Jenna Blazevich
Vichcraft Design Studio
Chicago-based product & branding designer, calligraphy instructor, and feminist artist.
Services Offered:
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Graphic Design
Molly Berkson
Fellow
Molly Berkson is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in paper, print, book, and fiber crafts. She has a fondness for the subcultures and subcultural practices that employ amateur and anti-authoritarian ideologies, and an appreciation for craft in all its forms–in its distinct and intermingling boundaries. In her practice, she patchworks together these specific aesthetic practices and do-it-yourself methods.
Berkson lives in Chicago and is a teaching artist with After School Matters and ElevArte Community Studio. She recently exhibited work at After School Special in Milwaukee WI, Femme4Femme in Chicago as part of 2nd Floor Rear, and at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, where she was a studio intern in 2016. Berkson graduated with her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015.
Services Offered:
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Printmaking Commissions
Website:
www.mollyberkson.com/Project Statement:
While working at the Women’s Studio Workshop last year, I learned about processing plants for papermaking and using different print processes on handmade paper. I collected plants from the roadside, made them into pulp and played with couching different fibers on top of each other. I then experimented with woodcut, letterpress and silkscreen on top of crispy, smooth, or soft fibers.At the same time, I began sewing my first quilt. By working in these methods simultaneously I felt the ways that these distinct skills are connected. Couching shaped sheets was like piecing quilt squares, building compositions from variations in texture and color of plant material. A woodcut printed on the surface was the top stitch connecting the pieces together.
Like quilting, these paper works used a type of waste material: ruderal plants and weeds were like the plant world versions of collections of unused textile scraps in the quilter’s studio. Fundamental to my work is an understanding that fiber craft and print media facilitate exchange, tell stories, and can occupy categorizations of both expert and amateur distinctions. Making quilt-like paper works at the Women’s Studio Workshop began to touch on these ideas.
At Spudnik, I want to push these quilt-paper pieces further. I envision this project developing over three parts: 1. Experiment with the handmade paper I already made, building up layers of prints, collaging techniques together, and developing concept. 2. Using this first step as research to make a new batch of ruderal plant quilt-paper, and then 3. Editioning prints.
Classes by this Artist:
Papermaking: Pulp, Sculpt and Print (February)Papermaking Basics (March)
Papermaking Explorations (May)
From Plant to Paper: Making Paper with Milkweed
Papermaking Workshop: Native Milkweed
Papermaking Labs (8/29/21)
Papermaking Labs (10/17/21)
Papermaking Labs (11/14/21)
Papermaking Labs (1/30/22)
Papermaking Labs (2/20/22)
Papermaking Labs (3/27/22)
Adrienne Quint
Director
HR Manager, Museum of Contemporary Art
Board Member since: 2016
Michael LoGuidice
Director, Treasurer
CPA, CBIZ Valuation Group, LLC
Board Member since: 2015
TJ Veneris
Director, Secretary
Director of Development, DePaul University
Board Member since: 2015
Betsy Stout
Betsy Stout is a perfectly efficient donut-consuming machine from rural Indiana who inevitably gravitated to the nearest confection hub: Chicago. When not working as a freelance graphic designer to generate the resources required to slake her pastry lust, she cooks up prints, drawings, sculptures, and cakes. Stout works primarily in silkscreen and frosting, employing pastel colors and hyper-effeminate imagery to challenge the status of ‘girly’ aesthetics. She claims to leave a trail of fluff and crumbs to lure viewers into addressing meatier concepts, but really just forgot a napkin.
Services Offered:
- Graphic Design
- Printmaking Commissions
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Illustration
Website:
www.betsystout.com/Project Statement:
I'd like to continue a project that has been in progress since late 2014, a series of large scale combination drawing/silkscreen works featuring self-identified effeminate males in the American Midwest. This project was launched with help from the Southern Graphics Council Undergraduate Fellowship in 2014, and so far I have been able to create and exhibit 4 portraits. Two more are in progress since the exhibition in April 2016. The current portraits and those in progress are slated to be exhibited at Butler University in the Spring 2017 semester. The current works incorporate screen print, drawing, and sculptural acrylic ‘frosting’ to explore the physicality, fashion, sexualities, and performative expressions of these individuals who have found a way to express their alternative gender identities with pride in the fairly restrictive social environment of the midwest. This project currently focuses on individuals who identify as masculine-of-center, but who feel some pull towards femininity. So far this has included cissexual men, transmasculine and nonbinary individuals, and women who have identified primarily with a masculine presence. I work with pastel colors and hyper-effeminate imagery to challenge the status of ‘girly’ aesthetics in the hierarchy of taste, using languages of fluff and delicacy to address more complex meanings. The portraits celebrate bravery in identity but also frivolity, hinting at a post-queer world where gender identity is an aesthetic choice and no longer a political action.
