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.
I am a motion and graphic designer based in Chicago. I graduated from DePaul University with a BFA in Graphic Design and a minor in Animation. As a multi-disciplinary designer, artist, and printmaker I have experience in 2D/3D animation, UX/UI design, videography + photography, bookmaking, screen printing, and risography. The driving force behind my work is experimentation and learning.
In the ten years since Angee Lennard founded Spudnik Press Cooperative, Chicago’s nonprofit community-based printmaking studio, the organization has evolved from an experimental work/live space to a multi-facetted organization unique in its dedication to providing approachable access to fine art printmaking to anyone who wishes to be creative through print. Under her leadership, Spudnik Press Cooperative provides pathways for individuals to grow their artistic practice over time and at their own pace through studio access, residencies, fellowships, classes, exhibitions, collaborative projects and public programs.
Angee Lennard is also a devoted educator whose teaching experience ranges from arts administration to illustration. As a lecturer at SAIC in the Arts Administration and Policy department, Lennard is able to share her perspective on the parallels between art making and arts administration and inspire students to find enjoyment in administrative roles. At Marwen, Lennard leads high school students through illustration, design, and printmaking projects. Her teaching at Spudnik Press Cooperative focuses on the technical elements of printmaking. She earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Printmedia from SAIC in 2005.
Fun Facts: Angee owns chickens (and eggs)! She believes that the egg came first.
E-mail: angee@spudnikpress.org
Photo by Jamie Davis.
Bianca is founder of Marks on Canvas, a Chicago-based boutique agency that specializes in strategic creative content, marketing media, project management and public relations for clients engaged in the arts, including: visual artists, galleries, art fairs, organizations and creative spaces. She’s an arts enthusiast with 12+ years of proven expertise driving brand awareness through compelling campaigns and multi-channel communications that integrate social media, content creation, public relations material, advertising, media, and team collaboration.
Notable clients include visual artist Amanda Williams. She’s collaborated on projects with art institutions and publications including: The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Arts Club Chicago, EXPO Chicago, Monique Meloche gallery, The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Magazine. She is a guest speaker for the 2017-2018 FIELD/WORK Residency at Chicago Artists Coalition on the subject of Marketing Strategies for Artists, the 2018 US Pavilion Venice Biennale Communications and PR liaison to Amanda Williams and Andres Hernandez and President of the Board of Directors for Chicago-based arts organization, Spudnik Press Cooperative. She resides in Chicago, IL.
I make work under the online persona plant_boi. My work is primarily a formal experiment in shape, architecture, and interaction of objects. Through this lens I have developed an interest in certain objects as visual means of communication; specifically: vessels, entryways, circles and their disruptions, repeating patterns and faces. I find these designs, successful and unsuccessful, to serve as a basis for my own logical and functional limitations when drawing.
Dutes Miller’s collages, artists books and phallic sculptures examine the spaces where the artist’s inner life, queer subcultures and mass media intersect. Miller appropriates images from pornographic websites, magazines and his own imaginings to investigate alternative standards of beauty, visualizations of lust and desire found on the internet, and power dynamics in sexual relationships. Michelle Grabner wrote in ArtForum, “Miller’s mixed-media collages on paper incorporating penis figures striking silly states of repose and activity are enjoyable vignettes, demonstrating nimble material interplay.”
Miller’s work is driven by an investigation of queer male sexuality through a tactile exploration of materials, most often plaster, resin and paint and also including fabric, feathers, horns and other found objects. From a conceptual standpoint, he is interested in the notion of an object that is penetrable (orifice) versus one which penetrates (phallus). Appearing to be in states of transition, his sculptures attempt to find the potential conflation of the two.
Yasaman Moussavi is a visual artist and art instructor. She holds an MFA with two emphases on Painting and Printmaking from Texas Tech University, where she explored and developed her skills in papermaking, printmaking, and installation art. Her work reflects the spiritual attachment to places and the emotional tension between today’s precarious living and the Persian’s poetic tradition of “living in harmony with nature.” Her works have have been displayed in many national and international solo and group exhibitions. She is a co-founder of Didaar Art Collective, a Chicago -based Iranian art community. She works and live in Chicago.
Image: Detail of If I Sought an Echo, I’d Now Be Addressing a Mountain, 2019
Trained as a printmaker in Boston, MA, Catherine maintains an interest in producing artist books, fiber and print works. She investigates a lifelong curiosity in human relationships through imagery that references scientific illustration, the human body, and maps. She also enjoys the surprising and beautiful possibilities in incorporating found images and select textures in collage. Beyond her visual practice, Catherine works to support the growth of creative communities at Arts of Life and Spudnik Press Cooperative. She serves as a member of Spudnik’s Exhibition Committee, actively advocating to increase visibility of emerging printmakers in the Chicago Arts community. She is drawn to printmaking in particular because it is a community-based practice – it is not about being alone in a studio, but very much about being in conversation with and sometimes collaboration with others.
Osée Obaonrin is a writer and fiber artist originally from the Republic of Benin, who grew up in the Maryland/DC area and currently resides in Chicago, IL. Obaonrin focuses primarily on documentation. Documenting self. The feelings of grief and acts of mourning as a means of reflection and also as a means of actually performing the processes of grief and mourning. She attempts to reconcile with the losses that have opened her to grief, the pain that has come along with it and perhaps find hope as a means of resistance.
Starting in the late 80’s as an American folk art dealer, Aron Packer built his early career focusing on outsider and self taught artists. Also exhibiting unusual objects such as sideshow banners, tattoo drawings, and wild looking magic tricks, his early venue was an apartment gallery, and he became known for a broad yet unusual vision. He added contemporary art and established his first public gallery in 1992 in Wicker Park, joining an alternative gallery scene that included Beret International, Ten in One, and Oscar Friedl Gallery. As business forces changed over the past 25+ years, Packer migrated to locations in River North and the West Loop, continuing to expand his notable group of artists. In 2015 he closed Packer Schopf Gallery on West Lake Street after nearly a decade of ambitious shows. Currently Aron Packer Projects has a permanent pop-up space in the offices of the Chicago Gallery News through 2018 which is open 5 days a week. The Gallery lives on!
Mike Pennekamp is an internationally exhibited artist, printmaker, and illustrator. Mike earned his BFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2010 and spent the next five years working at Tom Huck’s Evil Prints in St. Louis, MO. Eventually he decided to earn his terminal degree and, in 2017, graduated University of Arkansas with his MFA with a concentration in Printmaking.
Design by Angelika is a multi-service design and print shop based in Chicago led by Angelika Piwowarczyk (and her trusted sidekick, Flora the German Shepherd). The projects that come out of this little studio vary from custom stationery to small business branding to commissioned artwork, and anything in between!
