Laura Baisden (aka Camp Nevernice)

Laura!  Tell us a bit about who you are, where you grew up, and your background  as a printmaker!

I grew up in Buckhannon, WV and still have a lot of family there. I love my hometown and try to get back every chance I get. I went to college at both West Virginia Wesleyan and Cleveland Institute of Art and studied illustration and printmaking. I started off as a fine arts major, studying painting and drawing, but when I found printmaking, I found I  connected with the process and liked being around other people who were more driven by process than concept.

In 2006, I had graduated but wanted to keep printing and considered going to grad school, but instead of taking on more debt and spending more time in academia, I chose to do an internship in Nashville, TN for a letterpress printer named Bryce McCloud who showed me the applied science of printmaking through poster design using antique wood type and linocut imagery.As with many big decisions, I was driven somewhat by practicality and I had cousins in Nashville who would let me stay with them, so it made sense to take the internship and try this new iteration of print while I decided what I wanted to do next.

I fully intended to stay for 6 months and go back to WV, but then the internship was so engaging, I kept working with Bryce for three years which led to a full time position designing letterpress posters at historical Hatch Show Print and stayed in Tennessee. I enjoyed having clients and deadlines and posters are a great means to an end to keep creating work.In 2015 I lucked out and bought a Vandercook proofing press, launching my solo journey as a letterpress poster designer. The letterpress world is pretty small, and over the time I worked for Bryce and Hatch I made connections with Julie Belcher (formerly of Yee-Haw Industries in Knoxville, TN) and she encouraged me to move to Knoxville for a time to share space and resources with her at her then-new venture called Pioneer House. I was in Knoxville for 3 years building up the business and buying more equipment until I was ready to have my own fully functioning printshop. I moved it all back to Nashville in 2018 and I've been printing here ever since. 

How has Appalachia inspired your work & what is your favorite thing about living here?

I think being from the mountains really taught me how to be resourceful - I might not have learned much by way of practical business strategy, but I definitely implanted the instinct that hard work and independent ideas pay off in dividends of the spirit. That sounds cheesy, but I glean a lot of pride in my ability to figure things out and when something is *hard* but you're able to make it work - it's the carrot on the end of the stick. I'm certainly not drawn to letterpress or block printing because it's profitable or efficient, so I think what makes me love it is the same thing that made my Dad buy a primitive piece of land out on a river that was presumed to be our "summer vacation spot" but was actually just a LOT of work and while it was never very luxurious, it fulfilled a part of him that needed that outlet and sense of ownership.

With my family and with so much of the community I came from - working hard provides a sense of self-satisfaction and peace. My studio name "Camp Nevernice" actually came out of a conversation I was having with a coworker describing our cabins on the river. I told her "it's like a summer camp, but never quite *nice* - there's no running water, it's dirty, and somehow we're always raking leaves? It's always a great adventure." I liked the sound of Camp Nevernice and it makes me think about my Dad and I and how hard work and problem solving are so much of what makes our brains tick. Aesthetically, I also love the magic of the hills of Appalachia - it's lush and a bit dark at times. Winding roads and deep thickets of forest with moss and boulders and creeks and rivers to swim in make me come alive. I draw a lot of forests and animals and I have a lot of nostalgia for home. 

What are some consistent themes in your pieces you hope resonate with the viewer?

The process is such a huge part of why my prints look the way they look, so while someone may initially want the print because they like the subject matter, I definitely appreciate it when someone takes the time to understand the labor that went into it. My choices in subject matter, color and composition are probably the first thing that draws a person in to take a second look - but I am most proud of the skill it takes to convert an idea into a physical block, broken up into shapes and color and succeed in translating that idea through the medium back onto to paper. 

For the uninitiated, tell us a bit about your printmaking process!
Explaining linocut and letterpress printing is difficult without visuals - so I recommend that folks go to my instagram account to watch videos of the process in action. Seeing the machine and the tools I'm using really helps understand what I mean when I talk about carving out the image and cranking the cylinder press. 

