Posts Categorized: Past

Shelter In The Speculative: New Works by Spudnik Press Members

Featured Artists:

Teresita Carson Valdez, Sam Hensley, Miller & Shellabarger, Yasaman Moussavi, Kianni Pleasant-Bey, Joshi Radin, Don Widmer

Juror:

Ruby T

Dates:

11/9/2020 – 1/9/2021

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative (Annex)

Events

Shelter in the Speculative | Virtual Reception & Artists Talk
Monday, November 30
7:00 – 8:30 p.m. 
Zoom Meeting ID: 966 4803 1564

Shelter in the Speculative | Gallery Hours
Most Mondays 2:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Most Thursdays 2:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Most Fridays 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 12, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. with Don Widmer
Most Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. with Sam Hensley

Press Release:

For the 2020 Member Exhibition, Juror Ruby T has selected artworks that have a powerful physical presence: works that feel like a form of shelter, or are an extension or impression of the artist’s own body. During the pandemic, and mass movements for revolution, this exhibition asks: What kinds of physical and relational structures will we need, or need to build, in order to survive? How will the warmth and softness of our bodies guide us? 

In Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power,” she defines the erotic as “…a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.” She goes on to write: In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.”

Kianni Pleasant-Bey includes excerpts from Lorde’s essay in Fever Dream, a soft altar space rooted in protecting and nurturing Black femmes/womxn and all that they embody. Sometimes prayerful, sometimes geometric, sometimes grim, all of the works in this exhibition show reverence for the power of the erotic and the sensual to help us navigate pleasure, illness, rest, memorial, and violence. 

Like a body, an artwork experiences and projects a physical life as it moves through the world. Experiencing art in this time of pandemic, we can more closely approach an artist’s work than we can the artist. With their rich textures and tactile materials, the works in this exhibition are further activated by proximity. 

Yasaman Moussavi’s Revelation paper pulp sculpture references the traditional central courtyard of Persian domestic architecture as a site of spatial and social interactions, along with family correspondence as a means of emotional and social exchange between family members in and far away from home.

Teresita Carson Valdez’s work draws inspiration from translation as world building, the histories of cloth, the palimpsest, the creation of new traditions and archeological imagery as markers of temporality. Her screen-printed and dyed cloth sculpture, A novena for the plague, feels like a sacred object for private prayer, made public via the extreme circumstances of the pandemic, undergirded by the movement of bodies through global trade and displacement. 

Even when viewed remotely, these works still insist on an awareness of our own spatial relationship to the artists’ bodies and internal worlds, via the stand-in, or symbolic object of the work. Miller & Shellabarger‘s Untitled pressure prints show layers upon layers of hands, giving the impression of being reached toward, or beckoned. The process for creating these images relies on physical pressure or force to create this bodily imprint, underscoring the labor and rhythm of human relationships— a theme at the heart of this collaboration between the married artists. Their gestures shift between moments of togetherness and separation, private and public, protection and pain, and visibility and invisibility. 

Don Widmer’s Darkness and Light, an artist flag book, presents quotes by Etty Hillesum, a Dutch mystic and writer, who documented her life during the German occupation of Amsterdam and her experiences at Westerbork concentration camp. The harsh, stacked geometry of the black book evokes a prison cell block, rooting our current crises of incarceration and fascism in the historical. 

Joshi Radin’s CardboardRecord006_1, made from found packing materials and used clothing in infant proportions, feels like an ultrasound from outer space after the aliens got their hands on our cardboard waste. The print records the marking of an absent body, as both a unit and a package, on a horizontal plane. 

Sam Hensley’s Little Like Yourself presents an animatronic sculpture of a mythical creature resting atop a miniature bed, its breathing slow and belabored. This piece evokes reclaimed experiences of chronic illness and disability, in which rest may be proudly claimed and celebrated. Beds become more than of convalescence, but also soft zones of  pleasure and even performance—bed as stage, stage as shelter, shelter as communion between bodies near and far.   

