Posts Categorized: Past

CHASING POSADA! A Macabre Populist in the City

Curator:

Ryan Standfest, Rotland Press

Featured Artists:

Marie-Pierre Brunel / Tom Carey / Stephen Cavanagh / Sue Coe / Bill Connors / D.B. Dowd / Bill Fick / Céline Guichard / Ben Jones / Kaz / Erik Lundquist / Marc Brunier-Mestas / Yusuke Okada / Onsmith / David Paleo / Grant Reynolds / Arnaud Rochard / David Sandlin / Stephen William Schudlich / Caroline Sury / Wouter Vanhaelemeesch / Chris Wright

Dates:

1/17/2015 – 3/1/2015

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday January 17, 2014
6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

19 printmakers have responded to the artwork and ideas of José Guadalupe Posada (1852 – 1913), a popular illustrator-printmaker who had a unique working relationship with the urban environment of Mexico City. Posada observed the city from the window of his street corner studio, as he produced broadsides and periodicals to be circulated in the streets. In these, Posada trafficked in a “macabre populism,” giving his audience what they wanted—disasters, freaks of nature, social scandals and scenes of fantastical and everyday violence. It was a vision of an unstable and violent world but also an act of honoring the daily struggle of living. For this exhibition, a group of artists have created limited edition prints and another group has contributed to a limited edition newsprint tabloid publication, keeping in mind Posada and his presence in the city as a “macabre populist.”

Ryan Standfest is an artist and art educator who lives and works in Detroit. He is the publisher and editor of ROTLAND PRESS and founded the performance group Cabaret BLACK EYE. He holds an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa.

Horrifically Obvious, New Work by Tate Foley

Curator:

Kim Morski, 2014 Studio Fellow

Featured Artist:

Tate Foley

Dates:

10/18/2014 – 11/20/2014

Location:

The Printshop @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday October 18, 2014
6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

Tate Foley’s new body of work, Horrifically Obvious, elaborates on the theme of duality and doubling, a focal point of his studio practice. The series consists of individual prints and drawings hung side by side in pairs—a reference to the spread or gutter in a book. Foley utilizes the spread as a device to force previous unrelated pieces into relationship and dialogue. Each element, informed by its counterpart forms a more complete whole. Yet even as we set out to discover and understand the connections between them, Foley’s use of office supply hanging mechanisms (metallic tape and binder clips) and varied techniques (drawing, risograph, screen printing, and digital printing) remind us the current status and the meaning of the work is in flux, playfully subject to influence and change.

Tate Foley is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Department of Art, Design, and Visual Culture at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. His work has been recently exhibited in New York City, Washington D.C., Portland, Saint Louis, Cleveland, and purchased by Toledo Museum of Art, and the UCLA Fine Arts, Yale University, and Reed College libraries. Foley earned a BA in Studio Art from Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 2007 and an MFA in Printmaking from Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia in 2010.

CPG 5 Year Anniversary Exhibition

Curator:

Luke Daly, with support from the CPG Board of Directors

Featured Artist:

Jaclyn Jacunski
Kate McQuillen
Matt Bodett
Megan Sterling
Justin Santora
Zissou Tasseff-Elenkoff
Todd Irwin
Maggie Marlin
Troy Lehman

Plus select prints from the CPG Archive.

Dates:

10/18/2014 – 11/26/2014

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday October 18, 2014
6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

Established in 2009, the Chicago Printers Guild (CPG) supports and fosters the work of printers and seeks to bridge the gap between commercial printing and fine-art printmaking.

The CPG 5 Year Anniversary highlights the collaborative nature and collective ethos of the guild by presenting both individual collaborative works by members of the guild. As the CPG reaches a five year milestone, we celebrates the exemplary work in print media being produced in Chicago and showcase the impact the guild has on its members and the Chicago printmaking community alike. New collaborative works are by featured artists Jaclyn Jacunski, Kate McQuillen, Matt Bodett, Megan Sterling, Justin Santora, Zissou Tasseff-Elenkoff, Todd Irwin, and Maggie Marlin. Additional prints will be on display from the CPG Archive, house by the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College. Additionally, the exhibition will include a free takeaway designed by Troy Lehman and printed on Spudnik Press Cooperative’s newest equipment, a Risograph 3700.

