living.
Printmaking and Process
I studied printmaking in art school. At the time, I was attracted to the democracy of creating multiples. After art school, I continued to develop screenprints, but I didn’t continue with the more complex printing processes without access to a print studio. I’ve found that the early foundation in printmaking continues to inform my work: I often think and work in layers or color blocks. I love that moment in printmaking when you pull a print and there is this leap between what you thought it might look like and what it looks like. It feels like magic.
If I had to pick a favorite printmaking medium, it would be Risograph printing. It’s so simple, like using a photocopier, and as someone who doesn’t own or maintain a risograph machine, the clean-up is almost non-existent. I love how you can layer color and rougher textures. It’s an incredibly immediate and low-stakes printmaking method where you can produce imagery and text quickly and easily. I’ve made a few posters and several zines using the Risograph.
I love woodblock printing for almost the opposite reasons; it’s slow, cathartic, and organic.
BIG INK
I cannot remember exactly how I first heard about BIG INK. I know that I applied and was first accepted in 2020. The first session was shifted during lockdown to August 2020. At that time, I had just finished creating a tarot deck with black and white linework imagery. I was very obsessed with depicting lights and darks through patterns and textures. I used a lot of black and white concentric lines in my work. Seeing BIG INK facilitate the creation of these large-scale black and white images felt like a natural extension of the art I was making then. I have since printed with Lyell and Carand every time they come through Oregon. I love this project.
The Carving Journey
I bought an electric carving tool and love how it moves through the wood. Carving is meditative and cathartic for me. I can get lost for hours and must remind myself to move my body so I don’t get stiff.
Working on a large scale with woodblock has given me room to be less detail-oriented and look at the big picture. I can feel nitpicky about the shapes that don’t work out the way I want to, places where I might have lost control of my carving tool or made a mistake, but the scale of the work is forgiving. I’ve found that some of the rough edges turn into my favorite parts of the finished prints. These are handmade! This is not a digital process where you can hit “undo” when you mess up; you must make the mistake part of the image.
I’ve tried several approaches to creating the woodblock artwork, from drawing directly on the surface to projecting and tracing an already finished drawing. I prefer the former approach because it leaves more room for the image to shift as I work.
The Meetup & Printing Together
Attending a BIG INK printing event is transformative. You work with a large group to make art over an entire day. We aim to print these pieces of wood that many people have spent months carving. There is a lot of excitement, celebration, and support. I have felt energized after each event I attended.
In Oregon, BIG INK hosts their event at Whiteaker Printers in Eugene. It’s a beautiful print studio with a huge press, print resources, and a built-in community that drops by while we are printing. I hope to continue to print with BIG INK as long as they continue to come to Oregon.
The Final Print & What’s Next
I’m pleased with the way each of my prints has turned out. I can see a few areas for growth that I’d like to pursue: I’d like to be more aware of the shapes my “chatter” produces (I think it’s exciting to see the ways this texture adds dimension to the final pieces, and I want to continue cultivating awareness around this). I like the quality of some of my line work, such as how you can carve sharp points on a shape or square edges. I want to continue to push my shape-making and patterning on my next carvings.
On The Horizon
I am excited to exhibit the three prints I’ve made with BIG INK alongside the carvings at the Southwest Community Center in Portland, Oregon. This exhibition will be held in June and July. At the end of June, I will exhibit small paintings depicting color opposites through birds, people, and plants at The Fresh Pot coffee shop. I just released an oracle deck titled The Listening Oracle, published through Andrews McMeel and distributed through Simon & Schuster. The deck is a tool for supporting and growing your creative practice. I’m teaching a few exciting workshops this summer on intuitive ink work, freedom and mark-making in illustration, and an adult art camp.
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