This exhibition’s optimism comes from its insistence on human touch, physical care and pleasure, and the act of sheltering each other, as if to say: “Even during apocalypse, even when we must rebuild everything, we will still have our bodies and each other’s bodies.”

Image Credit, clockwise from top left:

  • Yasaman Moussavi, Revelation 2, 2019, handmade paper and screenprint (detail)
  • Kianni Pleasant-Bey, Fever Dream, 2019, mixed media (detail)
  • Joshi Radin, Cardboard Record 006, 2020, monotype (detail)
  • Teresita Carson Valdez, A Novena for the Plague, 2019, screenprint, silk, dye discharge (detail)
  • Sam Hensley, Little Like Yourself, 2019, animatronic sculpture and zine (detail)
  • Miller & Shellebarger, Untitled 2, 2019, pressure print
  • Don Widmer, Darkness and Light: Words of Etty Hillesum, 2020, artist book (detail)

With Renewed Urgency: New Editions from Spudnik Press

Featured Artists:

Candida Alvarez, Alexandra Antoine, Judith Brotman, Andrea Carlson, Celeste DeLuna, Brendan Fernandes, Azadeh Gholizadeh, Erin Hayden, Benjamin Merritt, Jessie Mott, Paul Nudd, João Oliveria, Steve Reinke, Joe Tallarico, Selina Trepp

Dates:

8/24/2020 – 10/31/2020

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative (Printshop & Annex)

Events

Open House
Saturday, September 13, 2020
1:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Press Release:

With Renewed Urgency is our annual exhibition featuring new prints by 15 artists, created through our Residency and Invitational Publishing Programs. This exhibition reflects on the unique power of a printmaking studio to breathe new life into the art making process, and how we depend on art during times of crisis for solace and meaning. Our title and theme With Renewed Urgency is also a chance to reflect on how the current pandemic has escalated already existing social emergencies that many of our featured artists have long been making work about. The call of Andrea Carlson and Celeste De Luna’s Indigenous Futurism rings even louder, as capitalism and colonization turn COVID-19 into an economic disaster. Others like Selina Trepp and Benjamin Merritt give us critical and pleasurable ways to reconsider what it means for an artist to remain homebound, reduce their material consumption, or need to rest because of an illness.

Other show highlights include a collagraph impression of the pelt of a plastic animal by our first international Resident Artist, João Oliveira, organized in collaboration with Comfort Station and funded by the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund. The prints from Ten x Ten show a collaboration between visual artists and musicians exploring the translation of artistic gestures across media.

The Spudnik Press Cooperative Residency Program provides professional printmakers unfettered studio access for new projects. The Publishing Program welcomes artists from a variety of contemporary disciplines, ranging from painting and drawing to performance and experiential art making, to enter a centuries-old tradition of developing a fine art print in collaboration with professional printers. Through these programs, Spudnik Press invites a diverse range of artists to continue printmaking’s unique history as a fine art, a master craft, and a social practice. With Renewed Urgency showcases traditional process and new experiments in screenprint, intaglio, relief, collagraph, and digital printing, as well as an impressive range of monotype techniques and prints that used the plate-making process as a form of sculpture. By installing the exhibition throughout the printshop in which the artwork was produced, we embrace our goal of encouraging artists and audiences to move through a variety of creative roles: making, experiencing, learning, and teaching. Placing the artwork into an active print studio highlights connection among the creative, the analytical and the technical processes of art making.

Image:
Left: Benjamin Merrit, Nap Suite
Right, clockwise from top left: Alexandra Antoine, Nkrabea: A coming together; Jessie Mott, OF SOUND AND LINE; Selina Trepp, 7 beats, don’t want to do 8, it’s too square; Azadeh Gholizadeh, Memory Bubbles

See The Printed City!