The CPG 5 Year Anniversary Opening Reception will be held Saturday October 18th, 6-9pm and is a Featured Chicago Artist Month Event. In addition to the Annex at Spudnik Press, the 1821 Hubbard Street Lofts are hosting their Fall Open House. Participating venues include Platform Studios, Tsubo Salon and the private studios of Gerda Meyer Bernstein and Doug Fogelson.

Lucha Lives

Curator:

Salvador Andrade Arévalo

Featured Artist:

Ricardo Xavier Serment

Dates:

8/30/2014 – 09/30/2014

Location:

The Printshop @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday August 30, 2014
6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

Lucha Lives is an exploration of the generational realities and mythologies experienced within immigrant communities, particularly those of Mexican Americans in Chicago. Using the iconographic imagery of Lucha Libre, artist Ricardo Serment pivots around the struggle, mirth, and quotidian by shining a spotlight on the spectacle that the everyday can be.

Ricardo Xavier Serment was born in Chicago to Mexican immigrant parents. In 2007, he graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BFA, concentrating in printmaking. He currently works in drawing, relief printing, and screen-printing; he also creates handmade books and portfolios. His inspiration draws from an array of collaboratives and movements including: the Taller de Gráfica Popular, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, Contemporary American printmakers, and the Mexican Muralism movement.

 

Recombinant Stare: a Stare Magazine Retrospective

Curator:

Kevin Riordan

Featured Artists:

Wayne Bertola
Mike Brehm
Elroy Christy
Peter Hannan
Bradley Lastname
Jean Riordan
Fritz Wolfmeyer

Dates:

8/30/2014 – 09/30/2014

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday August 30, 2014
6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

Recombinant Stare is an exhibition that pulls together strands from Kevin Riordan’s Stare Press, particularly Stare Magazine, a publication focusing on irreverent and arresting graphic art and writing that ran from1976-1991. The show consists of issues of the magazine as well as books, posters, press sheets, photostats, and photographs. It also brings together recent and selected publications and works by some of the many Stare contributors, including Wayne Bertola, Mike Brehm, Elroy Christy, Peter Hannan, Bradley Lastname, Jean Riordan and the late Fritz Wolfmeyer. The show will be accompanied by the publication of a printed book that is part catalog and part transgression against the encrypted order of cataloguing. Stare steps on toes and gets up your nose by throwing its flyweight around without leaving the ground.

Kevin Riordan is a lifelong Chicagoan and long time staff and faculty member of Columbia College Chicago. A former art museum security guard, sock salesman and comic book production slave, he attended 6 post secondary schools including vocational training at the Boys Club, 1975, in printing, which he used to subvert American culture throughout the next few decades, through the publication of Stare magazine and other seditious editions and exhibitions.

 

Bred Press #1

Curator:

Brad Rohloff, 2014 Studio Fellow

Featured Artists:

Abe Lampert
Alabaster
Andy Burkholder
Ben Marcus
Danielle Chenette
Inés Estrada
Michael Olivo
Natali Koromoto
Nicole Ginelli

Dates:

07/19/2014 – 8/23/2014

Location:

The Printshop @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday July 19, 2014 5:00-8:00pm

Press Release:

Bred Press is an artist books, comics, and zine publishing house located in Chicago. Started by Brad Rohloff in 2014, it provides a platform by which to support contemporary artists working within the medium of printed and published matter. Bred Box #1 is a printed suite of work by comics artists invited and published by Bred Press. The inaugural release of Bred Box will have Abe Lampert, Alabaster, Andy Burkholder, Ben Marcus, Danielle Chenette, Inés Estrada, Michael Olivo, Natali Koromoto, and Nicole Ginelli all with new offset lithograph prints. Bred Box comes in an edition of 150, packaged in a screenprinted envelope and numbered. Bred Box #1 will be for sale at the opening as well as individual prints from the artists.

