Dear Friends,

As 2013 comes to a close, we asked our dedicated Board of Directors to reflect on how Spudnik Press is unique in serving our community and support the arts, and why you should consider supporting Spudnik. Here is what they had to say:

We bring people together

From the free artist talks and lectures we offer, to our collaborations with larger organizations like Homeroom for Ten x Ten, and the Poetry Foundation for The Printers Ball, engaging with our Chicago community is at the core of who we are.

We welcome everyone

Spudnik Press Cooperative supports artists and students from all backgrounds through field trips, internships, publishing projects, group classes, and private lessons. We collaborate with high school poets, nursing home residents, public school teachers, musicians, graphic designers, and established artists.This cross-pollination provides a unique context for individuals to connect to their communities through visual art.

We meet people where they are at

Whether you need to print a single t-shirt, develop a full product line, or learn a traditional printmaking process, Spudnik has something to offer you. However, Spudnik Press isn’t just a place to take classes and make art. We offer creative programming to support artists and aspiring artists at any stage of their career including professional development, internships, residencies, and apprenticeships. These services are often offered at low or no cost to the artists.

We are committed to being affordable

Accessibility and affordability are key parts of Spudnik’s missionm so we aim to keep our fees and tuitions low, and offer avenues to those who cannot afford studio access through subsidized apprenticeships, youth field trips, community workshops and more. Your support will increase opportunities we are able to offer to those who cannot afford Spudnik.

We invest your donations wisely

Each dollar contributed to our mission is spent judiciously, and all earned income is completely reinvested in our programming. An average of $33 per day is spent on art supplies, which adds up to over $12,000 each year. $150 covers one month of insurance. $750 pays for one Artist Residency. Even a small donation can help fund an exhibition or youth field trip, and ensures that we can keep costs low for all that use our studio.

Studio fees, tuition, and earned income only cover a portion of our operating expenses. The rest comes from people like you. Please consider making a donation to support our work. 

Make Your Tax-Deductible Donation

This apprenticeship is a ten-month position that combines professional experience working with clients through our Publishing Program with entrepreneurial guidance. Artists apply with a substantial personal project they would like to work on throughout the apprenticeship. Over the course of the year, the apprentice will work with an advisor to develop their project.

Spudnik Press Apprentices are paid employees of Spudnik Press. Additionally, Apprentices receive complimentary keyholder access to the print studio. Read more details and the history of the program.

Review of applications will begin on Jan. 10, 2014. The 2014 Apprenticeship Program will tentatively run from Feb 15 – December 15, 2013. Please contact angee@spudnikpress.org with questions.

Applications Due January 17, 2014

We are pleased to announce our open call for applications to our residency program for the Spring of 2014. Printmakers, bookmakers, writers, and artists working in multiple disciplines are encouraged to apply.

Download Residency Description and How to Apply: Spring 2014 Residency Call

About Our Residency Program

Spudnik Press’ Residency Program provides the resources, equipment, and space for one artist per season to develop a body of print-based work. We hope to encourage and enable the production of innovative, high-quality, print-based artwork, and to contribute to the development of an emerging Chicago artist.

Spudnik Press will provide the Residents a $250 allowance for project-specific materials and unlimited general supplies (full list is available on our website) and access to the studio. At the conclusion of the residency, Spudnik Press organizes an exhibition of the work created during the 3 month period. The program is open to any artist comfortable working independently in his or her medium. Spudnik Press does not have the ability to assist with travel and housing, and encourages only Chicago residents to apply. One Residency position is awarded per season.

We aim to provide a residency that is catered to the individual artist. Proposals may be for a residency which works towards creating an edition of prints, artist books, chapbooks, zines, or a multi-disciplinary project. Artists that wish to work collaboratively may apply together.

RSVP by November 6th to reserve your place.

Email publishing@spudnikpress.org
Please include your phone number, website and space preference.

Holiday Art Sale: Prints in Space
Spudnik Press Printshop and Annex
Wednesday, December 4th, 2013
6-10pm

It is free for members to participate. The fee for non-members to participate in the show is $5, due on the night of the show. We ask that all participants donate 25% of their sales to Spudnik Press to help keep us in orbit. The universe is constantly expanding, but our space is limited. Display spaces are available on a first come, first serve basis.

18 wall spaces (6 feet of wall space to display your work)
There will be a line hanging in the shop that can accommodate the work of two artists (approximately 8 feet each)
10 table spaces (approximately 4’ x 4’ section of table)
We will have a shared table for writing-based, handheld or publication work. If you own your own press or have more than five pieces we suggest you request your own table.

We are continuing our potluck tradition! If you’d like to participate and bring in grandma’s secret recipe, let us know what you plan to make. Lastly, contact us if you want to volunteer.

Don’t be a space case. Gravitate towards Spudnik Press and orbit our satellite this holiday season!

Kindly,
Your intergalactic interns
Sophie and Anna

In Progress Benefit Auction
Saturday, September 28, 2013

Studio sketches, visual brainstorms, artist proofs, drafts, studies, notes, and ephemera from the studio practices of a diverse and impressive lineup of artists.

Details forthcoming.

Are you visiting Renegade? Join our street team!

September 7 & 8, 11-7pm
E-mail angee@spudnikpress.org to volunteer

Help us spread the good word about how fun and easy it is to print at Spudnik Press! We are looking for a few kind folks to come by the studio the week before Renegade to pick up a stack of our spiffy brand new brochures and then distribute throughout the weekend to vendors. Each volunteer will be responsible for visiting about a quarter of the booths to help promote our studio and invite people to print or learn at Spudnik.

Below are some of our recent projects that we have completed through our Publishing Program.

