Posts By: Gina Hunt

Spudnik Press Announces 2022 Resident Artists

Spudnik Press Cooperative is excited to announce the five Resident Artists in 2022 who will bring new research, programming, and experience to our community: Cameron Mankin, Susy Bielak, Elizabeth Rose, Hale Ekinci, and Hui-min Tsen. The Residency gives mid-career and established artists full access to our studios for the completion of new print-based artwork, along with a stipend and support from our staff of professional printmakers. Each Resident also engages our community in unique public programming that is connected to their practice and open to all.

In addition to these five artists in residence, we are also excited to be hosting artists re-scheduled from 2020. Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement welcoming these artists!

Resident Artist Project Statements:

Cameron Mankin, March/April 2022

In 1633, printmaker Jacques Callot made his Miseries of War – a series of 18 etchings depicting the invasion of his home, Lorraine, that would go on to inspire the works of artists like Francisco Goya and Otto Dix. At the same time, he was developing an incredibly rigid system of etching, preserved in Abraham Bosse’s Manual of Etching. In Covid after Callot, my goal is to produce a series of copper etchings, applying Callot’s etching system to news images circulating today – using the precursor thought-technology of Callot’s work as an archeological tool through which to examine the system of design that informs today’s imagery.

Susy Bielak, May/June 2022

Susy Bielak will use a residency at Spudnik to create a suite of portraits of people in the act of listening. This is part of an ongoing series that draws relationships between people and infrastructural and natural disasters.

Inspired by Pauline Ontiveros’ expansive understanding of listening as an act of meditation, tuning, and focus, and R. Murray Schafer’s concept of hearing as “a way of touching at a distance,” Bielak will photograph choreographers, musicians, and poets as they stage acts of listening in their homes. Bielak will translate the resulting images into a series of prints, with accompanying short texts based on conversations with the artists.

Elizabeth Rose, May 2022

Working with intaglio, relief, and risography processes, I will produce a series of unique and editionable works on paper based on my recent experiences living in Poland.

I am interested in ecological shifts as they relate to Northern latitudes within the broader global context, with specific attention to the correlation between Poland’s landscape and the United States.

I will work from my photographic archive along with bright and colorful resource materials I collected while in Poland to create my new work at Spudnik Press.

Hale Ekinci, July/August 2022

Collage and techniques of transference are integral to my multidisciplinary practice. As an immigrant female artist, my work deals with acculturation, hybrid identity, and ideas about gendered labor. Influenced by Islamic ornamentation, my visual language references a mixture of coded symbolism such as oya  (lace edging that traditionally contained meaning in the patterns on a headdress) and kilim rug symbols. As a resident at Spudnik Press, I plan to continue my mixed-media works on textiles and add printmaking to my visual vocabulary.

For this residency, I have a range of processes I would like to experiment with to expand my mixed-media mark-making. I plan to use silkscreen printing and transparent inks instead of solvent photo transfer, which would allow me to layer and play with colors while reducing toxic exposure. I will also use linocut motifs to create repeated patterns and textile materials to make impressions for monotypes. I have a collection of textiles, mostly from thrift stores and my dowry that I want to use to translate onto surfaces. After printing on fabric and/or paper, I will layer embroidery and hand painting as I typically do in my work.

Hui-min Tsen, September/October 2022

I will use the residency to develop a series of small, riso-printed books. The series is part of an ongoing project that brings the reader across a successive line of frontiers, starting with the Illinois prairie and heading westward across the American interior.  Individually, the books tell specific stories of prairie remnants, Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home, the crossing of the 100th meridian, and how-to-find-the-frontier (among others). Taken all together, the books use moments of westward migration to explore the identities and paradoxes of the American narrative, forming a loose story about the ways in which imagined and tangible landscapes can co-occupy a single space.

Learn more about the Spudnik Press Artist Residency

Image Credit (left to right): Details of “Ronald Reagan Rides a Horse” by Hui-min Tsen, “Covid Atlas” by Cameron Mankin, “Untitled Ellis Island” by Hale Ekinci, “Listening, Fireplace, Susy, 2020” by Susy Bielak, and “Altitudinal Zones”  by Elizabeth Rose.

Spudnik Press Welcomes 17th Cohort of Studio Fellows (January 2022 – August 2022)

Spudnik Press Cooperative is proud to introduce our 17th Studio Fellowship cohort:

golden collier
Clara Fischer
Frannie Miller
Alexander Tsanov
Logan Woodbury
Xingyi Zhao

Eight months of free and unlimited studio access is the foundation benefit of the program. Additionally, through the course of their fellowship, these artists will receive professional, artistic, and technical support catered to the needs of printmakers. Through working in our shared studio and monitoring weekly Open Studio sessions, fellows engage with our community of printmakers and benefit from ongoing support and feedback from staff and peers.

Established in 2013, this program to date has supported 66 artists with unfettered studio access to support the creation of both traditional and experimental print-based artwork, as well as a variety of other resources and opportunities.

Studio Fellow Bios:

golden collier

golden collier is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago who is deeply inspired by the creative vitality of the margins and places where disciplines, techniques, and ideas overlap.


Clara Fischer

I am a research-based artist who uses science fiction to talk about humanity’s relationship with nature and the impact this relationship has on food systems. My practice is an extension of my core belief for environmental justice and an examination of the destruction caused by agriculture. These passions are a reflection of my upbringing in rural New Jersey and my parents’ joy for the outdoors. My printmaking and material explorations delve into the extraordinary capabilities of plants and enthuse the vast unknowns of the plant world. I allow my interdisciplinary practice to be dictated by material and earth sciences.


Frannie Miller

I am a cartoonist from Skokie, IL. For the past five years, I have been teaching people how to create using technology in public libraries and academic spaces. I started making comics as a teenager and after, as an Orthodox Jewish schoolgirl, I read all of Love and Rockets haven’t been the same since. I went on to study comics and technology at the University of Michigan and have been living in Skokie since I graduated with my tiny, bossy Pitbull, Matilda.


Alexander Tsanov

I am a multimedia artist and recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA in Printmaking and Visual Communications. Much of my artwork deals with the combination of mediums to process and re-contextualize memories and emotions. I often tie-in my multicultural background to my pieces as a way for me to come to a better understanding of my identity. Since graduating from SAIC, I have primarily been working at Fulton Market Kitchen as the Marketing Director and Art Director, where I have organized a number of gallery shows and live painting events with Chicago artists.


Logan Woodbury

I am a graduate of Northern Illinois University working with relief and lithography.  I moved to Colorado for four-ish years, working as a commercial screen printer and doing some studio work on the side.  I also spent time there learning 3D and animation.  I recently moved back to the area and am trying to get back into print fully.  I am an LGBTQ+ artist exploring ideas along that vein with newer work while also using my knowledge of 3D to create mixed media projects.


Xingyi Zhao

Xingyi Zhao is a Chicago-based artist. She creates prints and handwoven textiles that investigate our relationship with domestic space and everyday objects. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of the 21st century, her work deals with memory, privacy, and a sense of forced optimism with a subtle minimalistic approach. She is currently in her final year as a BFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an emphasis in printmaking.

Image (Clockwise from top left):
golden collier, Frannie Miller, Xingyi Zhao, Clara Fischer, Logan Woodbury, Alexander Tsanov