Spudnik Press Cooperative has 4 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.
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.
Mary Clare Butler is an artist and designer from Chicago. Through process-driven offset and letterpress printing, her work investigates the relationship between modes of production and the representation of ideas. 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 with Amy Leners (MFA, 2015). Together they collaborate on a variety of publishing projects, experimental prints, and artists’ books.
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.
Jessica Cochran is a curator living and working in Chicago. She is recently completed a curatorial fellowship at the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation and her recent & upcoming exhibitions include Roman Susan (Chicago), McCormick Gallery (Chicago), Center for the Book (New York) and the Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago). After seven years spent in academic galleries, including the Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts, she is now a lecturer in the Department of Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the curatorial manager of a private family collection of contemporary art based in Chicago, Indiana and Palm Springs. Jessica has been on the Spudnik Press Board of Directors since 2011, and was elected Vice President in 2013.
Matt Davis is a printmaker and occasional cartoonist, illustrator, and designer. He runs a very small 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.
Originally from Rhode Island, Stephen studied and worked in New York as commercial still-life photographer for twenty-six years (including commuting between NY and Paris for two years) for clients including Estee Lauder, The Wall Street Journal, NYC MTA and People Magazine. In 2008, he moved to Chicago to earn his MFA in Interdisciplinary Book & Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. In Chicago, Stephen has curated exhibitions including a moving CTA train car for “Art on Track”, “Hearts-a-Bluhm” on Michigan Avenue and co-curated the “Marilyn Sward: Speaking in Paper” exhibition. As Director of Academic Initiatives at Columbia College Chicago, he managed special projects including exhibitions of faculty and student work, conferences, and the Art + Activism program and student organization. Stephen’s photographs and artists’ books have been exhibited internationally including at the Seoul Artists’ Book Fair, Printworks Gallery in Chicago and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. His work is included in the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection and the University of Iowa Library Special Collection.
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.
Lydia Godfrey Evans is a letterpress printer who incorporates design, illustration, and many printing and craft methods to create one-of-a-kind pieces. She specializes in wedding invitations and other custom pieces for clients, in addition to printing for other designers. Lydia designs and prints unique pieces for each client to match their style and bring their vision to life. She loves the creative process and the craft of letterpress and how it can empower individuals to express themselves in a personal, tangible way. Share the joy of letterpress!
Chris Flynn is an artist, printmaker and drummer from Chicago who earned his MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College Chicago in 2017. Since earning his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999, Flynn has been the Master Printer for Anchor Graphics, collaborating with an extensive range of artists and teaching printmaking to students of all ages and experience.
Statement
Chris Flynn’s current art practice builds on an open body of work entitled The Antigravity Puppet Project, which integrates sculptural papermaking and print media with percussion music and sound art. The Puppet is a self-portrait as a human-scale marionette, while The Antigravity Project is its dissection by image and sound. The figure, its fragmented image and its internal soundscape are played beside each other in translation games between graphic and musical forms, telling the allegory of the puppet through percussive sound composition, photogravures, visual scores and data glitches.
Ben Garbus is an artist working in Chicago. He holds a BA from Oberlin College and has exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and SPACES Gallery in Cleveland. Garbus hails from western Massachusetts.