Here at Spudnik we are lucky to work with awesome artists, designers, and businesses to create a large variety of high-quality printed products. Below are a few examples of screen-printed projects, but we also love to work with our clients to produce letterpress, offset, relief, or even lithographic projects based on individual needs.

ARTCRANK Poster by Jenna Stempel

“Bikes are the world’s most fun, accessible way to get around. Posters are the world’s most fun, accessible art form. ARTCRANK™ brings them together.Each ARTCRANK show features the work of 30 or more artists who live and work in the host city. Artists create an original poster design about bikes and what cycling means in their lives, and produce a limited edition of signed and numbered copies to show and sell. ARTCRANK uses creativity to change the way people think about bicycles and grow the cycling community.”

Screen-printed Tote Bags for Meg Onli’s Black Visual Archive website designed by Fivethousand Fingers

“Black Visual Archive (BVA) is dedicated to the documentation and review of contemporary black and post-black visual culture. Founded in 2010 by Meg Onli, BVA is a collection of critical writings that contextualizes the work of African American artists through historical and visual history. Based in Chicago, BVA investigates the city as a unique site for black visual culture with articles, reviews, and interviews that have surveyed the works of Kerry James Marshall and Theaster Gates while also reflecting on the defining archives of Johnson Publishing Company and Numero Group. With a particular interest in how contemporary artists mine the complex history of black representation in America, BVA will continually reflect and link works within their sociocultural constructs.”

For more information on consignment printing through our Publishing Program, please contact Ashlee or Angee at publishing@spudnikpress.org.

Stability Dynamics

New Work by Jeremy Lundquist

Stability Dynamics is a series of etchings produced during the Grant Wood Fellowship at the University of Iowa that directly reproduce, alter and layer fragments of the Joint Chief of Staff’s diagram, “Afghanistan Stability/COIN Dynamics.” The work is a critique of the current military and diplomatic strategy of the U.S. in Afghanistan while examining the futility of diagramming the chaos of war. The process involves printing each section from a single plate as information is built up and then scraped away. Lundquist pulls prints along the away as text and image materialize, linger, and disappear. This technique helps provide viewers the opportunity to consider and question how history and policy is constructed.

Stability Dynamics was installed as part of the 2013 Printers’ Ball: Trip and Return. His work will be on display in the printshop through September 13, 2014. See more of Jeremy Lunquist’s work

Winter/Spring 2014 Class Proposals:
Due September 29, 2013

Through combining broad cultural programming, an educational library, and a vast array of professional classes and resources for printmaking, bookmaking, writing, and publishing, Spudnik Press Cooperative acts as a center for the promotion of, cultural and historical understanding of, production of, and collection of literary and visual arts.

By splitting our focus between idea-based classes and classes that develop physical bookmaking and printing techniques, we seek to provide an environment where writing and visual art is approached as a form of making.

The final class calendar will be determined by many factors including strength of each proposal, and our need to provide a diverse selection of processes, levels of difficulty, and approach. Please download the Proposal Form and Supply Request. We recommend downloading Adobe Acrobat 8 or later to allow you to save our editable PDF.

Please direct any questions to angee@spudnikpress.org

Winter Spring 2014 Class Supplies

Winter Spring 2014 Class Proposal BLANK

This past month Spudnik Press has had the pleasure of working with artist Russ White in recreating a few of his drawings through our Publishing Program.

This project includes a series four screenprinted posters based off a body of work entitled “Small Arms”

On his website, Russ describes his series of drawings:

“The drawings here investigate our fear from different perspectives through several bodies of work: a series of bright, unsettling shooting range targets; a day in the life of a classic police target; and a darkly funny take on the anxiety and anonymity of crowds… the work uses simple constructions to mine complicated themes. Criminals, victims, cartoons, and crowds all play a role here in questioning our societal rage and reminding us not to lose sight of a villain’s humanity.”

These prints as well as many other drawings and prints will be on display at “Peepers“, a show at Humboldt House on August 9th from 6-11.

For more information about our Publishing Program, please contact Ashlee or Angee at publishing@spudnikpress.org

A Community Affair: Exploring Contemporary Art in Chicago

By Hanna Exel

When I set out for a week in Chicago I thought I would be able to leave with a comprehensive, fully formed picture of the city’s contemporary art scene. Instead, I found myself exploring only the tip of a very large iceberg. From a handful of boisterous alternative art spaces to the Brave New Art World gallery crawl to the venerable Museum of Contemporary Art and beyond, I saw a huge range of non-traditional models for producing, exhibiting, and funding contemporary art. I also met with a number of the people whose commitment, enthusiasm, and innovative ideas have helped to make the art scene in Chicago the vibrant network that it is.

My first visit was to Spudnik Press Cooperative on Chicago’s West Side. Angee Lennard launched Spudnik several years ago with weekly studio sessions in her one-bedroom apartment. Now, the co-op inhabits an expansive loft space with a classroom, a gallery, and facilities for screenprinting, intaglio, lithography, and letterpress printmaking. Angee showed me around the space and talked about how and why the cooperative model works at Spudnik. The Press offers a wide range of services to members and non-members alike; they rent studio space, host classes, administer a residency and, of course, offer the use of their printmaking equipment at an affordable rate. Equally important, though, is Spudnik’s function as a hub for members of Chicago’s printmaking community to come together and share skills and knowledge. As any printmaker knows, printmaking works best as a collaborative process; even the most seasoned practitioner can learn new techniques from other printers, or at least benefit from having a pair of clean hands around to pull pristine sheets of paper from the press bed. The importance of a local community coming together to produce and support art would prove to be a recurring theme throughout my time in Chicago.

To read the full article, click here.

Please be informed that there will be no open studio Saturday, July 27 due the event: Printer’s Ball!

Printers Ball
Saturday, July 27
12:00 Noon – 6:00pm
1821 W Hubbard
Chicago, IL 60622