Ryan LaFollette’s background is in non-profit administration and urban affairs. He has previously worked for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency. Currently, LaFollette is the Assistant Director of the American Library Association. With a steadfast appreciation for art, LaFollette has long been a supporter and collector. His collection includes many prints by artists from Spudnik Press.
Vicky Grube earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters in Education from the University of Illinois. After teaching in an early childhood program in Urbana, Il and the ECEC lab school in Iowa City, Iowa, Grube received an MFA in theatre arts from the University of Iowa. She was awarded four state, one regional and one national NEA. She became the director of a Suzuki preschool arts program in Iowa City, taught art, art education and theatre design as an adjunct at the University of Iowa, Mt Mercy College and Cornell College while earning a PhD in art education from the University of Iowa. She has exhibited her paintings and sculptures in numerous locations such as University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa; Lloyd Shinn Gallery, Chicago Illinois, The Joslyn Art Museum, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Des Moines Art Museum, University of Iowa, Cornell College, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, East Tennessee State University among other galleries.
Image: Detail of If I Sought an Echo, I’d Now Be Addressing a Mountain, 2019
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
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.
Magdalena Glotzer recently graduated from the University of Chicago where she received a dual-degree in Art History and East European Studies. Her undergraduate research focused on analyzing Ancient Mesoamerican ceramic figures as a method of understanding cross-cultural exchange. She is passionate about arts education and supporting emerging artists, scholars, and creative communities. This summer, Magdalena interned at the Norton Museum of Art in Florida with the Curatorial and Education departments. There, she led museum tours for summer camps and curated an exhibition on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She has also worked at the Chicago Artists Coalition, the Visual Resources Center in the Art History Dept. at the University of Chicago, and the Smart Museum of Art. In her spare time, she dabbles in black and white film photography, painting, drawing, and poetry.
Fun facts: Magdalena is training for a triathlon and has run across the state of Iowa 3 times!
Email: info@spudnikpress.org
Ruby Figueroa is an interdisciplinary artist from Chicago, IL. She received a B.A. in Studio Art from Concordia University Chicago, and an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Book, Paper, and Print Arts from Columbia College Chicago. Prior to joining the Spudnik Press staff, Ruby worked as the Technical Facilities coordinator at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and as the Printshop Support Assistant at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her artistic work explores the idea of home, and the relationships between humans, loss, time, and heartbreak. Her autobiographical essays are mixed with experimental nonfiction seen in her zines, artist books, monoprints, poetry broadsides, and videos.
Fun Facts: Ruby has a cat named Cobra and her favorite food is ceviche.
Email: ruby@spudnikpress.org
João Oliveira is a visual artist with a BA in Visual Arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (2011), and a Master’s in Creative Process in Visual Arts from the same university (2017). He is trained in lithography and metal engraving through the Workshops at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (MAM-BA). He works on the encounter of metal engraving with other supports, appropriating personal experience in order to create works with a forged autobiographical nature, obtained through small rituals of self-fiction.
George Liebert is a painter, printmaker, and teacher based in Chicago. By beginning with traditional pleine aire studies, and filtering them through digital and print media before incorporating them into his paintings, Liebert examines the longing for, and alienation from nature.
Education also plays a critical role in his practice, with teaching, and studio practice supporting one another. He has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the painting department since 1979. He has also taught in the first year program, and the print media department at SAIC. For two years he taught in a semester abroad program in San Miguel de Allende, GTO Mexico for the School of the Art Institute. The past three years he has been teaching at Korea University in the International Summer Campus.
Liebert was the resident director, and associate program director for Ox Bow Summer School of Painting from 1989 until 2003. After Liebert left Ox Bow a scholarship was endowed in his name to honor his achievement as an artist and teacher.
Jin is a printmaker and writer from Korea and Singapore, currently practicing printmaking, bookbinding, and book conservation in Carleton College, MN. Their works are built upon marks of nibs and needles. Carving into a flat surface and leaving a permanent mark comes with a degree of responsibility they bear in making of their works. Therefore, everything in their works, the marks, the allegory, and the composition are, or rather have to be, intentional.
