Spudnik Press is thrilled to announce our Resident Artists for Summer 2019 through Spring 2020. These Resident Artists will bring new resources, perspectives, and professional connections to the various audiences that Spudnik Press serves, including first-time printmaking students, emerging artists, professional artists, art collectors and supporters. The Residency Program provides mid-career to established artists one to six weeks of full studio access and the support necessary for the production of new print-based artwork. The Residency Program supports a range of local, regional, and national artists with each residency adapting to the interests and needs of the individual artist.
Resident Artists 2019/2020:
Andrea Carlson (b. 1979) is a visual artist currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Through painting and drawing, Carlson cites entangled cultural narratives and institutional authority relating to objects based on the merit of possession and display. Current research activities include Indigenous Futurism and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant recipient. For further inquiry, please contact the Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
João Oliveira is a visual artist based in Brazil who works with techniques such as engraving and drawing, its intersections and unfoldings into other processes. Selected exhibitions include “Esquizópolis”, MAM, Salvador-BA, “Prêmio Gravura EVA Parque Lage + MUL.TI.PLO Espaço Arte”, EVA Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro – RJ, two editions of “Salão de Abril”, Fortaleza – CE, and five editions of “Salão de Artes Visuais da Bahia”, where he was granted awards and honorable mentions. Other accomplishments include residencies at Museo Universitario Del Chopo, México, and Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Italia.
Celeste De Luna is a self-taught printmaker whose work includes large-scale woodcuts and fabric installation. Her political subject matter is social commentary with a feminine sensibility. In addition to her studio practice of creating large-scale relief prints, quilts, and installation, De Luna works in collaboration with community in Brownsville, Texas as a cofounder of the socially engaged arts collaborative Las Imaginistas. Las Imaginistas are recipients of a 2017 Artplace America Creative Placemaking grant and 2018 A Blade of Grass Fellows. Currently, De Luna is managing her print shop, Metzli Press, creating curriculum for a community printmaking collaborative, Taller de Permiso, (Permission Workshop,) and a lecturer at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and lives with her family in Harlingen, Texas.
Benjamin Merrit’s research intersects with the discussion of chronic illness. According to Merrit, chronic illness is continually based around cure and cause, often times with a language that puts the patient at fault (stigma around weight, smoking, alcohol consumption) in situations where those are proven to not be causes for the illness. Recently, the ways language is used in clinical settings and text have become more important in his work. Merritt aims to bring attention to the complex relationship between the body and language in medical discourse, and to encourage the viewer to consider compassionate and affective methods of discussing illness.
Andrew Bearnot (MFA, University of Chicago) is a self described “materialist”: he thinks with and through the substance of things. Informed by a background in material science (ScB, Brown University) and glass (BFA, Rhode Island School of Design), Bearnot explores moments of transcendence in the everyday. He was awarded fellowships from Fulbright and the American-Scandinavian Foundation for research on glass-making traditions in Sweden and Denmark and has been an artist-in-residence at the Hyde Park Arts Center (Chicago, IL), Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), Marble House Project (Dorset, VT), and Creative Glass Center of America (Millville, NJ).