Yasi Moussavi
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 2017Project 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 LaminatingPapermaking (Sept 2017)
Papermaking: Pulp, Sculpt and Print
Papermaking: Pulp Painting (July)
Carolina Martinez
Carolina Martinez is an artist and graphic designer who works mainly on print media, illustration and book arts. She has worked in commercial print graphic design alongside more personal artistic projects.
Working mainly on acrylic paintings, she creates illustrations and sketches about both private and universal references of miniature worlds that reflect her everyday, scratching and adding layers in order to give expression to her own perceptions of what is real and what is fantasy.
Carolina Martinez (born in 1983) is from Bogota, Colombia.
Website:
carolinamartinez.work/Project Statement:
As a recent immigrant, I’ve been struggling to find a place that I can confidently call home. I moved to the United States over a year ago and have been deliberately processing my experience through the creative process. Over the last five months I’ve been exploring the idea of home through a series of acrylic paintings that use the metaphor of a soil sample as a way to illustrate a deeper understanding of the meaning of home. A soil sample is the term used in geology to describe a portion of the earth that is extracted and then studied to test the quality of the soil. I have created a series of illustrations of small universes that reflect places, cities and countries I have lived in. I want to translate all the visual language from the acrylic paintings into printed media, as a way to explore different colors, textures and narratives for that imagery, and collect them within a printed book that intends to answer the following questions: -What is home? -Where is home located? -What does home looks like? -Who do you share home with? -What is the difference between your past/present/future home?Classes by this Artist:
Community Workshop: Paste Papers (Plus Accordion Books!)Products by this Artist:
Mary Climes
Mary Climes is a recent graduate from the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work revolves around the humorous narratives of awkward lives, gross representations of middle school and her complicated love of Cathy comics. Her recently self published works include “We’re All Fine” (Spring 2016), and “Please Insert Anything” (Summer 2016).
Website:
www.maryclimes.com/Project Statement:
For my time in Spudnik press I would like to focus on creating a screen-printed artist book project. Much of my comics work revolves around small town life, characters in communities and their interactions with each other. I want to create a set of materials of various structures and sizes that feed into a central narrative of a small town amidst an unnamed tragedy. I have begun this project as part of an independent study with Chicago artist Paul Nudd, who has been mentoring me through the visual side as well as the overall themes in the narrative. By the end of the project I plan on having an edition of 50 to 100 sets of this collection. My influences for this project are Chris Ware’s Building Stories, Nick Drnaso’s Beverly, and the use of print in Lilli Carre’s various artist books.Classes by this Artist:
Community Workshop: Paste Papers (Plus Accordion Books!)Products by this Artist:
Bianca Marks
President, Board of Directors
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.
Website:
www.marksoncanvas.com/
Stephen DeSantis
Director
Originally from Rhode Island, Stephen studied and worked in New York as commercial still-life photographer for twenty-six years (including commuting between NY and Paris for two years) for clients including Estee Lauder, The Wall Street Journal, NYC MTA and People Magazine. In 2008, he moved to Chicago to earn his MFA in Interdisciplinary Book & Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. In Chicago, Stephen has curated exhibitions including a moving CTA train car for “Art on Track”, “Hearts-a-Bluhm” on Michigan Avenue and co-curated the “Marilyn Sward: Speaking in Paper” exhibition. As Director of Academic Initiatives at Columbia College Chicago, he managed special projects including exhibitions of faculty and student work, conferences, and the Art + Activism program and student organization. Stephen’s photographs and artists’ books have been exhibited internationally including at the Seoul Artists’ Book Fair, Printworks Gallery in Chicago and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. His work is included in the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection and the University of Iowa Library Special Collection.
Bert Green
Vice President, Board of Directors
Bert Green is the director of Bert Green Fine Art gallery in Chicago. He has lived in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Bert Green Fine Art focuses on fine art marketing, sales and curation, with an emphasis on art’s role, impact and interaction with trends in urban economic development and revitalization, technology and culture. The gallery represents and exhibits emerging and mid-career artists, and works with specialty print houses to produce unusual and rare limited edition lithographs, letterpress, and photographic prints.