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.
Shannon Bodrogi is an artist, musician and arts educator. Working with alternative photo printmaking, monoprint, relief, embroidery, painting and collage, Shannon builds up pieces with different combinations through an intuitive process. She is interested in the patchwork of memory, documenting and archiving experiences and places, and the lessons we can learn from the plants around us. Shannon teaches MonoMerch: Basic Embroidery for DIY Merch through The Vera Project, which connects needle work to punk aesthetics and values. She values creating a safer and welcoming space that prioritizes self-expression, exploration and understanding.
Elizabeth Burke-Dain is an Oak Park-based artist and media consultant. She 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 School of Fine and Performing Arts, the Garfield Park Conservatory, and many more. She is a specialist in taking organizations and individuals to the next level with strategic messaging. Her expertise is in working with brands to create content and programs that resonate with and build new audiences.
She is married to the artist and UX designer Michael Dain. Together they have two children, Claire and Leo.
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.
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.
Jessica Christy is a printmaker and designer. 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. Her work combines found images, photographs, text, and hand drawn marks, and utilizes various materials from paper to found wood and glass to textiles.
Areas of Expertise
Favorite Process: Polyester Plate Litho
Possible Process
Cam Collins is a fine artist born in Chicago, IL in 1999. His work conveys ambiguous narratives that revolve around colorful figures and sprawling objects, prompting the viewer to investigate, but also have fun doing so. Collins went from Chicago High School to the Arts and moved on to get his BFA in Printmaking at RISD while working as a studio technician in Benson Hall. He has done his own solo exhibition in Providence titled Colorstroll, and has won various awards from Scholastic and AIGA.
Hellen Colman is a Chicago-based photographer primary working on artists’ books. Her work spans several media striving to construct alternative languages depicting multiple realities that are not parallel or alternative worlds but surrogates for an unattainable truth.
She is also a mathematician. Originally from Montevideo, Uruguay, she received her PhD from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Furthermore, Hellen holds a Certificate in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she also received her photography and printmaking training.
Her work in mathematics has been published in several scientific journals and her artists’ books were acquired by several private and public collections and institutions, including the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at SAIC.
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.
Kirstin Dunlap is a current printing student at School of the Art Institute of Chicago exploring the possibilities of screen printing- specifically, screen printed artist books. Pushing the norm of the traditional book format in order to express the chosen topic best. The topics most explored in her practice follow the wonders of interstellar research. Her work likes to border the line between fine art and educational material. As freelance, Kirstin enjoys DIY scene posters, merchandise, and general content design and printing, as well as custom floral illustrations.
Kyle Dunlap is currently a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. With a background in oil painting, his present work is focusing in Photography and Print Media. While working in various modes of imagery in both of these mediums, his subject matter is engaged with exploring personal narrative in relation to literary motifs.
