Jolanta Soares, grew up in Communist Poland, coming of age during the Solidarity Movement, before emigrating to the United States. This background intermingles with her experiences as a mother, her love of sailing and working as an IT professional, to inspire her many different series of works. “Stories” describes her life’s journey, “Into the Cloud” conveys a rebellion against the digitization and vulnerability of our identities, “Poppies Fields” embodies the beauty and pathos inherent in poppies, and “Don’t Think” being the Joie de vivre. Reminiscent of De Kooning, Joan Mitchell and other Abstract Expressionist artists, Jolanta uses an Oil & Wax and Encaustic techniques to create paintings.
Image: Detail of Jolanta Soares, Blind Justice, Printing Ink on Paper, 2019
Services Offered:
Website:
jolantasoares.com/
Calvert & Co
Shawn Calvert is a Graphic artist and web/ux designer.
Services Offered:
Website:
shawncalvert.com
Intern
Lydia James is a studio art major at Grinnell College in central Iowa and will graduate in the spring of 2019. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia but has found quite a home in the Midwest. Her work is not explicitly based in a single medium but she enjoys printmaking, watercolor, embroidery, knitting, and sewing. She is always drawing and has consistently kept a sketchbook since the age of 5.
You can keep up with her day-to-day making on instagram at @lydiajames.art and contact her at lydiajames.art@gmail.com
Services Offered:
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Illustration
Website:
lydia-james.squarespace.com/
Aspiring scientific illustrator and printer: almost always sunburned.
Services Offered:
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Illustration
- Printmaking Commissions
Website:
www.instagram.com/100yrsold/
Intern
Ali is a 24-year-old graphic designer pursuing her MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She graduated from Northwestern University in 2016 with a degree in History and Integrated Marketing. Her work focuses on the interplay between text and image on the printed page. She writes, illustrates, and designs content, then prints and binds it into unique book forms.
Contact her at atomek1@saic.edu
Services Offered:
Website:
alitomek.com/
Member
Holly Cahill draws inspiration from the spaces we inhabit within our shared environment. Rather than referencing any one place, the visual seams and illuminated marks in her works point to patterns drawn from construction frames hidden beneath the walls of buildings and the various functions of rooms. She is fascinated by the idea of a portal that can be defined in architecture and science fiction as a passage way for the body from one space to the other. The marrying of this concept of a portal that can bend rules of time and space with its more mundane counterpart in architecture creates a space to consider the possibilities of things beyond our comprehension yet in relationship to what is in front of our eyes.
Trained as a painter, Holly Cahill uses an exploration of materials and process to engage with ideas connected to choreography, landscape, hyper-dimensional phenomena, and architecture. Her work has been shown at Penn State University, DEMO Project, Chicago Artist Coalition, the David and Reva Logan Center for the Arts, D Gallery, The Franklin, the Hyde Park Art Center, and the Walter Philips Gallery in Banff Canada, among others. She received her BFA in painting from Syracuse University and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, 8550 Ohio, the Banff Centre, and Ox-Bow. Holly is an artist member of the newest branch of Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Chicago.
Website:
www.hollycahill.com
Residency Period:
Jun 2018–Jun 2018
Project Statement:
As an artist in residence at Spudnik Press Cooperative, I plan to develop a new series of work that builds off of forms and processes utilized in my painting and drawing practice. My painting practice is often sculptural and I would like my works on paper to investigate a more three-dimensional component. I have been using sprayed ink and transfer processes for sometime in my works on paper and canvas. More recently, I began to use paper as a form of resist in my paintings as I cover the surface of the canvas. The paper, which becomes saturated with ink in the painting process is cut or torn and then reused in a series of collages. I am particularly fascinated by the luminous pixellated, atmospheric quality that I can achieve with spray ink and want to bring this element into a series of prints through acquatint techniques. There is also a layering process in my works on paper and canvas, that I would love to develop more through printmaking by using reflective and transparent inks.
In the print studio, I also plan to experiment with textured papers that can be molded, torn, and reassembled to lift off the two-dimensional plane. These abstractions mimic clusters of soft natural environments and patterns that would then be altered by inserting geometric elements that refer to built environments such as the home, religious spaces, monumental architecture and gardens that form a bridge between interior and exterior spaces.
Image: Holly Cahill, Through the Eaves, 2013 (detail).
Products by this Artist:
Member / Past Artist-In-Residence
Professional artist, lecturer, and educational activist Anita Jung creates works of art involving repurposing, printmaking, stencils, installation and shadow art that are known and exhibited internationally.
Services Offered:
Website:
www.anitajungart.com
Residency Period:
Jun 2018–Jun 2018
Project Statement:
Anita Jung applied to the 2018 Artist Residency at Spudnik Press with her partner Tom Christison. While they are an artist couple who maintain separate studios and studio practices, both explore an aesthetic and political practice that involves recycling and fragmentation. Their work comes from a dedicated practice of making in a world that seems to continuously be on the brink of self- destruction. This residency will examine the cross-fertilization of ideas, techniques and dialogue that influence their works. Their studios are across town from one another, the Spudnik residency will not only permit them to experience working in closer proximity but to take advantage of the planned Chicago Print Crawl through a participatory community-based event.
Image: Anita Jung, Jali Sunyata 1, 2017 (detail).