Featured Artists:

Lauren Anderson, Atlan Arceo-Witzl, Alana Bailey, Ryan Basile, L. Berger, Lilli Carré, Veronica Corzo-Duchardt, Luke Daly & Bailey Romaine, Anya Davidson, Jo Dery, JNL Design, Alex Fuller, Craig Hansen, Walker Kampf-Lassin, Angee Lennard, Cynthia Marris, Keara McGraw, Michelle Miller, Jennifer O’Neill, Colin Palombi, Adam Paul, Mike Pennekamp, Chloe Perkis, Jason Pickelman, Joey Potts, Reba Rakstad, Brad Rohloff, Jill Ruzicka, Mary Sea, Emily Serruto, Derek Smith, and Joe Tallarico

Dates:

2/17/2020 – 4/8/2020

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 West Hubbard, Chicago IL 60622

Corresponding Events:

Charlie and the Hashbrown Factory: 10th Annual Spudnik Press Chili Cook-Off

Exhibition Statement:

From zine fests to shows at The Hideout to Spudnik’s own “Heavy Metal County Fair” themed chili cook-off, our artists have designed stunning visuals for some of the city’s most well loved and experimental events in theatre, literature, music, and the arts. Don’t miss this deep dive into our archives, which includes 3-D posters, wearable posters, and posters so smart they come with books!

This 13-year retrospective of the Chicago arts scene through handprinted posters features screen, offset, and risography prints produced at Spudnik Press Cooperative through both open studio and in-house publishing programs.

Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind

Featured Artist:

Jessica Christy

Dates:

11/15/2019 – 1/18/2020

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 West Hubbard, Chicago IL 60622

Corresponding Events:

Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind | Opening Reception & Artist Talk

Exhibition Statement:

Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind explores a move from the prairies of North Dakota to the urban environment of Chicago. The exhibition considers Jessica Christy’s transplanted indigenous identity, one connected to place, in the midst of a culture shock. While exploring a new city, both foreign and known images were gathered: deer hair, parking signs, coyote tracks, municipal tickets, bird feathers, and corner store signs. Through self-applied cultural guilt and gender expectations, visuals emerge that suggest the artist’s voice is becoming comfortable in the 21st century metropolis.

As traditional printmaking moves from a commercial process to fine art editions to a contemporary medium, artists are continually exploring new matrices and substrates and their conceptual implications. The work in Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind stems from a fascination with this contemporary shift. Images are transferred through print onto surfaces found and gathered in Chicago. The artist’s cultural and personal transition from the Great Plains to an urban Chicago environment is represented on found wood, fabric, and other surfaces through text and imagery gathered in a daily journal. Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind employs these new substrates to intimately speak to the artist’s experiences of cultural disconnect, domestic struggles, and a general liaison with her new environment.

Download the Press Release

Artist Bio:

Christy is a native North Dakotan, born to two artists on the Sanger Art Farm, located at the northern edge of the Sheyenne River Valley. She received her MFA from the University of North Dakota in 2011 and has since created works that challenge the status quo of human activity and the resulting impacts. Heavily influenced by her upbringing in the Dakota and Lakota cultures, Christy weaves the Native experience into her work. She has shown both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Find further information at www.jessicachristy.com.

Image: Jessica Christy, Untitled (chic), 2019

Prints United: 2019 Member Exhibition

Featured Artists:

Vidisha Aggarwal
Reevah Agarwaal
Lisa Armstrong
Cat Chen
Elke Claus
Kyle Dunlap
Lya Finston
Rita Gondocs
Elnaz Javani
M Kellman
Steve Kerber
Dave Krzeminski
Gary Lehman
Dutes Miller
Yasi Moussavi
Catherine Norcott
Trent Pierson
Hope Wang

Dates:

8/30/2019-11/2/2019

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 West Hubbard, Chicago IL 60622

Corresponding Events:

Reception! Prints United: 2019 Member Exhibition

Press Release:

This exhibition highlights the thing that brings us all together: Print!

