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.
Services Offered:
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Printmaking Commissions
Website:
yasamanmoussavi.com/
Residency Period:
Sep 2017–Dec 2017
Project Statement:
During this residency, my aim is to translate human experiences of transition and displacement into a visual language by creating a series of prints made out of textured hand-made papers, such as kenaf and other natural materials. I would like to create a body of work based on my personal journey from my home country, Iran, to the U.S., and explore the feelings associated with being in between places. My final exhibition will consist of etchings that depict creatures entangled in a natural space. I want to explore the ties between individual and environment, and unearth emotions, associations, and memories that one attaches to physical spaces to discover the abiding bond between nature and us.
Classes by this Artist:
Community Workshop: Handmade Paper: Adventures with Pulp, Embedding, and Laminating
Papermaking (Sept 2017)
Papermaking: Pulp, Sculpt and Print
Papermaking: Pulp Painting (July)
Image: Detail of If I Sought an Echo, I’d Now Be Addressing a Mountain, 2019
Website:
www.instagram.com/_mullally_/
Classes by this Artist:
Relief Printmaking
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.
Services Offered:
Website:
www.catherinenorcott.com
Classes by this Artist:
Coptic Stitch Bookbinding
2020-21 Fellow
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.
Services Offered:
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Printmaking Commissions
Website:
www.oseeobaonrin.com/
Marketing Lead
Yang Pulongbarit-Cuevo is a Chicago-based papercut artist and illustrator mainly inspired by nature, music, anatomy, and folklores. Yang started as a political cartoonist for The Manila Collegian, the official student publication of the University of the Philippines in Manila, where she received her bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communication. She eventually earned her master’s degree in Development Communication from the same university, while accumulating about 8 years of combined work experience in marketing and business development. Studying and working in the field of communication complements her art practice, as she allows her work to impart messages in imaginative and symbolic ways. Yang also hosts a weekly radio show and writes newsletters for the Chicago Independent Radio Project – another local non-profit organization.
Fun Fact: Her life is pretty much recorded in a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and Trello boards.
E-mail: yang@spudnikpress.org
Websites: www.yangcuevo.com | www.papercutmaps.com
Website:
www.yangcuevo.com
Studio Fellow 2021
Esmeralda Reyes is a Mexican-American artist born in Grand Haven, Michigan. She is a printmaker focused on intaglio and lithography. Esmeralda graduated from Kendall College of Art & Design in 2020 with a BFA in Printmaking and a minor in Illustration. Esmeralda’s printmaking style is informed by her illustrative background. Her work focuses on human relationships, traits, stereotypes, and combining humans with animals that share physical and metaphorical similarities. Her work that was featured at the Fresh Looks Exhibition at Eastern Michigan University made her a Windgate Fellowship nominee for her precise craft.
Image:Esmeralda Reyes, Untitled, Lithogaphy, 13”x9”
Website:
Instagram: @esmeralda_illustrations
Administrative Assistant
Breanna Robinson is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Chicago. She studied at the School of the Art institute of Chicago, where she earned a BFA in 2017. Her work manifests mainly through printmedia, although she often utilizes collage, painting, html, and object-making.
Website:
breanna-studio.github.io
Board of Directors
Vida Sačić is a Croatian-American artist, designer and educator. Her work in print media explores the relationship between printing and language. She prints and creates large-scale installations; assemblages of prints on paper, textiles and fiber using moveable type, letters that can be touched, and a printing press. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationwide, including DeVos Art Museum (MI), Art Mora Gallery (New York City), Columbia College (Chicago) and The Center for Book Arts (New York City). Sačić has been recognized as an Artist-in-Residence at The Penland School of Art and Craft (North Carolina), The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum (Wisconsin), The Center for Book and Paper Arts (Chicago, Illinois) and Tiporenesansa Studio (Ljubljana, Slovenia) among others. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Northeastern Illinois University and works in her studio in the Ravenswood neighbourhood of Chicago.
Website:
www.vida-sacic.com
Classes by this Artist:
Letter + Press // Co-presented with AIGA Chicago
Jake Saunders is a Chicago artist working in printmaking as well as drawing and painting. Hailing from Muncie, Indiana, Jake grew up with a love for a variety of narrative based art forms, which became a focus in his art practice. After becoming fascinated with the unique aesthetics of woodcuts and etchings and their aptitude for seriality and multiplicity, Jake earned a BFA and MA in printmaking from Ball State University and went on to earn his MFA at the University of Connecticut. He has since gone on to show nationally and internationally. Today, Jake’s work amalgamates narratives to explore the concept of tragedy in forms both grand and mundane.
Services Offered:
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Printmaking Commissions
Website:
jakesaunders.net/
Residency Period:
Sep 2016–Dec 2016
Project Statement:
Through the use of pre-established and widely known narratives, my works use symbols, references and visual tropes as a foil for personal and often common experiences. My use of these stories provides a ready-made visual language of symbolic and allegorical tools in which I utilize to my own ends.
An array of artists have frequently used self images as acts of strategic and symbolic significance. Caravaggio frequently portrayed himself as the dismembered head of Goliath, Medusa or Saint John the Baptist while leading an extremely self destructive and violent life. In the same fashion I utilize my self image and the images of friends and loved ones strategically. This way my works tell a story within the confines of another story.
Using a well known narrative to express things outside its traditional confines, I inevitably comment upon the narrative itself, its subject or its origin. I often use a story against itself to criticize, subvert or bring to light problematic areas of a culturally relevant anecdote.
Print media is philosophically in line with the storyteller. The print’s high aptitude for multiplicity and seriality go hand in hand with storytelling and its need for proliferation. However, more than anything, I view print media like intaglio and relief as a way of extending the act of drawing. As a natural draftsman, I often engage printmaking as a means of refinement.
Classes by this Artist:
Relief Printmaking
Etching & Intaglio Printmaking (May 2017)
Relief Tester & Refresher (Sept 2017)
Relief Printmaking (Sept 2017)
Etching Tester & Refresher (Oct 2017)
Etching & Intaglio Printmaking (Oct 2017)
Relief Printmaking
Etching 201: Color
Etching Tester & Refresher
Relief Printmaking
Relief Printmaking: Carving & Printing Woodblocks (July)
DIY Greeting Cards: Relief Printing
Products by this Artist:
H Schenck received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Printmaking at Bradley University, IL, in 2010. He went on to complete a Masters of Fine Arts in Studio Intermedia at UT Arlington, TX, in 2013. His work explores the characteristics of materials, such as foam, fabric, and found objects; he uses the traits he discovers as a language.
Image: Detail of the artist’s biography
Website:
www.hschenck.com/
Classes by this Artist:
Screenprinting Explorations (Early September)
Products by this Artist: