In Perry, creativity runs in the family

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS)—Art is the family business for one local woman in Shiawassee County. Ruth Egnater is a printmaker from Perry who says her love for art started with her mother.

“My mother was a professional artist and so I grew up with that,” Egnater says. “We would go to the Ann Arbor Art Fair every year, and she collected art.”

As Egnater got older, she picked up a little bit of everything from her mother.

“She was a potter to start with and started making jewelry and sewing and different things like that,” Egnater says. “And so I learned all those things.”

Egnater wasn’t always an artist. Before becoming a printmaker, she was a nurse and taught at the Lansing Community College. This position allowed her to take art classes of her own.

“And then I took a printmaking class, and that was it. I was hooked. You can do all sorts of things,” says Egnater. “Printmaking has no rules, really. And so there’s such a wide variety of things you can do with that, that there’s no time to be bored.”

The process of making a print requires a lot of time and attention to detail. Egnater begins with a sketch on paper, carefully crafting the design of the print. Then, she carves the design into a hard material such as linoleum or wood. Then, she covers the carving in ink, and with a variety of tools and other materials, stamps the design onto a page.

Egnater says that this detail is necessary for her creative processes.

“I need to have a story,” says Egnater. “Each print is a story, and that is why there is so much detail in the print.”

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