Globe Corner Blogs

When I was accepted into the printmaking residency at the Frans Masereel Center in Kasterlee, Belgium, I emailed around looking for advice from anyone who’d been before. In addition to commenting on the great printmaking facilities and the beautiful countryside location, one over-enthusiastic printmaker reported back on the Center’s grounds being filled with ponies and miniature squirrels. He said it was gated “to keep out the gnomes.” The next person talked about the “enchanted forest” nearby that you can explore on your state-sponsored yellow bicycle. I figured these were some crazy printmakers who’d been exposed to too much lithotine. But, in the past four days, I’ve found their tales to be (mostly) true.

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I was given a yellow bike, branded with a Flemish seal, and in the past few days, I’ve biked around the town and areas surrounding the residency. I have not seen any gnomes, but there are plenty of creatures about, and the setting is incredibly bucolic.

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All the trees and fields seem to be a bright, brilliant green, and the light here really does look like something out of a Dutch landscape painting. Cows and sheep are in nearly every pasture, there are tiny bunnies living in the bushes outside my door, and a foal lives in the pasture behind my house. Nuthatches tweet all day long, and seriously portly mourning doves seem to defy gravity as they swoop from tree to tree.

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The town of Kasterlee has a population of around 20,000, and, in appearance, hovers between the suburban and the rural; pastures and farmland sit next to complexes of closely-spaced houses with driveways on pretty cul-de-sacs. Everyone seems to have a bicycle, and in addition to sidewalks, there are bike lanes and bike traffic signals throughout the town.

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The Frans Masereel Center houses a complete printmaking studio (lithography, intaglio, woodblock, silkscreen, and letterpress), and has a few gallery spaces in the center of the building. The main building was once a private residence that belonged to a print enthusiast who collected prints and various types of presses and bookmaking tools. In the 1960s, the home and all its presses were purchased by the Flemish government. They put some of the presses back to use in the space converted to studios, and named it after Frans Masereel, the famous Flemish woodblock artist who is considered a father of the graphic novel movement.  All the buildings are egg-shaped, which does add the the slightly Smurfy feeling of this whole experience, but the facility has some incredible old presses and bookmaking equipment, like this seemingly ancient book press and wood type press set-up:

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Next up: explore the enchanted forest, the nearby town of Turnhout, and the Museum of the Playing Card. Stay tuned!

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Read more: Art & Architecture, Belgium, Travel


Kate lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her interests include fine arts, food and wine, and baseball.

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