“Okay, I’m an artist!”
That’s how Ypsilanti-based type artist Ingrid Ankerson describes the moment when she decided to pursue her passion for art. Today, from a bright mixed-use studio attached to her home, she creates using two printing machines – a Vandercook #4 proof press and a Golding Pearl #11 platen press. While some see the machinery in which Ankerson specializes is antiquated, she produces a seemingly endless variety of intricate, abstract geometric designs with a bold, modern feel.
Ankerson is also a full-time graphic design teacher at Washtenaw Community College, where she has taught since 2012 and serves as co-chair of the Digital Media Arts Department. She teaches courses in typography, publication design, and professional practices for students sharpening their creativity for careers in the industry.
Finding her passion
According to Ankerson, she didn’t always feel like “an artist.” After earning an undergraduate degree in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin, she was studying Creative Writing at the University of Baltimore when an instructor introduced her to letterpress printing. She had the opportunity to attend a two-week letterpress workshop at Penland School of Craft in Mitchell County, North Carolina, where she dove into letterpress printing, inspired specifically by typewriter art.
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Ankerson highlights this as a pivotal experience in her artistic journey: “After that workshop, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m an artist! I really want to pursue this and have my own shop.’ After coming back from Penland, I started looking for property where I could have a studio, and that’s where I am now, in Ypsilanti.”
Making impressions
In the decade since then, Ankerson has utilized the letterpress print medium to explore shapes, patterns and symmetry in her artwork. She uses 8- or 12-point metal Caslon lettering to create delicate but complex geometric designs. “Radial Pattern No. 06” and “Cube No. 07,” for example, are produced entirely using tiny printed capital U’s and lowercase i’s, x’s, and o’s, respectively.
Ankerson’s interest in patterns is rooted not only in the printing process itself, but also more broadly in language and abstraction. “I tie it back to when I was in middle school, when we learned how to diagram sentences,” she said. “I was really fascinated by that, taking sentences apart and restructuring them. There was a formula you had to follow. I liked that there was a specific answer for each part of the sentence, but it became this abstract image… I think that really stuck with me.”
While her type prints are mostly in classic black ink, Ankerson also incorporates bright pops of color in her periods. The bi-colored 12-point periods used in “Spring Period No. 05” blend together after 360 passes through the press, creating a range of hues using only red and blue.
Beyond print
From relief impressions to printed fabrics, Ankerson’s work is deeply tactile and textured. The artist learned to quilt when she found a sewing machine in her basement and began applying letterpress print techniques to fabric rather than paper. Her recent quilt collection, “Communication Patterns,” continues to draw on sentence structures and patterns. Ankerson said the series is “about relationships and the ways we communicate (or don’t) and the conversations we have (or don’t, but should).”
Ankerson’s collage pieces are a melange of various reused colors and textures. Because her print work involves constant repetition, she said she “makes a ton of mistakes!” She explains, “I’m printing on the piece of paper so many times, sometimes I’ll misalign it or turn it the wrong way. Those misprints piled up, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but they were still beautiful pieces. I started cutting and pasting them together. In some ways the collages are a quick little study of my quilts, just playing with the scraps.” While her printwork process is more formulaic, Ankerson describes her collages as “pretty intuitive,” allowing her to keep brainstorming and discovering new combinations of shapes and materials, while taking a break from the repetition of printing.
What’s next?
Ankerson plans to start exploring animation with letterpress printing, using more traditional analog methods like flipbooks. “I’m not totally sure whether it’ll work the way I see in my head,” she says, “but I’m excited to explore that in the future!”
Whether you’re drawn to her small monochromatic prints or her bright, busy quilts, Ankerson’s work (and herself!) can be found by appointment in her studio. Her art was also recently put on exhibition at Cluster Museum in Ann Arbor, and is featured at Signal Return in Detroit.