Prints United: 2019 Member Exhibition features a wide variety of print-centered art making that happens at Spudnik Press Cooperative. Printmakers and fans alike are invited to celebrate the work of our beloved print geeks, relief devotees, intaglio fans, serial serigraphers, and letterpress lovers.

From the Exhibitions Committee:

“At Spudnik Press, we all feel welcome, whether we wipe plates, roll ink, or squeegee shapes. We all have in common a deep curiosity about print and an appreciation for the way ink transforms our ideas into reality. This exhibition celebrates the cacophony of visual statements made each day at Spudnik Press.”

This exhibition celebrates the cacophony of visual statements made each day at Spudnik Press.  

Download the Press Release

Noah Breuer: CB&S Werkstätte

Featured Artist:

Noah Breuer

Dates:

6/7/2019-7/27/2019

Location:

Annex of Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 West Hubbard, Chicago IL 60622

Corresponding Events:

Noah Breuer: CB&S Werkstätte | Opening Reception & Artist Demonstration

June 7, 2019 6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

In his first Chicago solo exhibition, Noah Breuer presents prints and fabric wall hangings from his ongoing project that examines the visual legacy of “Carl Breuer and Sons” (CB&S), his Jewish family’s former textile printing business in Bohemia. The exhibition’s title, CB&S Werkstätte is a nod to the now-defunct family business that began in 1897 and was forcibly sold to Nazi-approved owners in 1942. Breuer acquired a rich digital collection of original CB&S designs and fabric samples during a 2016 research trip to the Czech Textile Museum and has used these images as the primary source material for his current work.  The exhibition features recent laser-engraved woodblock prints, large cyanotypes on cotton and an accompanying risograph-printed artist book published by Spudnik Press.   

In conjunction with the opening, Breuer will facilitate a demonstration that will allow exhibition attendees to use the laser-engraved surfaces of custom-built table-tops to make wax rubbings.  Attendees may collaborate with the artist and produce new artworks inspired by the CB&S factory designs.  The table-tops will be displayed and made available for use through the duration of the exhibition. 

About the artist:  Noah Breuer is an American artist and printmaker.  He holds a BFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. Breuer additionally earned a graduate research certificate in traditional woodblock printmaking and paper-making from Kyoto Seika University in Japan. Solo exhibitions include Spudnik Press Cooperative, Chicago, IL, Left Field Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA, SPACE Gallery, Portland ME, and Zughaus Gallery in Berkeley, CA. He has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow, Kala Art Institute, Hotel Pupik, Grin City and the University of Oregon. His artist books have been published by the San Francisco Center for the Book as well as Small Editions in Brooklyn, New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.  Currently, Breuer works as an Assistant Professor at Auburn University. 

Image:  Hops, 2018, woodcut, 22″ x 15”

 

Eternal Recurrence: New Editions from Spudnik Press Cooperative

Featured Artists:

Carris Adams, Claire Ashley, Judith Brotman, Elijah Burgher, Holly Cahill, Lilli Carre, Dana Carter, Tom Christison, kg, Jonathan Herrera, Richard Hull, Anita Jung, Raeleen Kao, Chad Kouri, Benjamin Larose, Judy Ledgerwood, Faheem Majeed, David Leggett, Caroline Liu, Jereon Nelemans, Paul Nudd, William J. O’Brien, Roni Packer, Steve Reinke, Kay Rosen. Alice Tippit, Orkideh Torabi, Amanda Williams, Brittney Leeanne Williams

Dates:

4/5/2019 – 5/25/2019

Location:

Spudnik Press Cooperative (Printshop & Annex)

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception & Publisher’s Talk
Friday, April 5, 2019
6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

Eternal Recurrence: New Editions from Spudnik Press Cooperative features prints by 28 artists who recently developed new print-based projects through the Spudnik Press Cooperative Residency and Publishing Programs.

The Spudnik Press Cooperative Residency Program provides artists unfettered studio access to produce a new body of print-based work. For the first time in 2018, the Residency Program was open to national artists in addition to local artists. Renowned printmakers Anita Jung and Tom Christison travelled from Iowa City to be our first regional visiting artists.

