Stephanie Berrie is a local printmaker who was featured at Local Ink 2025.
Printmaking, an art form where an image is transferred to another surface using ink, can be a long and labor-intensive process. However, artists in the Cincinnati area have grown to love and celebrate this niche form of art, forming a small but strong community.
Local Ink, an annual printmakers market, was held in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, and showcased over 40 printmakers and their unique processes.
This 18th annual market was organized by Tiger Lily Press, a non-profit printmaking studio established in the late 1970s with the goal of preserving, creating and promoting the historic art form.
Stephanie Berrie, a printmaking instructor at the University of Cincinnati’s (UC) School of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) and co-founder of Spit Bite Studios, joined Tiger Lily in 2020 and has been participating in Local Ink for four years. She said the art fair had “a little bit of everything,” including lithography, intaglio, screen-printing, linoleum-carving, woodblocks and letterpress.
According to Berrie, this printmaking-specific variety is what makes Local Ink unique and helps to educate people that may overlook the art form.
The art around the market varied from brightly colored pop-art styles to tiny black and white detailed works. Each artist, despite using similar processes and techniques, had dramatically different pieces that celebrated diverse inspirations, cultures and communities.
Kaya Friday, a fifth-year student at DAAP, was one of the artists featured at Local Ink. Their artworks explore the experiences and identities of the queer and transgender communities, and one of their displayed works read, “The fight for equality started with a brick,” in reference to the Stonewall Riots.
Local Ink has been growing in recent years with this being their first year holding the event at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Jennifer Baldwin, an artist at Local Ink and a former president of Tiger Lily Press, expressed that half of the people in the market were not members of Tiger Lily Press, showing the expansion of their community. “Last year we had like 30 tables of artists, and now we have 45,” Baldwin said. “I think just printmaking in general [and] the interest in printmaking, I’ve seen it growing over the last five or six years.”
Susan Naylor, a longtime member of Tiger Lily Press, said it was her dream to make the market a tri-state event, and the outcome at Local Ink this year showed that her dream is on its way to becoming a reality. Baldwin shared that the market drew artists from outside of Cincinnati, highlighting that she even met a woman from Wisconsin who was visiting the fair.
Some artists said that the connections they’re able to make with others in the community at Local Ink are the most valuable parts of the market.
Chelsea Shivers, a mixed media artist, said that the people in the printmaking community are always willing to lend a helping hand and that’s what makes their small group so great. Shivers shared that this Local Ink market was her last art fair in the Cincinnati area since she is moving states after three years of being based in the city. “I wanted this one to be my final one because the printmaking community and just the amount of talent and variety with the artists and how they talk and how they do their art, it’s just great and it feels good to be surrounded by that,” Shivers said. “So, it’s a really good last hurrah.”
With a love for printmaking and art connecting the community, these artists have grown to become a niche and beloved part of Cincinnati’s art scene. Even with the rise of artificial intelligence-made art, Baldwin and Naylor both think that people will always crave printmaking and other traditional art forms. The direct contact of both the body and the mind with the art is something that cannot be replaced or faked for these artists.
“I think that it’s important to support people who are your local artist because we’re out here, we’re struggling, we’re trying to make ends meet. People just have a passion for creating things and I think that gets lost with technology and AI,” Baldwin said. “[…] Doing something physical with your body like printmaking, I just think that there’s more of the human element to it, you know? And I think that that’s what’s beautiful to me.”