As with most creative ideas, everything begins with a sketch. I draw quite small first because I'll want to iron out the composition and quickly and not spend too much time getting caught up in the details (because that can happen - and I'll get myself in trouble if I draw it to scale first, I can easily get derailed and focus on something too detailed from the get-go if I'm drawing it full sized.) When I've got the concept sketch and the layout, I'll enlarge the rough sketch to scale and then fill in the details from there, often looking at reference photos. I trace the final image with pencil on tracing paper and then tape the drawing face down onto a blank surface of Linoleum and rub (burnish) the pencil lines from the tracing paper onto the block in reverse. Then I redraw it again with a sharpie marker so the lines won't smudge. *A little bit about the press, so the next part makes sense: I use a 1947 Vandercook proofing press which works like a crank-steamroller with ink rollers.

There are grippers on the big cylinder that hold a sheet of paper in place, but rolling in front of the cylinder, resting in the "carriage" there are metal and rubber inking rollers. I mix the colors myself and manually smear the ink onto the rollers, but the press itself has a motor that spins those rollers and smooths the ink and applies an even, thin coat of ink to just the surface of the block as you physically roll the carriage forward down a set of tracks that keep it level with the surface of the block. Simultaneously, as the carriage rolls over the block applying ink, the paper you load into the grippers wraps around the cylinder - following the inking rollers, over the surface of the blocks and presses the paper into the fresh ink which transfers the ink directly onto the sheet of paper. So now when you're carving out the image from the solid block, you're thinking about the raised areas and where the color needs to show up - At this point, it depends on how many colors I'm printing and whether I'm printing a reduction or using different blocks for color separations.

Let's say I'm doing a three color print: yellow, red and black: If I'm doing a reduction, then my fine-line *drawing* on the block will actually be the black; the last thing I carve down to - so the **first thing** I'll carve away/remove are any spaces that need to appear white (or the color of the paper). Once I finish carving (using gauge tools to remove linoleum) I'll crank the full edition of 100 prints (or whatever it is) with the lightest color/yellow. I'll take the same block out of the machine and hand carve it again, and this time whatever I remove from the block, when the prints are run through the press layered over the first color, whatever I've carved away in this second pass will appear yellow and the rest of the yellow will be covered with the new red layer. So now I have 100 prints with some white details with a lot of yellow and red shapes.

Then in the last pass, I'll take the same block and carve away everything that was red and just leave the lines and when I print the same 100 prints, the "key block" will lay on top of the first two colors, containing those shapes and adding detail in black ink and the image will be complete. (Like a coloring book in reverse) Now, if I'm printing the same print but using three different blocks -- one for yellow, one red and one black: I'll carve the black lines first. (the key block with the "coloring book lines" essentially) Then I'll hand ink the block on the press and print two very wet copies of it onto coated paper, take it out of the press bed, replace the carved block with a fresh clean block in the same place and run the wet print through the press, transferring the wet ink off the paper and the key image onto that new second block and then repeat for the third block. That way - I have the map laid out to carve the shapes that need to be filled with yellow and the shapes that need to be red on each block. Then I carve the yellow block, print 100 prints.

Carve the red, print those same 100 prints with a new block. And finally, lock in the black key block and run the edition with the line art layering last. The benefit of the block separations is that you can go back and reprint the edition later if you need to, but you can also layer the colors in a way that you can sometimes get a sneaky 4th color when red layers yellow (to make orange) versus pure red on the paper - but it's a little bit more work, uses more linoleum, and the registration isn't as exact. I like doing a combination of the two processes, using the key block for 1-3 monochromatic colors (because monochromatic/similar colors layer the best) with one or two accent blocks in a complementary color to sneak in some fun color tricks. (getting orange or purple or a deeper shade of red by layering a different block over the key block). Again, it's all very complicated to explain without a visual aid, so go look at @campnevernice on Instagram if you're interested in learning more!

Shoutout some exciting events you’ll be taking part in / looking forward to in the coming months!

I'm eager to get back into the swing of things. January and February are pretty dormant months with very little commission work, but pretty soon bands will be touring and I anticipate getting busy designing and printing tour posters soon. I've been dabbling in printing block printed patterns for wallpaper squares but it's been a personal project and outside of an art show I installed last year, I haven't actually installed any of the paper patterns I've printed in a permanent space as of yet, but I hope to soon. I'm also the 2026 featured visual artist for WTSQ 88.1 FM radio in Charleston, WV and look forward to designing some posters for their fundraising drives in the coming months.