The Spudnik Press Cooperative Publishing Program invites artists representing a variety of contemporary disciplines—ranging from painting and drawing to performance and experiential art making—to develop a fine art print in collaboration with professional printers at Spudnik Press.

Together, these programs provide entry point into the unique facets of printmaking, such as its historical and cultural roots as a social art practice and its role in contemporary art practices.

The phrase Eternal Recurrence is borrowed from Steve Reinke’s print entitled Eternal Recurrence of Shame from his series featuring absurd, crude, humorous, and poetic aphorisms and short phrases. Reinke’s piece references a phenomenon Nietzsche calls “eternal recurrence” in a passage from The Gay Science. In the passage, Nietzsche asserts that existence may recur in an infinite cycle as energy and matter transform over time.

The artists included in this exhibition maintain a wide range of studio practices and experiential art making. Eternal Recurrence reflects the continual transformation of ink and paper to reflect artists’ visions and honors the act of creation as a continuous process responsive to a particular time and place–a particular recurrence of the infinite possibilities.

The work in Eternal Recurrence features screenprinting, relief, letterpress, intaglio, and monoprinting techniques, using a range of traditional and nontraditional materials and bringing together an impressive collection of artists. Each prints reflects the artist’s vision and dedication to their individual practices while showcasing the creative, analytical and technical processes of art making.

Image: Cerulean Blue Series #2, kg, 2017

Non-Constants: Ashley Freeby & Jesse Meredith

Featured Artists:

Ashley Freeby
Jesse Meredith

Dates:

1/11/2019 – 3/16/2019

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception & Artist Talk
Friday, January 11, 2019
6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

Emerging from recurring conversations about access, authenticity and authorship, artists Ashley Freeby and Jesse Meredith make artwork around and through one another’s experiences, from outside of their own cultural backgrounds. Over the course of a year, they have worked in one another’s studios, traded primary research sources and conducted a series of structured conversations about their own personal experiences. Non-Constants presents recent work that has stemmed from this exchange.

Many of their collaborative artworks address racialized experiences in the United States and transpose them with survivalism and defensive preparation. Using a technique of doubling, one artist produces a piece through synthesis of conversations and research, and the other re-makes it, displacing its context.

At a time of polarization and broken lines of communication, Non-Constants asks viewers to consider the impact of their own presence in the environments they inhabit, to reclaim permission to be inquisitive and open, and think outside of individualized experiences.

About the Artists:

Ashley M. Freeby (b. 1986, rural Pennsylvania) is a multidisciplinary artist whose incisive exploration of American history builds a critical examination through found sources to reveal how the history of injustices against people of color inform our understanding of society today. Recent solo exhibitions, Unjustified Patterns, Kanzlei, Berlin Germany and Palimpsest: present through past, GalleryX, Chicago. In addition, she has participated in group exhibitions in Canada, Chicago and Pennsylvania. Freeby is a 2019 HATCH Projects resident at Chicago Artist Coalition, received An Artist Opportunity Fellowship from Vermont Studio Center and participated in a residency at Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin, Germany. She received a MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2018 and a BA from Bucknell University 2015.

Jesse Meredith is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, sculpture, text and video to undermine power structures and complicate simplified narratives of belonging. Born in New York City (1987), he grew up splitting his time between rural Gilboa, New York and Brooklyn. Recent solo and group Exhibitions include Reckless Comfort, Extase Chicago, Do You Fear For Your Life, 062, Chicago, and 2,3,4: Dimensional Photographies, Ohio University Seigfred Art Gallery. He was awarded the 2018 James Weinstein memorial fellowship and is currently a Field/Work artist in residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition. He has also exhibited in, New York, Philadelphia, and Buenos Aires. He currently lives and works in Chicago. He received a BFA from SUNY Purchase (2009) and an MFA from SAIC (2018).

