Inside Chicago Printmakers Collaborative: The City’s Living Workshop for Handmade Prints

In a city known for its architecture, jazz clubs, and fiercely independent arts scene, the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative (CPC) has spent more than three decades preserving one of the oldest art forms in the world: the handmade print.

Founded in 1989, CPC is the longest-running independent printmaking workshop in Chicago, a working studio and cultural hub where artists still practice techniques that date back hundreds of years. Step through the doors and you’ll find presses humming, ink rolling across plates, and artists pulling prints the same way masters like Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer, and Mary Cassatt once did.

But CPC is more than a studio—it’s a community.

The workshop provides Chicago-area artists with the tools, space, and collaboration needed to pursue their craft. Through classes, demonstrations, exhibitions, and open studio access, the collaborative keeps the tactile tradition of printmaking alive in an increasingly digital world.

Inside the studio, artists work across a wide spectrum of printmaking methods. Etching and intaglio presses sit alongside stations for lithography, screenprinting, relief printing, monotype, photo printmaking, and book arts, allowing members to explore nearly every form the medium has taken over the centuries.

Just as important as the studio itself is the CPC Gallery, which regularly features exhibitions by both local and international artists. The shows present a broad range of styles—from experimental contemporary works to traditional printmaking techniques—giving visitors a rare opportunity to experience the diversity of the medium under one roof.

A New Chapter for a Chicago Institution

Recently, CPC expanded with the addition of WING, a new studio and gallery space created by founder Deborah Maris Lader. Completed within the past year, the space functions as both a laboratory for creative experimentation and a gallery where visitors can experience the printmaking process firsthand.

Lader has served as the driving force behind the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative for more than 36 years, guiding the organization since its founding. An artist, musician, performer, and administrator, her work spans prints, drawings, paintings, and mixed media, and has been exhibited internationally.

Her art is included in major permanent collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago History Museum, the New York Public Library, and the City of Palo Alto. Over the decades, she has received numerous awards for her contributions to the printmaking and artist communities and has appeared on podcasts, television, radio, and as a visiting artist at universities across the country.

Now, a transition is underway.

In early 2026, Lader will pass the leadership of CPC to incoming director and owner Lauren Steinert, marking a new era for the workshop she built.

The Next Generation of Printmakers

Steinert, currently co-director of CPC, has already become a central figure in the studio’s daily operations. She oversees membership, coordinates classes, and curates the gallery’s programming, while also teaching several of CPC’s courses—including new morning sessions that complement the studio’s established evening classes.

Steinert holds an MFA in Printmaking and previously earned degrees in printmaking, glass-working, environmental science, and German. Her career has included work as a printmaking technician, adjunct professor, glassblowing instructor, studio coordinator, and artist assistant.

Her own artistic practice centers on documenting and preserving the histories of shared creative spaces.

Steinert believes that objects often hold memory more faithfully than people, and her work seeks to reveal the traces left behind by artists, communities, and the environments they inhabit.

That philosophy fits naturally within CPC’s mission.

For visitors, students, and artists alike, the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative offers something increasingly rare: a place where centuries-old craft is still practiced by hand, where artists learn directly from one another, and where the physical act of making art remains at the center of the experience.

In a city that never stops reinventing itself, CPC stands as a reminder that some traditions are worth preserving—ink, paper, press, and all.

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