As a documentary filmmaker, I was moved by Lankes’s vision and by his friendship with Robert Frost and Sherwood Anderson. With J.J. Lankes: Yankee Printmaker in Virginia, I aimed to explore how his art and his dialogue with Frost, Anderson and others framed an American understanding of work, place, and purpose.

Throughout the film, Montes-Bradley weaves personal archival materials, interviews, and on-location filming with understated sensitivity. We see Lankes’s legacy not only through his prints but also through the memories of scholars, collectors, and descendants who help reconstruct the arc of his life—from Buffalo to Europe, from Vermont to Virginia.