Image: Ashley Freeby & Jesse Meredith, And What Are We Up To This Evening?, 2018, graphite, acrylic, digital collage, 14″ x 28″

 

Collective Ground | 2018 Annual Member Exhibition

Featured Artists:

Julia Arredondo, Molly Berkson, Emma Bilyeu, Jennifer Burak and Dan Spielman, Elijah Burgher, Mary Clare Butler, Jessica Christy, Ben Garbus, Orr Gidon, Colleen Hardison, Margot Harrington, David Krzeminski, Carron Little, Grace Makuch, Dan Manion, JJ McLuckie, Miller and Shellabarger, Yasaman Moussavi, Catherine Norcott, Emily Shopp, Veronica Siehl, Junli Song, Amanda Ware

Dates:

September 7 – October 20, 2018

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press
1821 W. Hubbard St., Ste. 302

Gallery Hours:

Monday – Friday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturday, 1:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception
Friday, September 7, 2018
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

EXPO Chicago’s Art After Hours 
September 28, 2018
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Hubbard Street Lofts Open House
Friday, October 19, 2018
6:00 – 10:00 p.m.

2018 Annual Benefit: Bad Wedding
Saturday, October 20, 2018
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Press Release:

Spudnik Press Cooperative is pleased to present Collective Ground, our 2018 Annual Member Exhibition. Collective Ground opens on Friday, September 7th at The Annex at Spudnik Press and will have a public reception from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. All are welcome.

In The One and The Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, art historian Grant H. Kester writes: “The workshop has emerged as a significant nexus of creative production in a wide range of collaborative and collective projects.” Inspired by the work of our own community, Collective Ground is an exhibition that highlights collaborative projects by members of Spudnik Press. This exhibition is a response to our layered and multi-generational community, comprised of creatives from different backgrounds, fields of study, and stages in their careers. It is the amalgamation of their unique perspectives and voices that allows our print shop to be a space for social, educational, and artistic exchange.

Through this exhibition, we witness work that is playful and humorous, socially conscious, or explores the boundaries of print media. The outcome is a spacious celebration of the different artistic approaches and ideas shared in our community of printmakers. This in turn, yields a transformative vision and helps craft a deeper understanding of our art practices, each other, and our surrounding communities.

We grateful to our participating artists who embarked on this project with us, and to our 140+ active members. It is their contributions that enrich our community day in and day out.

Participating collaborators include:

Julia Arredondo and JJ McLuckie
Molly Berkson and Orr Gidon
Emma Bilyeu and Dan Manion
Jennifer Burak and Dan Spielman
Elijah Burgher and Dutes Miller
Mary Clare Butler and Veronica Siehl
Jessica Christy and Spudnik Press Studio Users
Ben Garbus and Grace Makuch
Colleen Hardison and Margot Harrington
David Krzeminski and Amanda Ware
Carron Little and Spare Rib Project Contributors
Miller and Shellabarger
Yasaman Moussavi and Catherine Norcott
Yasaman Moussavi, Emily Shopp, and Junli Song

Please note, Collective Ground will have extended viewing hours on September 28th during EXPO Chicago’s Art After Hours, on Friday, October 19th during Hubbard Street Lofts Open House, and on Saturday, October 20th during our 2018 Annual Benefit: Bad Wedding.

Now More Than Ever

Featured Artists:

Emmy Lingscheit

Dates:

11/2/2018 – 12/29/2018

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception & Artist Talk
Friday, November 2, 2018
6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

Spudnik Press Cooperative is pleased to present Now More Than Ever, a solo exhibition featuring work by Emmy Lingscheit.

In Now More Than Ever, artist Emmy Lingscheit invites us to think about the idea and aesthetics of salvaging hope, shelter, and community out of repression, division, and catastrophe caused by rapid environmental change. Her prints offer a critique of entrenched systems and attitudes that contribute to environmental damage, amplifying social and economic inequality in the process.

