Spotlight On: The Aquarius House

For almost three decades, Briar Press has connected people across the world. We’re spotlighting some of the printers in this community—newcomers and long-timers alike. Join in at spotlight.briarpress.org

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Liz started art school in Detroit in 1999, intent on becoming a graphic designer, but was disheartened when she found the path to be more about designing annual reports than it was about creating record covers, posters, or books. After one printmaking survey class, Liz fell in love with the process of intaglio printing, and transferred to the college across the street, Wayne State University. In 2004, she earned a BFA in Printmaking after exploring traditional processes in engraving, serigraphy, aquatint, woodcut, and lithography. After college she started the imprint Trophy Wife Design, creating t-shirts, posters, and art prints in her basement screen printing studio and selling them at pop-ups at garage rock shows around Detroit.

In 2007, Liz was finally introduced to letterpress printing through a community workshop at Hollander’s School of Book and Paper Arts in Ann Arbor, and fell in love with typesetting metal ornaments and cranking out prints on an 1800s Golding Pearl Platen Press.

Letterpress gave her the opportunity to combine her passion for hand-made, process based printmaking and her love of writing poetry into a cohesive new form. This inspired Liz to pursue a masters at Columbia College Chicago where she focused on hand-papermaking, book binding, and letterpress printing, eventually teaching Letterpress Studio to undergrads, co-curating exhibitions at the Center for Book and Paper Arts, and earning an MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Art.

Two months after grad school, in 2013, Liz purchased an entire print shop and moved it to an artist’s loft in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Along with her husband, they taught workshops, collaborated with artists, and worked on commission with brands like Field Notes, Chicago Parks District, Americans for the Arts, and Pinterest. Their main presses were a 1920 Chandler & Price 10x15 motorized platen press, a 1960s Blick 14x22 Sign Press, and a variety of rotating tabletop presses we bought, used, and traded again in the print community. They became passionate about collecting and preserving wood type, and printing and cleaning with non-toxic materials.

In 2018, after five years of business, they closed their shop and moved back to Michigan to raise their daughter. Liz’s home studio, The Aquarius House, is a smaller set up, with the Sign Press, wood and metal type, a Howard Imprinting Machine for hot foil, and a newly acquired 1878 Damon & Peets 9x12 platen press that she’s in the process of restoring. In her work, Liz uses a combined process of movable vintage type, abstracted botanicals, and hand mixed metallic ink to create art prints, books, and works on paper. Her themes often explore the intersection of ephemeral moments in nature, poetic language, and the ritual of process-based art making.

Liz currently teaches letterpress and linocut workshops in studios around Southeastern Michigan, including Signal-Return in Detroit, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, and the Ann Arbor District Library. “The through line in my teaching practices is celebrating the process and context of letterpress printing as an imperfect, handmade medium that allows a message to be seen, felt, and experienced.”

In the Spotlight: The Aquarius House

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The Aquarius House

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