Spudnik Press Cooperative has 5 permanent staff. Our Board of Directors works closely with staff to guide overall policy and direction. Each year, we work with 4 Fellows who monitor our open studio program, and approximately 25 teaching artists.
Our Member Directory highlights the amazing community of artists involved with Spudnik Press Cooperative.
Ryan received his BS in Studio Art focusing in Communication Design from Skidmore College (2008) and his MFA in Visual Communication Design from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2011). His foundation in the world of Graphic Design with a comprehensive typographic education turned into a deep-seated passion when he met letterpress. Typographic forms spoke to him more so than any other medium he’d previously encountered; combining that love with paper into hand printed form was like discovering a new religion. Since Ryan’s discovery of letterpress in graduate school his life has been redirected around this method of printmaking, so much so that he quit an old job an hour after the purchase of his first press; in that moment he started his own business, Double Trip Press.
Benja received his Bachelors of Arts from Columbia College Chicago with a focus in painting, printmaking, and photography. His experience with printmaking is especially focused on intaglio processes, such as drypoint and photo-sensitive printing plates, monotypes, relief printing, chine collé, and gel plate printing, using various inks and paints. After a substantial, successful corporate career, Benja is entering the Fellowship to pursue his lifelong passion for the arts.
Image: Marc Benja, untitled, Relief print and monotype on paper, 2009.
Molly Berkson is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in paper, print, book, and fiber crafts. She has a fondness for the subcultures and subcultural practices that employ amateur and anti-authoritarian ideologies, and an appreciation for craft in all its forms–in its distinct and intermingling boundaries. In her practice, she patchworks together these specific aesthetic practices and do-it-yourself methods.
Berkson lives in Chicago and is a teaching artist with After School Matters and ElevArte Community Studio. She recently exhibited work at After School Special in Milwaukee WI, Femme4Femme in Chicago as part of 2nd Floor Rear, and at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, where she was a studio intern in 2016. Berkson graduated with her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015.
At the same time, I began sewing my first quilt. By working in these methods simultaneously I felt the ways that these distinct skills are connected. Couching shaped sheets was like piecing quilt squares, building compositions from variations in texture and color of plant material. A woodcut printed on the surface was the top stitch connecting the pieces together.
Like quilting, these paper works used a type of waste material: ruderal plants and weeds were like the plant world versions of collections of unused textile scraps in the quilter’s studio. Fundamental to my work is an understanding that fiber craft and print media facilitate exchange, tell stories, and can occupy categorizations of both expert and amateur distinctions. Making quilt-like paper works at the Women’s Studio Workshop began to touch on these ideas.
At Spudnik, I want to push these quilt-paper pieces further. I envision this project developing over three parts: 1. Experiment with the handmade paper I already made, building up layers of prints, collaging techniques together, and developing concept. 2. Using this first step as research to make a new batch of ruderal plant quilt-paper, and then 3. Editioning prints.
Emma Bilyeu is a visual artist working out of her basement studio in Humboldt Park, Chicago. As a student of printmaking and book arts she likes to incorporate paper, letter shapes, book forms, and multiples into her work. With this she is able to explore ideas of communication and storytelling. When not in the studio, Emma is cuddling her dog, reading dystopian or self-help literature, or painting edges of business cards at Rohner Letterpress.
With access to Spudnik facilities, I will implement multiple printing methods for the completion of this project. The bulk of the case-bound book will consist of copperplate intaglio prints that include screen printed and letterpress elements. I hope to experiment with translucency though the use of transparent and/or clear substrates, building layered imagery.
I would like to use this book and supporting, framed visual elements as a vehicle to explore ideas of communication, more specifically communication between myself and those I love. With text-like elements in a book-like format I plan to address the benefits of transparency in dialogue all the while finding comfort in a hidden fog of silence or ambiguity.
Since founding the citywide arts festival Around the Coyote in the 90s, Elizabeth Burke-Dain has transformed and elevated some of Chicago’s most celebrated cultural brands such as Poetry Foundation & POETRY magazine, the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago’s gallery programs, the Garfield Park Conservatory, and many more. She is an influencer and specialist in taking organizations and individuals to the next level with strategic and targeted messaging and by engaging distinguished branding and design agencies such as Pentagram Design and Michael Bierut. Burke-Dain has a proven track record of reinvigorating mission-based organizations with innovative programming, media partnerships, advertising campaigns, communications planning, and creative content development that successfully resonates with potential audiences.
Mary Clare Butler is an artist and designer from the south side of Chicago. Through process-driven offset and letterpress printing, her work investigates the relationship between modes of production and the environment. She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts from Columbia College Chicago (2016) and her BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2009). In 2015, she co-founded Fata Morgana Press, an experimental studio in Bridgeport focused on the wiggly line between art and design.
Teresita Carson Valdéz is a Chicago based artist working in fiber, film, photography, print media and installation. She received her Bachelors in Fine Arts from the School of the Art institute of Chicago. Recent exhibition sites include Adds Donna Gallery and Mana Contemporary. Her awards and honors include winning first prize for her screenplays Poly Esther, Chucky’s Feast, 1st and 10, Shlomo’s Night Out, and Ratacholo. Her short films have been shown at festivals around the world and at curated film exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego.
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, in a solo exhibition, Domestic Tides / Indigenous Mind, here at Spudnik Press in Chicago, Illinois.
Matt Davis is a printmaker and occasional cartoonist, illustrator, and designer. He runs a Risograph print shop called Perfectly Acceptable that offers affordable commission printing as well as a curated series of artist prints and books. He graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in Russian Language a few years ago.
Jazmin Dua b. 1991 a multidisciplinary artist focusing on photography and printmaking. Her art is a form of visual storytelling, interested in conveying moments of surveillance, life, and interactions. She devises rituals within her work creating photographs and prints of everyday experiences.
