What The River Carries

"What the River Carries" is a zine meant to educate on pollution in the Ohio River and emphasize the importance of keeping our rivers clean. The zine incorporates block printed designs along with handwritten lettering and some drawn designs. 

The zine will be sold at America's River Roots Festival from October 8th through the 12th and all proceeds will be donated to The Ohio River Foundation. If you are interested in donating directly to this organization you can do so here. 

Process

I started my process with around a week researching water pollution and the Ohio River to figure out what specific content I wanted in the zine. Then I wrote out an outline in a google doc before making the first mockup with text and illustration. After I finalized the mockup I started on carving the designs I wanted to use, and then did test prints to make sure all of the linolium stamps looked how I wanted. I did at least three prints of each spread, chose which ones I liked most, and then handwrote all of the text in pencil before going over it in pen. Finally I scanned the pages, did some minor editing and formatting in Canva, and then sent it to be printed. 

First mockup

Transferring images onto linolium

Choosing which spreads to use

About the Artist

Ashe Gruenhagen is currently a second year at Miami University majoring in Environmental Earth Science and Zoology and minoring in Studio Art. This is their third summer working as an apprentice with Artworks and their second time working with The WelI, previously having worked on "Greetings from Planet Love," the 2023 True Body Project. Ashe enjoy all kinds of art mediums, such as sewing, crochet, sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking. They find themself very inspired by nature and like incorporating that into their art through animal imagery, specifically insects and aquatic animals, with the intent of drawing attention to more overlooked and possibly unloved parts of the world around us. 

Special Thanks To

Anissa Lewis