Created specifically for this exhibition, and in addition to her framed work, Lingscheit hones in on the idea of a natural world out of balance through large-scale relief prints. These pieces are designed to yield prints that align edge-to-edge, repeating infinitely and building up to a visually overwhelming abundance that is both breathtaking and grotesque. Among the specimen featured in these large-scale prints are oyster mushrooms and a bloom of jellyfish, both of which may seem alien to us, but are situated to inherit the earth as we change it.

Now More Than Ever opens on November 2, 2018 and will be on view through December 29, 2018 at The Annex at Spudnik Press, 1821 W. Hubbard Street, Suite 302, Chicago, IL 60622.

About the Artist:

Emmy Lingscheit’s work critically investigates the ambiguities and exchanges between organisms and non-organisms, and that between humans and non-humans. These seemingly rigid categories become increasingly blurry as technological advances take us further into a postnatural domain, and scientific research continues to reveal surprising insights into the world we think we know. Lingscheit’s prints, drawings, and sculptural works explore the myriad ways in which we are enmeshed with the non-human world, from the cellular level to the global economy, and their implications for the ecological and climatic challenges we face.

Lingscheit exhibits her work nationally and internationally, including recent invitational and group exhibitions “New Prints 2016/Winter” at the International Print Center New York, NY, “A Curious Bestiary: Chimeras and Cryptozoology from American Printmakers” at Davidson Galleries in Seattle, WA, and “American Lithography in the 21st Century,” at the Lithographic Academy in Tidaholm, Sweden. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the University of Southern Indiana, and the Indianapolis Arts Center. She has held numerous artist residencies, including at Ucross, Brush Creek, Zygote Press, and the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program. Lingscheit holds a BFA from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, and an MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her work is represented by Davidson Galleries of Seattle, WA, and resides in private and public collections, including the collection of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Lingscheit is currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she is the printmaking coordinator.

Image (left to right): Emmy Lingscheit, Longitudinal Study, 2016; Mycoremediation, 2018 (detail).

States of I: A Conversation

Featured Artists:

Mary Jones and Jolynn Reigeluth

Dates:

6/15/2018 – 8/11/2018

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception & Artist Talk
Friday, June 15, 2018
6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

Spudnik Press Cooperative is pleased to present States of I: A Conversation, an exhibition featuring work by artists Mary Jones and Jolynn Reigeluth.

Jones and Reigeluth are artists that live and work in states of “I;” respectively, Indianola, Iowa and Indianapolis, Indiana. In addition to living in states that start with the same letter, these printmakers have a penchant for building images from a central persona who is at best an unreliable narrator, caught and fraught in a landscape of self.

In their work, both artists celebrate the absurdity of being human by bringing to light some of our deepest, untold internal monologues. These autobiographical works by Jones and Reigeluth exemplify their shared interests in narrative imagery, as well as a love for the graphic legacy and energy coming out of Chicago, Illinois. For this exhibition, Jones and Reigeluth will contribute two bodies of work that culminate in a conversation with a set of two prints – one from each artist – that correspond in size and title.

States of I: A Conversation opens on June 15, 2018 and will be on view through August 11, 2018 at The Annex at Spudnik Press, 1821 W. Hubbard Street, Suite 302, Chicago, IL 60622.

About the Artists:

Mary Jones makes maps of the wilderness of personal histories. Images and words are layered out of time and perspective, and where and when are subjective. Space is delineated by the inhabitants, the who in the journeys being told. These personas are a combination of what is seen with what is imagined about encounters with people, places, and things. Details get piled on in the way that life is lived– in steps, notes, beats, breaths, and marks. Whether drawing or working in print media, collage is always an element. Trained as a printmaker, Jones is a scavenger of technologies, old and new.

