Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay Schmittle.
Hi Lindsay, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for sharing your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
I was a Visual Communications major at the University of Delaware, but by the time I reached my junior year, I was jaded by the copious screen time involved in digital design. While growing up, art was always a hands-on activity for me, and that’s where the majority of my skillset lived. I took as many studio art classes as I could and soon discovered the letterpress studio where I found my sweet spot, at the intersection of design, illustration, and hands-on craft.
Without a professor on campus who was well acquainted with the big vintage printing presses anymore, I took it upon myself to learn via YouTube and sign up for workshops at a local letterpress studio, Lead Graffiti. During my senior year, I spent five weeks interning in Chicago at Starshaped Press, a one-women-run letterpress shop that creates all its work primarily by printing vintage metal & wood types. This internship opened my eyes to the idea of creative entrepreneurship, and with graduation fast approaching, I began mapping out how I would slowly acquire print equipment of my own to begin my studio.
During my final week at Starshaped Press, Jen, the shop proprietor, received an email forwarded by many printers that simply said, “there’s an 87-year-old printer who is retiring and looking for someone to buy his equipment,” and a phone number was attached. I recognized the phone number as a Philly area code, felt this was my serendipitous chance, and called him the next day, making a plan to visit the following week when I returned home.
In February 2013, I met with retiring printer Henry Morris and made a deal to purchase his first press and his metal type. I planned to set up a small studio in a storage unit, but my parents very generously offered half of their garage to dedicate to my studio & budding business, named Gingerly Press. Over the years I worked various part-time jobs, from print shops to vineyards to kitchens, while I honed my skills, developed my unique style within the medium, and built an audience for my work.
In 2016 I launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a dream project of mine: to hike the entire Appalachian Trail and create a printed collection about the experience. In 2017 I completed the 2,190-mile journey by foot and by mid-2018 I was touring my print collection to galleries across the country, from Nova Scotia to Alabama to Seattle. In 2019 I moved my studio which was bursting at the seams in the one-car garage to a studio in Pittsburgh and has been happily printing about the natural world, advocating for climate action, and building my business since!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Of course, it has not always been a smooth road—is it for any small business? Of course, as a creative entrepreneur, there have been many bouts of self-doubt, in my artwork, in my business, in my ability to pay my bills and keep pushing forward with my dream, but I recognize that I was lucky enough to have the privilege of that launching pad in the garage at my parent’s home for so many years, that I refuse to let any self-doubt ruin the opportunity that was handed to me.
Owning a small business takes grit and the unfaltering optimism that if you just keep putting one small step in front of the other you will eventually reach your goal. The pandemic was a good test of this grit. I had moved to Pittsburgh and began paying overhead for both a studio and a separate living space just 6 months before the pandemic wiped out all but one meager income stream, online sales.
I revamped my website, kept creating new work to build out my offerings, pushed my online marketing, and applied for some governmental assistance, and luckily I made it through. Unfortunately, this past year I have been dealing with an unpredicted challenge: in May of 2022, I was stalked by an unknown neighbor on my walking commutes to and from my studio and woke up to his dark figure hovering over me in my bed.
I am lucky I have so much to live for: family, friends, my business, my dreams, and this planet, because I fought for my life that night to prevent being raped or killed and I somehow managed to end the fight by holding him at knifepoint while waiting for the cops to arrive. I have been working over the last year to loosen this trauma’s grip on me while simultaneously attending criminal court hearings and keeping my business afloat.
It has been my toughest year in business to date because as a solopreneur, when I am unwell, the business is unwell. I am trying to train myself to trust sleeping, walking in public, and hiking alone again. I am taking small steps on this road to recovery each day; that is all I can hope for. “Small Step” was my trail name on the Appalachian Trail after all.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe you can tell us more about your work next?
I create colorful letterpress printed wall art that brightens your home and empowers you to explore the outdoors more, appreciate nature’s beauty, and adopt more sustainable living practices for a healthier planet. I create my artwork and stationery products with antique printing presses, vintage metal & wood type, and carved MDF, linoleum, and plywood blocks. I also will occasionally collect textures & pigments found in nature to incorporate into my prints—something I am looking to lean into more and more for my work.
I see my work as a mix of both traditional historical processes and experimental printmaking. I create abstracted floating landscapes with little trees, tents, canoes & campfires made of vintage metal type, geometric story-based abstracts, and text-based illustrations, all of which use a cheerful & earthy color palette inspired by colors found in nature. I donate a dollar from every product sold to the National Forest Foundation as a Small Business Partner to plant a small tree, and since starting the program in mid-2020, we have planted over 2,600 trees!
My work often talks about habitat fragmentation in our local communities and abroad. I have created work that talks about how roads, lawns, and other development breaks the natural ecosystem into fragmented islands and by creating a native haven in your backyard by planting native species, shrinking your lawn, and leaving the fall leaves, you can help be a bridge between those islands of shrinking natural areas.
My latest work is inspired by a January 2022 Artist Residency deep in the Peruvian Amazon working with the Indigenous Maijuna Community in a fight against an illegal highway corridor being built through conservation lands and Maijuna ancestral lands, fragmenting the vulnerable rainforest & jeopardizing the Maijuna’s ability to sustainably live off their ancestral lands.
I am thrilled to return to Peru this July to continue this important work with the Maijuna, and I will have new tropical landscape prints launching on my site this spring that will donate a percentage of proceeds back to the Maijuna and the fight against the road. Overall, my artwork aims to highlight the interconnectedness of all living things on this beautiful planet and encourage others to make the world a better place for all species, not just us humans.
What was you like growing up?
Growing up, I was a goofy little kid, the creative middle child of the family. Some of my favorite activities were tending to the garden beds with my parents on weekends, diving into some creative crafts, biking around the neighborhood, climbing trees, singing and dancing with my siblings, and playing soccer. It’s funny because many of these activities are still some of my favorite hobbies today!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gingerlypress.com/
- Instagram: @gingerlypress
Image Credits
LeeAnn K. Photography (https://www.leeannkphotography.com)
