For over 30 years local artist Helen Lardner has been producing interesting pieces of art.

Lardner specializes in printmaking, a process in which an image or design is carved into wood or a rubber eraser like material to make different prints.

Lardner has her own art studio in her house at Gates Mills where she can work on her art whenever she wants. “I work in spurt but it depends if there is a project,” she said.

Her goal is to create a new print or drawing every three months. She finds inspiration from common objects that can be found anywhere that most people would look over. Lardner finds that it is more important to capture the essence in the artwork rather than selling the piece.

Often Lardner is asked to make specific pieces for people, as well as greeting cards and illustrations for museums.

If someone asks Lardner for one of her pieces to be placed in an art show or gallery she will say yes, “I don’t chase down galleries; I am in one or two a year.” she said.

Lardner has entered her work into the Gates Mills Art Show five or six times and has won numerous awards for her pieces there including first prize.

Currently Lardner is working on a life size kid’s skeleton for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Lardner’s neighbor Marcia Brandenburg has seen numerous works by her at the Gates Mills art show, “I think her artwork is very unique, quirky, and fun and she has a lot of detail in her work.” Brandenburg said.

Lardner’s most recent piece has two contrasting images of a house. On the right side there is a house sitting in the dry vacant desert with a single cloud in the sky above, on the other side the side a house being swept away by sea.

Lardner was inspired for the image on the left by the tsunami that had hit Japan about five years ago. She wanted to have a contrast to go along with that so she had the other house in a very dry place.

For that piece Lardner used a woodcut printmaking process in which different segments of the image are carved into a piece of wood that will have watercolor painted on as a stamp. This is a time consuming process that must be measured up just right for all the part of the image to come together like a puzzle. Lardner worked 10 to 12 hour days in her studio for two weeks for this piece.

Lardner’s daughter Isabel Lardner, who is a junior at Mayfield High School, said, “I think her work is really neat how she finds relationships between common objects. She rotates us to do critiquing on her stuff but she is always hard on herself because she is a perfectionist.”

Art teacher Gail McClelland owns one of Lardner’s pieces. McClelland said, “One of the things I like about her stuff is the diminutive size and that you have to get really close to see what is going on. Also I like the sense of mystery; how she is only showing a small part of the story and leaving you curious.”

When asked about her art career, Lardner said, “I like the freedom it gives you to investigate your own personal interest and I like the physical process of making art and the surprise from seeing the finished work when it is completed.”