The Wrong Story

Featured Artists:

Ali Aschman

Dates:

July 19 – August 23, 2014

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday, July 19, 6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

The Wrong Story is a solo exhibition of relief and silkscreen prints made while Aschman was Artist in Residence at Spudnik Press from March through May, 2014, and an accompanying stop-motion animation created from the printed works. Aschman employs symbolic motifs such as ropes, braids, ladders and hands, which through intuitive association form a fractured narrative about moments of convergence and separation between individuals. She embraces incoherence and ambiguity to communicate the fragmented and uneasy experience of encountering another person’s reality. Limbs detach, bodies open to reveal hidden objects, peculiar figures gather among stepped archways, hesitating to touch, in an endless loop with no discernable climax or resolution. The Wrong Story wavers at the frayed edges of a narrative, unraveling the artist’s desire for both connection and solitude.

Artist Bio:

Ali Aschman is a Chicago-based artist whose practice encompasses printmaking, animation and installation, exploring forms of experimental narrative across media. She received a BA from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited internationally in numerous gallery exhibitions and film festivals, and was recently inducted as a Visual Arts Fellow by the Luminarts Cultural Foundation. Ali will be spending the next few months at several residency programs around the United States, creating animations and works on paper.

PROOF: Fellowship Showcase

Featured Artists:

Nate Cubeta
Elise Forer
Tara Zanzig

Dates:

June 12 – July 12, 2014

Location:

The Printshop @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday, June 28, 4:30-8:30pm

Press Release:

The inaugural artist’s of Spudnik’s Studio Fellowship Program are Nate Cubeta, Elise Forer, and Tara Zanzig, co-ordinated by Vanessa Delamorte.

“As pioneers of the program, we adopted PROOF as the theme for our concluding exhibition. PROOF references a printer’s prototype, a document of a step taken, and a collection of evidence. The exhibit will feature select individual works culminating through the fellowship and a collaborative installation of process and studio ephemera.”

Join the fellows to celebrate their work and get a taste of their process through live printing workshops and demos lead by Nate, Elise and Tara.

Artist Bios:

Tara Zanzig, under the moniker Tararchy, is a multi-disciplinary artist with an emphasis on non-traditional screen printing. Raised in South Florida, Tara moved to Chicago in 1998 to attend The School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago. She received her BFA in 2001. Post graduation, Tara immersed herself in the t-shirt printing industry for more than a decade, returning her focus to fine art in 2013.

“My work explores the concept and connection of mind-body-spirit to our existence and the natural world. It’s about an ideal state of being and our expression of this state through activities we are passionate about. The practice of yoga informs my work literally, while the concepts are symbolic and universal.”
www.tararchy.com/

Elise Forer is a printmaker and Minnesota native living and working in the Chicago area. Forer received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM) in Moorhead, MN in 2013. In her time at MSUM she served as Studio Intern and Teacher’s Aide under John Volk in the printmaking studio, and the resident intern at the Hannaher Studio in the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND. Forer’s work has been shown in several exhibitions, including student shows juried by Curator Lisa Elder Melander and Michael Byzewski of Aesthetic Apparatus. Forer also operates Take Aim Press and Bindery which offers stationary, prints, and handmade boxes and books.
www.eliseforer.com

Nate Cubeta is a print artist from Boston, MA he received his BFA in Printmaking from Maryland Institute College of Art. His recent work comments on the sensation that role is sports in our society, with a visual focus on both the architectural and cinematic. He has interned at Spudnik in 2011 and taught a class on screen printing with photos in 2013.
http://cubetaprints.tumblr.com/

Oh, won’t you be my neighbor?

Curator:

Elise Forer, 2014 Studio Fellow

Featured Artists:

Kellie Hames

Dates:

05/10/2014 – ???

Location:

The Printshop @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday May 10, 2014
6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

Kellie Hames’ new body of work, “Oh, won’t you be my neighbor?”, debuts in The Printshop at Spudnik Press. Hames explores isolation and connectivity in the Midwest suburbs.

“I find it unusual that, despite the close proximity there is a distance between neighbors in these communities, especially among young individuals. I attribute this to modern advances, where technology allows us to communicate with those we choose and ignore others, and where a wider social connection corresponds directly to a more isolated personal connection.”

