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Spudnik Press Community Day

2:00     Pop-Up Exhibition
2:00     Layers & Shapes: Communal Pattern Making Workshop
2:00     Assembled Parts: Collaborative Relief Printmaking
5:00     1/1: Print Politics and the Monoprint Panel Discussion

Come take part in a day of communal printmaking presented by our 2017/2018 Studio Fellows, Molly Berkson, Ben Garbus, Brendan Robson, and Cristina Umaña.

As a culminating aspect of their 7-month Fellowship, these artists have collaborated to design and present a robust day of programming that invites our community to see, make, and talk about artwork.  Spudnik Press Community Day is also a day to celebrate the artwork and accomplishments of these four emerging artist.

Spudnik Community Day will fully activate out studios and include two collaborative drop-in workshops, a pop-up exhibition, and a panel discussion. All of these activities focus on communal printmaking practices and the intersection of various processes and motives within the umbrella of printmaking.

With a focus on screenprinting and relief printing, guests will learn introductory printmaking processes through making their own prints and contributing to the creation of a collaborative group monoprint. The evening will culminate with a panel discussion exploring monoprints and ideas surrounding the political and social implications of this type of printmaking as an art form.


1/1: Print Politics and the Monoprint is a panel discussion with Chicago-based artists on the topic of monoprints and the political consciousness surrounding this form of printmaking. Unlike other types of printmaking, an image produced through monoprinting can only be made once. Using this as a point of departure for our conversation, we will address why some artists are choosing more and more to create prints of this nature and whether it’s a commercial trend or a political statement, or else something new altogether.

About the Panelists:

Jessica Christy is a printmaker, designer, and North Dakota native living in the Chicago area. 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 culture, Christy often weaves the Native experience into her pieces. Her work has shown both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Jordan Martins received his MFA in visual arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia in Salvador, Brazil in 2007, and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and North Park University. He is the executive director of Comfort Station, a multi-disciplinary art space. Martins’s visual work is based in collage processes, including mixed media two dimensional work, photography, video and installation, and he has exhibited nationally and internationally. He is co-director of the Perto da Lá, a biennial multidisplinary art event with international artists in Salvador, Brazil. From 2014 to 2016 he served on the programming committee for the Chicago Jazz Festival. He was a resident in the Chicago Artists Coalition’s HATCH program in 2013, a mentor for their LAUNCH program in 2016 and 2017, and currently serves on their Educational Advisory Panel.