straight spine ~ jack pine

Over the next few weeks you’ll see this poster up around Charlottetown:

The poster—for the July 14, 2026 edition of Jack Pine Folk Club—is a reproduction of an original lino reduction print by Lisa, the result of weeks of research, planning, carving, and printing. It’s a visual tour de force, and it captures the craggy essence of the jack pine so well.

Jack Pine Folk Club is a Shane Pendergast project, one that “channels the spirit of a 1960s folk coffeehouse.” Hosted at the Trailside, it’s an evening we’ve become quite fond of, and so when the opportunity came up to collaborate with Brandon Hood, who manages the visual language of the project, we jumped at it. Brandon took Lisa’s image and wrapped it in a lovely rich orange, with Futura typography, for the poster.

The rendering of the jack pine, which Lisa titled straight spine ~ jack pine, started in April with a recon trip to East Bideford, reputed to host the Island’s largest concentration of the trees. And jack pines we found.

We found the trees concentrated in and around a sand pit off the Burleigh Road, which, because sand has been mined from it, is a sort of otherworldly landscape, both natural and unnatural.

Starting from a reference photo of a jack pine that she took that afternoon, Lisa drew on tracing paper, and then transferred that to lino block:

Layer by layer, using on our Golding Jobber No. 8 letterpress for efficiency, we printed colour upon colour, Lisa carving away more of the block between each:

The final two layers were hues of red/magenta; here’s the second-last layer ready to print:

Our biggest technical challenge proved to be getting ink to dry, a result of mixing ink chemistries (Akua soy-based ink overprinted with Cranfield Safewash oil-based ink). The prints are drying, but very slowly. To aid them along, we rigged up a drying line down the middle of the print shop:

A limited number of signed original prints of straight spine ~ jack pine will be available at Jack Pine Folk Club on July 14.