Special thanks to Pitchfork for featuring Spudnik’s Kickstarter campaign: The Gig Poster Project. Check out our campaign plus all the others featured as “special interests” on the Pitchfork page.

This October, meet Chicago’s artists at 200+ exhibitions, openings, demonstrations, tours, open studios and neighborhood art walks that take place at galleries, cultural centers and arts buildings throughout the city. Chicago Artists Month is presented by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. For more information, visit www.chicagoartistsmonth.org.

And Then She’s Like
And He Goes
Curated by Chris Campe

August 9 – September 15, 2012
A+D Gallery, 619 S. Wabash Ave, Chicago

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11 am – 5 pm
Thursday 11 am – 8 pm

Closing Reception: September 6, 2012, 5–8pm
ColumbiaCrawl, a campus-wide evening of visual and performing arts
6pm, Gallery Talk with the artists followed by a performance of
The Wilhelm Scream by Jeff Kolar

Participating Artists:
Anne Vagt
Jana Sotzko & Elen Flügge
Deb Sokolow
Mark Addison Smith
Tony Lewis
Jeff Kolar
Chris Campe
Mark Booth

And Then She’s Like/ And He Goes combines text-based visual art with language-based sound art. The visual pieces in the exhibition emphasize the audible qualities that hand rendered letterforms add to text, and the audio pieces play with the visual potential of sound.

Someone is telling us that she said something and he answered—what we don’t know. What we do know: there are at least three people involved here: she, he, and the person telling us about their conversation. And actually, we are involved, too. It is up to us, the audience, to speculate what she said and he replied, or what she inquired and how he responded, or what she threw at him and what he retorted. Even though the content of the dialog is left out its colloquial language evokes distinct voices in our head and entices us to imagine what is going on.

The exhibition And Then She’s Like, And He Goes combines text-based visual art with language-based sound art to highlight the works’ multi-sensory appeal as a mode of storytelling. Seeing and reading text in an artwork involves hearing, even if only inside the viewers head, and listening to spoken words and sound involuntarily brings images to the mind‘s eye, even when the language is not straightforwardly descriptive. The artists examine these audible qualities of image-text and the visual potential of language and sound. Intertwining documentation and fabulation they give us audio/visual bits and pieces and use non-linear narrative to draw us into their stories. Rather than over the course of the traditional beginning, middle, and end the narrative comes alive in the overlap between word, image and sound. Although there is no way of knowing for sure what she said and he replied, the works in the show invite us to be involved in the story.

More information?
Here’s a link to the show’s catalog, with an essay by John Corbett:
http://www.colum.edu/ADGallery/Exhibits/2012_and_then_shes/andthen_issue.pdf

Did you know that Spudnik Press can accommodate your class field trip? We can customize a printmaking workshop just for your group! Target Field Trip Grant can help make your field-trip-to-Spudnik dreams come true! Click the image link to learn more about applying for the grant and email Angee@spudnikpress.com to start planning your trip!

Garden Where I Walk: Summer Artist in Residence Exhibition by Daniel Greenberg

Friday, August 31, 2012
5:00 – 8:00 pm
at Spudnik Press

“Walking is the best way for me to think. Walking in nature allows for a temporary repositioning from our daily lives. But I more often find myself walking on a city street, or meditating while surfing the internet. For me, both the internet and nature operate as an escape from reality.” says Daniel. Working in the form of block prints, drawings and monoprints, and using imagery found online, Daniel depicts the detail and expansiveness of green forests on or with materials made from wood. He hopes viewers can get lost in the details of the natural world, and at times, utilizes technology as a means to this end.

“In the past months I have archived photographs of men in nature from the internet. The men are mostly alone; mostly men I see as beautiful. Certainly, a homosexual gaze enters this work. But by erasing and abstracting the figures I hope the viewer can, for a moment, occupy their bodies, gestures, and perhaps even thoughts. Sometimes I go a step further, extenuating varieties of ugliness in the figures, or at times the impressions of figures left behind in nature. Footprints in snow or mud represent a mark of a person left behind, and a desire to see him. Together, these works investigate not just the the homosexual gaze, but the human desire to see ourselves in others.”

Wednesday, August 8, 2012
6:30pm at Spudnik Press

Join us for our Spudnik Press Member Meeting to discuss upcoming projects & new ideas!

Not a member yet? Join today!

Trialogues
Opening Reception Friday, October 5, 2012
7:00 – 10:00pm
Plaines Project
October 5 – October 19, 2012

In partnership with Spudnik Press, Polly Yates, the recent artist in residence at Spudnik, will have a solo show opening in early October.
Yates is a recent transplant to Chicago, coming from London, where she recently received her Fine Art MA at Central Saint Martins. Polly’s project explores themes of desire, abundance and fecundity. In the complexity of the processes inherent to her practice of fragmentation and collage, she references the Baroque, excessive ornamentation and the folding in of the outside

During her residency at Spudnik Press, Yates has been completing a series of large, screen print collages, plus an accompanying series of smaller works. Yates says, “I work in the exact opposite way to most print makers; instead of taking one image and making multiples, I take multiples and create one image. For the Spudnik Press residency, I have been working with processes of doing and redoing, doing and undoing – of showing and hiding. Taking photographed or found images I fragment, distort and weave them into one another to the point of abstraction. By limiting myself to certain techniques, colours and imagery, I am trying to gain as much difference with repetition as I can.”

Our donated Hot Foil Stamper is now up and running! Use heat to transfer metallic foil to a solid surface. Use it on business cards, invitations, and other special projects. Be careful because this baby reaches temperatures up to 300 degrees so you must be authorized to use it. To get authorized, email brandy@spudnikpress.com to set up an appointment.

Welcome Tara Zanzig from all of us here at Spudnik Press. Chicago artist, Tara Zanzig, is now renting out one of Spudnik’s private studios. We can’t wait to see what you will be working on. Next time you’re at Spudnik say hi, and feel free to see what she has been up to.

“Megan, what do you do as an intern at Spudnik Press?” Well, it’s too hard to answer what happens here briefly. The truth is that I get to dip my feet into a variety of projects. I get to be a photographer, teacher’s assistant, and social media guru. I lend a hand in printing, hanging art work, tidying up, and administrative organization. Also, I get to observe the constant traffic of talented people who hang out at Spudnik for classes and studio hours.

In addition to all of that, I’m working on an individual project for Spudnik. As an Ad Art Direction major I’m creating a mini-campaign. I want my campaign to show all that happens here at Spudnik and the talent that comes through these doors. I will show how Spudnik is a resource to outsiders looking in and to those who are already familiar.

You might see me sifting through artwork for inspiration or testing out fonts for my headlines. Be on the lookout for the launch of this campaign mid August!

Take a look at this audio slideshow of our most recent community workshop, Paper Making. Thanks to John Santore for visiting Spudnik and documenting this fun event.

Transit is currently accepting submissions for their third exhibition, Building Blocks: TRANSIT’s Print Community, a print invitational that will run from October 1–27 in conjunction with Chicago Artists Month 2012.