Ryan Smith is a woodworker and printmaker whose work has quietly become one of the defining visual signatures of Maker Camp. Every year, hundreds of people walk away with one of his letterpress posters tucked under their arm, each one pulled by hand on a nearly hundred-year-old Vandercook printing press that he’s restored, hauled to camp, and runs all weekend long. Between woodworking commissions, shop builds, and print runs for makers across the community, Ryan has built a practice that sits right at the intersection of craftsmanship, nostalgia, and pure hands-on joy.

Leigh, Mush, and I sit down with Ryan to talk about the path that led him here: from early days in social work and woodworking to stumbling into the world of antique presses through a chance connection with Jimmy Diresta, to slowly resurrecting machines that had been locked up and forgotten for decades. We get into the magic of pulling that first crisp print off a freshly carved block, the odd and wonderful logistics of transporting a 500-pound press up a trailer ramp without losing it through the truck bed, and the way these old machines connect him to both tradition and community. We dig into the posters that have become Maker Camp collectibles, the crossover between music and printmaking, why he keeps rescuing presses off Facebook Marketplace, and the joy of making prints for fellow creators whose work he admires. And woven through it all is Ryan’s belief that keeping these old processes alive - in a world rushing toward digital everything - matters not out of resistance, but out of love for the tactile, the imperfect, and the deeply human side of making.

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