Born and raised in Minnesota, Kellie Hames attained her BFA in printmaking from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 2010. Pursuing her love for lithography, Hames applied and was accepted to the world-renowned Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2011.  After successfully completing the second year apprenticeship Hames was awarded a Master Printer certificate from Tamarind Institute and to this day holds the record for the most editions pulled by a second year apprentice printer.

Her work has been exhibited nationally, most notably at the Plains Art Museum (Fargo, ND), The North Dakota Museum of Art (Grand Forks, ND) and the University of the Arts Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), among others. Hames is currently studying at Northern Illinois University and residing in DeKalb, Illinois.

 

Tenebris

Curator:

Nate Cubeta, 2014 Fellow

Featured Artists:

Kyle Tata
James Bouché

Dates:

04/12/2014 – 04/27/2014

Location:

The Printshop @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Friday April 18, 2014
7:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

In Tenebris, James Bouché and Kyle Tata engage in the historically grounded practice of taking objects in the studio and translating them into finished works. Paired, the selected works reflect two distinct approaches to the task that are unified by maintaining the integrity and substance of their chosen subjects. Bouché takes a tangible, action-oriented approach by using the physical half tone pattern of mesh fabric as both a surface treatment and a positive for screen printing. The prints are systematically layered so that we witness the disorder and variation produced from that repetition. The source object is clear and simple, yet the results are abstract and optically complex.

The images emerging from Tata’s studio are instantly recognizable and informed by contemporary still lives. He crafts the atmosphere, clarity and composition to reflect each object’s unique qualities; a meticulous, yet hazy composition of a drink ring and wishbones, sharp concrete forms and a deep darkness with subtle fauna. In 2014, Tenebris displays two young artists’ addition to the extensive canon of studio observation and still life.

 

In Clipping Signal

Curators:

Luke Daly, Spudnik Press Cooperative
April Sheridan,  Columbia College’s Center for Book and Paper Arts

Featured Artists:

Rosmarie Waldrop
Keith Waldrop
Gustave Morin
Michael Carr
Brandon Downing
Jen Bervin
Eric Unger
Norma Cole
Bailey Romaine
David Baptiste Chirot
Lewis Freedman
Barrett Gordon
Tom Ahern
Krista Franklin
Brett Brady
Kyle Schlesinger

Dates:

05/17/2014 – 06/28/2014

Location:

The Annex @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday May 17, 2014
6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

In Clipping Signal is an exhibition of new and selected works by poets involved in the dual practices of writing and making visual collage. The show explores the connections between the practice of collage and its role in the formal, semantic and imaginative landscapes of contemporary poetic practice. The materials in the exhibition will consist of visual works as well as a publication consisting of images and writings exploring the intersections of poetry and visual art.

 

Good Vibrations

Curator:

Tara Zanzig

Featured Artists:

Joey Potts, Austra, and Chema Skandal

Dates:

03/08/2014 – 03/30/2014

Location:

The Printshop @ Spudnik Press

Opening Reception:

Saturday March 8, 2014
6:00-9:00pm

Press Release:

Brutal winter, right?! Break out of the winter doldrums and get some Good Vibrations going over at Spudnik with the March show in the print shop featuring a few of Chicago’s best: Joey Potts, Austra, and Chema Skandal! Each artist’s work uniquely uses character in bright color palettes creating an environment of good good good…good vibrations.

This opening is a very special one as each artist has donated a one color design that you can print right there at the show! Try your hand at screen printing, support Chicago’s artists, hang out and have some fun. We hope to see you there!

Joey Potts works with a wide variety of media to create illustrations, animations, graphic prints, paintings and collage.  His influences include classic cartoons and animation, skateboarding, renaissance art, toys, religious iconography, abstract art, science fiction, movies, psychedelic art, music, and natural phenomena.

Austra is a painter, both street and studio. It’s not always smiles, but it’s all good. Austra’s characters showcase her distinct cartoon style. While cool and playful on the surface, her work explores a wide range of experience, the yin and the yang, and what it is to be.

Chema Skandal is a graphic artist, painter, and screen printer. His enthusiasm for popular music and images of the last century are evident in his body of work ranging from gig posters to outdoor murals.