Prior to moving to the Des Moines area, Jones lived in Chicago, where she exhibited at Ann Nathan Gallery. She was employed as an illustrator and designer, with work published by the Chicago Tribune, Playboy Magazine, and the Philadelphia Enquirer, among other publications. She was awarded residencies with the Ragdale Foundation, and with Anchor Graphics in Chicago. Twice she has taught photopolymer intaglio workshops for Frogman’s Print Workshops in Omaha, NE. For the past 17 years, she taught printmaking, design, and book arts courses Grand View University in Des Moines. She has work in several public collections, including the Illinois State Museum, and the Alter Collection of Art by Women at PAFA in Philadelphia. She is represented by Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee and Moberg Gallery in Des Moines.

Jolynn Reigeluth’s work combines an array of printmaking processes with drawing, painting, and collage to create print and mixed media hybrids. The images earnestly and humorously reflect on the emotional and physical aspects of the human condition and its twisted ironies. By working in tension between intuition and structure, she creates imagery that playfully captures the complexity of ubiquitous human experiences and interactions. She has a distinct affinity for the absurd and scatological that manifests in these introspective self-portraits.

Reigeluth is an artist from Des Moines, IA currently living and working in Indianapolis, Indiana. She earned an M.F.A. in printmaking from Kansas State University in 2015. Since 2015, Reigeluth has completed a residency in Ontario, Canada, taught at Indiana Wesleyan University as well as other Indianapolis venues, and visited universities in Michigan and Kansas as a visiting artist. In 2016, she curated a traveling exhibition titled “Sateen Dura-Luxe,” an exchange portfolio in honor of Indiana born author, Kurt Vonnegut. The exhibition schedule included MAPC’s 2016 Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, and The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis, where Jolynn is currently organizing another exhibition for 2018. In recent years, her work has been included in exhibitions across the United States including the International Print Center New York’s New Prints Exhibition, Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition, Pacific States Biennial North American Printmaking Exhibition, and others. In 2018 Reigeluth will participate in conducting research for a project titled Transforming Printmaking Through Chemical Innovation lead by National Endowment for the Arts Grant Recipients, Jason Scuilla and Stefan Bossmann, of Kansas State University.

Image (left to right): Jolynn Reigeluth, These Are My Legs II, 2017 (detail); Mary Jones, Harryette, 2017 (detail).

Entre Rios y Montañas

Featured Artists:

Jonathan Herrera

Dates:

4/27/2018 – 6/9/2018

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Corresponding Events:

Opening Reception & Artist Talk:

Friday, April 27, 2018
6:00 – 9:00pm

Press Release:

Spudnik Press Cooperative is pleased to present Entre Rios y Montañas (Between Rivers and Mountains), a solo exhibition featuring new work by Chicago-based artist Jonathan Herrera.

The work featured in Entre Rios y Montañas stems from Herrera’s deep interest and continued investigation of the relationships between collective memory and historical instances of state-sponsored violence and trauma inflicted on politicized bodies. Often the victims of these crimes, or rather their bodies that disappear, leave behind stories not in words but in gesture. Trails of clothing are found in the deserts between borders as they get stuck on fences with barbed wire or wash up onto shores of beaches. These garments are sometimes attached to lifeless bodies while others manage to claim autonomy from the flesh.

Through these collographs, akin to rubbings, Herrera explores the connection between clothing and the body, as well as the relationship between forensic evidence and items of personal significance. By employing this print-based process, Herrera partakes in an act of remembrance as he produces tracings and impression of clothing left behind. His harsh, and almost violent, treatment of the objects carries forth into the artwork’s final presentation. Ultimately, the objects of clothing rendered in Herrera’s work are declarations unto themselves, left behind by bodies to evoke lived experiences.

Jonathan Herrera is a print-based studio artist and teacher from Chicago, IL. He holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College in Art and Design. Through his studio practice and teaching philosophy, Herrera engages multiple facets of place-making and thinking in order to express ideas through concept building, process, and materials. He constantly works to create accessibility in both art and education by connecting his studio work, public work, and community engagement. Herrera has recently exhibited work at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN), and Concordia Gallery (St. Paul, MN).

Image: Jonathan Herrera, Untitled, 2017 (detail).