My Best Friend And I Took A Gap Year From One Of The Top Art Schools In The World To Make An Online Print Shop

I entered art school in 2018, expecting to graduate in 4 years with a set career, life path, and place to live. This sounds highly unrealistic, right? Instead, my best friend and I took a gap year off from college to pursue the crazy dream of starting our own business. Here is how it started and how it's going:

The coronavirus put every school system in the U.S. online in the spring of 2020, including the Rhode Island School of Design. We spent the rest of our sophomore year sitting in front of a computer screen hundreds of miles away from RISD, trying to learn about printmaking techniques.

Elsa took this opportunity to remind me of our dream: opening our shop "Luckytown." She was thinking of taking a gap year to wait for the pandemic to subside. Our dream suddenly didn't seem so distant anymore. So, we decided on taking the year off to work together.

Luckytown Press became much MORE than just a shop but rather a narrative for both of us to build off of for years to come. This small idea began to grow into a fictional space where individual residents have their own lives and stories to tell. It's important to remember that small towns = mystery. Legends about ghosts and cult meetings in the forest are only some of the spooky happenings of this town.

We create handmade prints and postcards that depict feelings, landmarks, and residents reminiscent of our town. Mainly working in relief printmaking, woodblock printing is our preferred medium.

Although we have experienced struggles along the way, we both know that we can do it! Elsa always says that we "put our hearts out on the press." So hopefully, from the body of work below readers can feel our love for what we do.

If you want to know more about Luckytown Press, check out our website! And it would be awesome for other creators to let us know what you've been working on during this unusual time.

Thanks for reading, Julie and Elsa.

More info: luckytownpress.com