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2018 Artist in Residence
Carris Adams’ work visually investigates markers of “domesticated space”. The domestication of space occurs through the markers and signs of presence (i.e. roads, residential structures, commercial structures, government buildings, cemeteries, advertisements etc.) resulting in “grounding”. This act of grounding produces neighborhoods and sites, often defined by temporal boundaries and limits. Human necessity (in addition to prejudices, politics, and aesthetics) aids in the formation of boundaries and subsequent value judgments about the inhabitants surrounding these objects. Carris’ work investigates these markers and the relational threads between ownership in marginalized spaces, politics, class, histories, celebration, and resilience. Her itinerant tendencies and unsettled curiosity allow for found images, objects and language to become source material for the studio. Thusly the works are conceptually multi-layered, often with double or triple meanings that seek to inform and position viewers to recognize their assumptions, recall an experience and perhaps note how societal markers materialize in the landscape.
Adams is a visual artist whose practice visually investigates markers of “domesticated space”. The conceptually multi-layered works seek to inform and position viewers to recognize their assumptions, recall an experience and perhaps note how societal markers materialize in the landscape. Adams received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin (2013) and her MFA from the University of Chicago (2015). Adams’s work has been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem ( New York, NY) , The Logan Center Exhibitions at The University of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Produce Model Gallery (Chicago, IL) Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery (Chicago,IL) and The Courtyard Gallery at The University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX).
Website:
www.carrisadams.com/
Residency Period:
Jun 2018–Jun 2018
Project Statement:
As a Spudnik artist in residence, I will create 3 editions of prints based on my paintings PRAYPRAYPRAY, Bone No. 40, and BeautyfeelFEELbeauty. While creating these paintings I enjoyed the process of experimenting with materials, composition and mark making in an effort to embody my experience of encountering the original markers in the landscape. While painting and drawing is my primary mode of working, I make it my goal to experiment with different forms that can better the work.
With this in mind, I chose these three paintings as sources because they are all created from signage in the landscape that exists in multiples. For instance, PRAYPRAYPRAY was inspired by an old newspaper bin that had been painted black, except for PRAY stenciled in white letters on its sides. I found this newsletter bin in the Southshore neighborhood of Chicago, but more have been spotted in Hyde Park, Wicker Park and Garfield Park. Who is this anonymous artist giving pedestrians a directive to pray and why? Is it what our world needs? And to whom do we pray?
Thus, just as PRAYPRAYPRAY enabled myself and the viewer to question its mission and motive, I aim to create an edition of prints that will do the same. Through printmaking, I want to experiment with color, texture, composition and mark-making. The option to have a work of art exist in multiples just as it does in the world is unchartered territory in my practice and I am interested in exploring this further.
Image: Carris Adams, PRAYPRAYPRAY, 2017.
2018 Artist in Residence
Tom Christison is a master of lithography and monotype processes, which he uses to create detailed fantastical prints about life cycles, passages of time, regeneration, and the food chain.
Christison’s work may be found in numerous permanent collections including the Corcoran, Washington, DC, The National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Dresden Academy of Fine Art, Kupferstichkabinett, Germany, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris, India Habitat Center, New Delhi, India, among others. He has taught printmaking and drawing at McNeese State University in Louisiana, Ohio University, The University of Tennessee- Knoxville, Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the University of Iowa. He has also been part of the Master Printmaker in Residence Program at the Robert Blackburn Print Workshop in New York City and a resident at the Plain Museum of Art in Fargo, North Dakota. He maintains a private print workshop, Sandhill Press in Iowa City, Iowa, where his investigations into printmaking take place. Christison studied printmaking and drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and Arizona State University in Tempe, where he received an MFA in printmaking.
Website:
orangebarrelindustries.com/tomchristison/
Residency Period:
Jun 2018–Jun 2018
Project Statement:
Tom Christison applied to the 2018 Artist Residency at Spudnik Press with his partner Anita Jung. While they are an artist couple who maintain separate studios and studio practices, both explore an aesthetic and political practice that involves recycling and fragmentation. Their work comes from a dedicated practice of making in a world that seems to continuously be on the brink of self- destruction. This residency will examine the cross-fertilization of ideas, techniques and dialogue that influence their works. Their studios are across town from one another, the Spudnik residency will not only permit them to experience working in closer proximity but to take advantage of the planned Chicago Print Crawl through a participatory community-based event.
Image: Tom Christison, Turnbuckle, 2014-2015 (detail).
Products by this Artist:
I’m Ashley Kukulski, the founder and designer behind Evermore Paper Co. I started Evermore in 2013 as a way to express myself creatively and live more intentionally by doing something I was truly passionate about. My goal was to create something unexpected and my trials with paper led me to design products with unique cut out and layered elements. Since then, my collection has grown to include hand-painted and printed designs, but one thing that remains at the core is my love of texture and pattern. My work is constantly evolving and a reflection of my personal style, which is minimal, romantic, effortless and a bit edgy. I pour my heart and soul into each product with the hope that they will inspire others to spread their love and live their best lives.
I am a visual person who enjoys taking mental snapshots of the beauty around me. I am especially drawn to patterns and textures found in nature and urban environments and I love exploring different ways to translate my findings into simple, yet beautiful illustrations.
Most of my designs are created by hand with ink or paint in my home studio overlooking the Chicago skyline. The components are then digitalized and recolored in Illustrator. Each paper cut card is machine-cut and hand-assembled from my home studio and all printed pieces are produced locally. I make an extra effort to use recycled materials and work with local suppliers whenever possible.
Website:
evermorepaperco.com/
