Reporter Rachel Levy learning to make cyanotype prints with an artist on the Ketchikan beach. (Courtesy Rachel Levy)

An eight-part series in “The Alaska Current” about Southeast Alaska printmakers is one of the recently-completed projects awarded grants from the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism Arts Reporting Initiative in the Fall 2025 round. The final piece just published.

Reported by freelancer Rachel Levy, the series highlights the different types of prints artists create in Southeast, and the sometimes monumental efforts it takes to move — or restore — the monolithic printing presses.

From the shores of a remote homestead-turned-community-art studio, to artist collectives in downtown Ketchikan, and a printmakers’ gathering in Juneau, Levy guides readers through the work powered by sun, water, wood, seaweed, plants, paper, ink, and century-old machinery. Highlighting the small-town feel of not only the state of Alaska, but more particularly Southeast, the closeness between “the Press” of journalism and pressing art is evident in the appearance of the Daily Sitka Sentinel’s former printing press in one story, and an owner’s family member as the featured artist in another.

“The feedback I received was incredible,” Levy wrote. “For a few artists, especially those in more rural spaces like Haines and Ketchikan, this was a really exciting way for them to talk about the arts culture in their own communities that are often not represented in larger media outlets.”

Printmaker Karen Beason shows her paper work in her studio. (Courtesy Rachel Levy)

Some may see this series as documenting a revival in printmaking — as folks around the world (or the internet, at least) are looking for ways to have that “90s summer.” But while not as visible, printing has been there.

“Even before everyone was talking about going analog on social media,” artist Meghan Chambers said in the series’ opening piece, “I wonder if as a community at large we’re all searching for ways to heal ourselves a little bit and make it through these really adverse and depressing political and environmental times.”

While some of the artists are using their work in relief printing to illustrate the natural beauty of Alaska’s coastlines, many are also finding in it the physical relief of stress, a response to a call to action for relief for those fragile environmental spaces, and a call to action for relief in the political and civic arena.

Printmakers work in dichotomies: Dark and light, presence and absence, form and void.

As Alaska rolls into the backside of summer, and our eyes look ahead to our next fall session, another statement from an artist seems pertinent as summer work prepares for winter processing:

“I feel that cyanotyping in the studio and cyanotyping in the wild represent the two seasons of living in Ketchikan,” Britta Adams said. “You have spring and summer where everybody is out, going, doing, creating, exploring, and there’s just kind of an uncontrolled freedom and play about it. Then in the wintertime, everything’s very hunkered down, indoors, more detail oriented, and the two different styles are really represented in the work.”

Read Pressing Silence:

Part 1: For Meghan Chambers, beginnings are coastal

Part 2: Karen Beason is old school cool

Part 3: Rebecca Poulson, Woven in Water

Part 4: Britta Adams is a Body in Motion

Part 5: [Insert Art], Ketchikan’s own art collective

Part 6: Haines is for the Misfits

Part 7: Pressing Silence: Evon Zerbetz

Part 8: Pressing Silence: Sea Pony Press