Feather & Fox Print Co.

Life surprises you when you allow it.

Our first incarnation as a printing studio, Fine Balance Imaging Studios, started as a leap of faith out of a real desire to help our community. After a number of life-changing events sent Nancy on a path to create a new way of life, she engaged her mother Pat and her son Joe in opening an art gallery in the quiet little seaside town of Langley on Whidbey Island. Joe had his own share of life-altering circumstances after the dot-com crash changed his assumptions about his career path, and the three of them banded together – re-establishing a long-separated sense of family, while creating a brand new business together.

The Isle of Art Gallery (inspired by Joe’s joke after seeing the oft-used Whidbey Island license plate frames stating “Isle of View”; if you don’t get it, say it out loud) reached out to local island artists, along with a few from the family friends at the Kirsten Gallery in Seattle, to establish a venue where emerging artists with a passionate and inspirational vision could exhibit their works and debut in a locale where art was paramount and highly respected. Within a year of the gallery opening, Nancy and Joe saw needs not being met by local services: artists were sharing tales of going off-island (a time-consuming and sometimes expensive endeavor) to several different businesses to pull together the resources they needed to get basic needs met to make a living making art. The most obvious need was to get fine art reproductions made as giclée prints or canvas gallery wraps. With Joe’s background in the arts and digital imaging, the family gathered resources from the remaining stocks and retirement funds to purchase the essential equipment needed to start printing for the gallery’s artists.

Isle of Art Studio evolves into Fine Balance Imaging.

A year later, the printing business had established itself as an excellent resource for local artists, growing by word-of-mouth alone – and still to this day, most clients find us because of a conversation with another artist. Joe and Nancy saw the need to expand and moved from a little back room behind the Langley Clock Shop next door to the Isle of Art Gallery into their own space, where the old Knox Photo shop had been – a fitting evolution for the space. What began as the Isle of Art Studio shifted into Fine Balance Imaging Studios – a name based off of an early email address Joe had, “findingbalance@…” – an attempt to find a balance in life between doing work he loved and making time in life for all those things the corporate lifestyle had forced him to put aside during the dot-com days. Creating a business working with art and artists daily was the solution to finding balance…and Joe and Nancy realized that rather than constantly seeking balance, perhaps the answer was in setting an intention with their business that they already had – a Fine Balance. This would be the foundation for the quality of work they would provide for artists as well, as every fine art print requires a fine balance of color correction, subtle adjustments, the right choice of papers, along with other precise variables to re-create a museum-quality giclée fine art reproduction.

Responsive Services for Artists & Businesses

Over the first decade of printing, Nancy and Joe added more services—every time based on what artists, small businesses, and local non-profit organizations were asking for—including graphic design, business basics such as business cards, brochures, flyers, and posters, and larger-scale displays like wall murals.

Always Growing

In 2014, Joe & Rhiannon Fisher made strides toward establishing a new kind of business as a complementary addition to the printing studio by forming the retail boutique Feather & Fox. Finding independent artists and crafters around the northwest and country, Rhiannon has honed a particular aesthetic that seemed missing on Whidbey Island. Adding to the collection of unique finds, Rhiannon & Joe put their creative energies together to design and produce a wide variety of custom offerings, all made utilizing the capabilities of the printing studio. This makes for a great showcase of possibilities for artists and customers to ponder when browsing the shop, knowing that the ability to create their own products was close by.

2016 saw another giant leap of faith and massive business expansion for Fine Balance Imaging. Upon hearing a local business owner’s desire to move on to other plans in life, the team at Fine Balance began planning for the most significant move yet by acquiring a local copy center, Whidbey Island Printing & Office Supply (formerly known as Boomerang). Once they found a suitable location to consolidate services, the real work began with a complete remodel of the space formerly occupied by Lind’s Jewelry on First Street in Langley. Fine Balance upgraded all of the copy and printing equipment during the transition and added several new capabilities.

Transitions and Expansion…now with Lasers!

In 2017, Rhiannon and Joe welcomed their baby girl, Maevyn Nox Fisher-Menth, into the world. While Rhiannon took some time at home with the new family addition, Joe and Nancy focused on settling into the new flow of running a fine art printing studio, copy center, and retail gift shop all under one roof. By the middle of 2018, Rhiannon returned to work with baby in tow, and Maevyn became a joyous little local attraction for all the studio and gift shop patrons.

Nancy retired from the family business at the end of 2018. Rhiannon and Joe now operate all aspects of the company together.
New service offerings in 2018 included the fun and versatile addition of a Glowforge laser cutting and engraving machine. This machine allows the studio and its clients to experiment with various mediums, including wood, leather, acrylic, and more. So far, the laser cutter has helped produce projects as varied as engraved wood photo portraits, rubber stamps, embossing seals, folded wooden boxes, votive candle holders, a leather clutch, and various kinds of wood and acrylic jewelry.

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

2020 became the strangest and most challenging set of events anyone in our generation has experienced.

The beginning of the year was odd enough, as our small town of Langley had blocked the streets in front of the studio for over a month, reducing business to a trickle. As soon as the road cleared, COVID-19 took over, and Fine Balance/Feather & Fox shut down for the better part of four months.

As I wrote this in July of 2020, the business was adapting further. Since Feather & Fox came out of the love between Rhiannon and Joe, it is a fitting evolution that the name Fine Balance Imaging was let go for good. A new coherence and clarity of purpose emerged as the re-branded Feather & Fox Print Co.

Our plans moving forward will continue to follow the flow of whatever the new normal ends up being. For now, our wide range of printing services continues to expand, with the addition in 2019 of a DTG (Direct to Garment) printer. This printer allows us to create print-on-demand one-off full-color t-shirts, tote bags, tea towels, and more, on natural fabrics. It’s already a big hit, and we plan to create many exciting designs with the new capacity.

Time for an Update!

To be honest, it’s been a while since we’ve paid any attention to our web presence. The past five years felt like a never-ending fever dream. Rhiannon suffered extensive health issues due to Long-Covid and had to take a break from the business, mostly, for the better part of three years. Joe ran the studio and shop without any staff help for most of that time.

But we never gave up. This business is our livelihood, and we believe (and our clients would tend to agree!) that it provides an essential set of services for our town.

In 2023, Joe built out the interior of what was otherwise an empty pole building on our home property, to create an auxiliary production studio as well as a personal art studio…which would enable Rhiannon to take on some production for the business, but at home where she could regulate her energy as needed.

That project is mostly finished but was put on pause in mid-2024 so Joe could build an entirely separate building to house the latest Feather & Fox Print Co. expansion: an entire traditional letterpress studio!
In early 2025, we finally were able to seal up the “letterpress shed”, and move in the 100+ year-old Chandler & Price 10×15 platen press, alongside five cabinets full of lead type (about 120 drawers – or “cases” – of original lead fonts), and another 100 or so “galleys” full of type and cuts (engravings or lead stamps used for illustrations). Also included are a small 5×7 hand press, a larger proofing press, multiple antique book presses, and various other pieces of traditional printmaking and bookbinding equipment.
We have a LOT of sorting and organizing to do in the coming months, but we will launch our press sometime in 2025.
Our intention is to open it up as a kind of community creative space alongside our home production studio…not so much for printing services, but as a space for education, workshops, and collaboration with local artists or anyone interested in the legacy of traditional printing.
Stay Tuned!