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.
A recent BFA Printmaking graduate of Ohio University, Dan Manion is an interdisciplinary artist and storyteller with an affinity for all forms of visual and auditory narrative. He wishes to continue pursuing printed and moving imagery to expand upon his experimentation with various storytelling forms which allow us to simultaneously escape, cope with, and confront our own experiences with the world. His narrative goals aim to evoke intimate, visceral and empathetic connections between diverse viewers.
In August of 2016, my brother and I exhibited a collaborative installation called “We Are Building A Ship,” where we crafted an experimental comic consisting of three interrelated storylines, each covering their own wall. The comics surrounded the viewer, placing them in the center of this imagined world. We used large screen printed comic panels in tandem with painted glass sculptures of the setting in which these stories were taking place. We wanted the audience to experience a fictional world we conceived through small fragments that provoked further investigation.
My intention with this Studio Fellowship is to continue my experimentation using print media as a vehicle to produce immersive narratives. Stories encourage empathy, which is exceedingly important in cultivating understanding between individuals, especially in the current political climate. These stories would be told through comics, vignettes, moving imagery, and other forms. I want to utilize printmaking methods I am already familiar with (i.e. relief and silkscreen) as well as with methods I would like to learn more about (i.e. risography and letterpress) to disseminate my work.
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.
Sean Mac is a Chicago-based illustrator, cartoonist, and muralist.
He uses comic books and zines as a platform for storytelling and narrative. His work uses loose linework and vibrant colors to tell humorous and intimate stories within each panel. In addition to self publishing his comics his work includes screenprinting and public art. He graduated with a BFA in Illustration from Columbia College Chicago.
Yasi Moussavi is a visual artist whose 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.” Moussavi was born in Tehran, Iran and she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the Al-Zahra University of Tehran.
She holds an MFA degree with an emphasis in painting and print making from Texas Tech University, where she explored and developed her skills in papermaking, printmaking and installation art. She has participated in many group national and international exhibitions such as Juried International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Irving Art center, TX, A.I.R Gallery Biennial, Brooklyn, NY, “Norouzaneh” International Mini Print Annual Exhibition at Sagene Kunstsmie, Oslo, Spazio 74/b Milan and Chicago.
Image: Detail of If I Sought an Echo, I’d Now Be Addressing a Mountain, 2019
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 not only the Studio Technician at Spudnik Press. He is also 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!
Monika Plioplyte currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. She was born in Kaunas, Lithuania and moved to the United States with her family in her early teens. Plioplyte received her BFA in printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (‘12) and her MFA in Print Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (‘19). She has been a recipient of Genevieve McMillan-Reba Stewart Travel award for printmakers (‘12), Blanche E. Colman Award (‘16) and John W. Kurtich Foundation Travel Grant (‘17). Currently she is a co-director and curator at Three Seeds Gallery in Pilsen.
Plioplyte works in various media such as printmaking, performance, photography, and ceramics. Drawing from her historic identity as it relates to the worlds of Lithuanian tradition, the immigrant experience, and the struggle between the psychological and physical self, she grounds her experiences to cross-reference seemingly disparate parts of her cultural objects, behaviors, and physical life. Thinking about the body as the paradox of contained and container at once, Plioplyte focuses on capturing the boundaries of the body as object and the limits of its physical extension into space. In her practice she explores and breaks down the boundaries of human experience, however anxious or unsettling, it is a permanent state of transition. Rooted in feminist ideas and tensions between the experiences of pleasure and pain, Plioplyte deconstructs and reinvents the body.
Currently a designer in Chicago, Brendan Robson graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Graphic Design in May of 2017. As a designer Brendan enjoys exploring the areas of intersection between analog and digital content and the opportunities for discovery that exists within that space. Primarily focused on aspects of design, printmaking, and multimedia installation, Brendan’s personal body of work addresses themes of memory constructs, genetics, digital identity, and stasis.
Nicolette has long been a contributor to the Spudnik Press community. Since first joining our organization in 2012, Nicolette has been an active member and volunteer, while teaching many of our relief printmaking and bookbinding classes.
She holds a BFA with an emphasis in Printmaking and Book Arts from the University of Central Florida, and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis.
She is the Studio Manager at Double Trip Press, a premier letterpress studio located in the East Lakeview neighborhood.
@rosspressandbindery
nicoletterossprint@gmail.com
