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.
Chicago based 🌈 artist. Interested in collaboration or commissions in painting, photography, quilt making/sewing, and printmaking.
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: Feel Field, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
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.Â
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.
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.
Having been born and raised in St. Augustine, the nation’s oldest city, there is no question as to why I’ve always found myself attracted to the antiquated and obsolete. I find myself significantly more intrigued by the past than with the future, and this notion is something that I explore with my art— not only through imagery but also by choosing manual printing as a means of production. I strive to educate and to preserve public history by studying and depicting the architecture, furnishings, and textile patterns of the past, however, I am particularly fascinated by the whimsical area in which the past and present visibly overlap.
