Footpath
From the time I was born, hiking on the Long Trail was something we did as a family. Even before that, I have a photo of my grandfather posing with a group after hiking up to Taft Lodge. And as teens my Dad and his friends were dropped off at one mountain pass, only to be picked up at the next road crossing days or a week later. Even at three months old, my parents took me on a rainy overnight hike to Cooley Glen.
Three months old, my parents did an overnight hike with me at Cooley Glen.
My sister and I posing on Mansfield’s forehead on a Father/Daughter overnight trip.
Once for a high school class project, I created a huge topo map of a portion of the Long Trail, and wrote an accompanying report about it’s history. To this day I continue to pour over guidebooks, historic photos, and maps of Vermont. So to say this poster is a testament of my love of the Long Trail is an understatement.
In 2017, in the early years of my artistic journey I was teaching myself how to create relief prints primarily using linoleum. I had recently secured my first wholesale account of watercolor profiles of the Long Trail, and the shop was putting together a local artists series where they collaborated with a few artists to be featured in their shop. After a few initial sketches and a lot of research, I decided I wanted it to have a vintage travel poster feel. I ordered a few large sheets of linoleum and rolls and rolls of paper, and finalized the hand drawn design.
Relief printing requires the design to be a mirror image of the final product. I had transfered the poster design onto linoleum and was carving the mirror. Let me tell you, all the text was hard to carve on the reverse!
The transferred Footpath design onto the sheet of linoleum.
Once I finished carving out the block it was time to print. For a few weekends in a row, our entire house was covered in Footpath posters.
An early test print of the southern Vermont section.
First few finished prints.
Huge stack of completed prints!
I only issued one print run of 125 copies that I hand pulled in the kitchen with a wooden spoon as my press. I kept number 107 for myself, and is framed and hangs in our kitchen, as that’s how old the Green Mountain Club was at the time. I still have a few prints left, and introduce them as a giveaway prize or other special events from time to time.
When the original series was almost sold through in 2018, I had a friend digitize one of the last remaining prints, so we could turn it into a screen print. Since then all of my posters are screen printed locally in Colchester.
It’s been fun to reminisce on this original poster, and think back to the beginning of what helped MTN GRL Studio who it is today.