A 24-hour Marsh Retreat & Workshop at Sedge Island, NJ

I was so thrilled to be asked to teach a special letterpress printing workshop at Sedge Island in the beautiful salt marsh of the New Jersey coast this past July! 

The workshop was a 24-hour retreat at the off-grid Sedge Island Natural Resource Education Center run by New Jersey Fish & Wildlife, and it was such a fun combination of adventure & creativity in the marsh!

The best part is that I was invited back to teach again next summer too! Read on to see how the marsh adventure & workshop went this summer.

If you’re interested in joining us next summer, sign up for the waitlist below! 

Program Leader & Marine Biologist Guide, Mae Skrba

The workshop & retreat ran from 11am on Friday, July 17th until 11am on Saturday, the 18th. However, I met Mae Skrba, our awesome program leader & marine biologist guide, at the dock at 9am because I had to load a condensed letterpress studio onto the pontoon boat to get out to the island and set up for the workshop participants. 

Condensing my 800 sq. foot Pittsburgh-based letterpress studio to a 15’ x 3’ table at Sedge Island was certainly a challenge—it all had to easily lift onto a bobbing boat too! I decided to haul three presses for the adventure: my cylinder Freemont Proofing Press, my cylinder Challenge Proofing Press and my small Kelsey Platen Press.

My apprentices and I curated two typecases full of vintage image cuts & metal border rule, a quarter case full of small vintage metal ornaments and a box of my large carved geometric blocks. We chose cuts & ornaments that related to the marsh landscape, including sea creatures, birds, lighthouses, ships, and geometric shapes that could be built into boats, grasses, sunsets, waves and more. 

The goal for the printing workshop at the island was to create a print inspired by our marsh adventures and frame it in a 8” metal circular frame (the same I use for my Large One-Of-A-Kind Framed Prints), tied up with velvet ribbon for a cute keepsake ready to hang on the wall—and everyone did an awesome job! Next year we’ll most likely make something different— maybe hand-bound adventure journals!

Participants arrived at the NJ Fish & Wildlife dock in Island Beach State Park at 11am and we boated across part of the Barnegat Bay to get to the Sedge Island facility on the main island (technically Sedge Island includes three different islands in the marsh!). 

Once everyone settled after a tour of the facility & bunk house we’d be staying in, we changed into water wear and hopped in kayaks for a guided marsh tour by Mae. Mae shared facts about the birds, marsh sedge grasses, any critters we saw and the tides as we paddled through the marsh maze. She even encouraged us to taste the edible Salicornia, known as Sea Beans, foraged amongst the sedge grasses right at our feet! Sea Beans are a salty succulent, crunchy like a bean (but in no way related to beans) and a sought after delicacy at the local farmer’s markets—so cool!

Edible Salicornia, AKA Sea Beans. Photo by Wolfram Burner Flickr.

We jumped in the water by the Sedge Island shore and learned how to collect clams by digging our hands into the sand under our feet. We collected only what we’d eat and what the biologists would use as bait in traps for their various research projects on the island. After clam collecting, we fired up the grill and gave them a taste. It was my first time trying clams and I’ll admit, the texture is not for me, but the collecting was fun!

After some more appetizing snacks, we dove into printing based on our marsh adventures. While each participant would only frame one finished print, each had five sheets of paper to print on. We started with my large hand-carved blocks, printing them on the two cylinder presses as backgrounds & land forms to anchor the compositions. We used the block-printing technique, inspired by Dutch printer H.N. Werkman, that I use in some of my in-studio workshops in Pittsburgh. This quick printing technique helps keep the printing easy & loose, avoiding the slower process of typesetting & locking forms into the presses with spacing material. 

We printed until dinner time, then enjoyed a delicious meal on the porch prepared by our in-house chef, Cate. After eating we jumped into a second round of printing before the sunset, this time focusing on the smaller details and “characters” of the compositions, made with the smaller vintage image cuts and metal ornaments. The compositions came to life, morphing into dynamic marsh scenes depicting our kayaking adventure, the abundance of birds, fish & turtles, the iconic Barnegat Bay lighthouse, the sedge grasses, and even some Sea Beans! The room was buzzing with ideas as folks printed or hand-stamped the tiny details into their works of art. 

We finished off the evening sitting on the docked boat in the dark with a big light shining down into the shallow marsh water. The light attracted fish towards the surface for our viewing pleasure, which was pretty cool. Then Mae introduced us to the amazing bioluminescent Comb Jellies of the bay, which was a highlight of my experience! According to Mae these jellies aren’t technically jellyfish because they’re lacking the stinging organ jellies are known for, but that allowed for us to touch them gently to ignite their bioluminescence. The jellies themselves aren’t bioluminescent, but there’s a bacteria they eat that lights up when processed in their intestines, which you can see right through their transparent bodies. They were SO COOL and the perfect thing to ponder as we headed to our bunk rooms and drifted off to sleep. 

The next morning we woke at the crack of dawn for a sunrise boat cruise around the bay led by Captain Rob. We spotted some small shark fins schooling among the marsh (harmless sharks, don’t worry!) and a TON of awesome birds including osprey, herons, a skimmer, and ibis.

NJ Fish & Wildlife’s Captain Rob printing on the Kelsey Press.

Upon our return to the island, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast on the porch before finishing off our prints. I inked up the Kelsey Platen Press with a handset type credit line to print on the backs of the prints, reading, “Letterpress Printed at Sedge Island with Gingerly Press, July 2026”. Then we settled around the porch table to trim & frame our finished prints in the metal round frames, tying them up with velvet ribbon as a finishing touch! 

After a group picture and some bunk house tidying, we were back on the boat and on our way back to our cars across the bay. It was a packed 24 hours of adventure and creative play, yet we moved at an unhurried relaxing pace. I left feeling rejuvenated & inspired, and I absolutely can’t wait to return next year to teach again! 

If you’re interested in joining us next year for the Sedge Island Workshop & Retreat sign up via the waitlist button below to be the first to know when tickets launch in early 2027! 

Don’t worry, signing up for the waitlist doesn’t commit you to any workshop tickets yet.