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:
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/
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.
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.
Sula is a recent graduate with BFAs in Graphic Design and Printmaking from Ohio University. She is currently working as a Graphic Designer in Chicago, IL.
Services Offered:
- Graphic Design
- Illustration
Website:
sula.medovoy.com
Orr Gidon currently resides in Chicago as a freelance artist, designer, and fabricator. Gidon earned their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where they studied Printmedia and 3D Design & Fabrication. In their 2D work, Gidon is stimulated by pattern, repeating line and shape to create visual movements, and optical illusions inspired by patterns of human behavior. Within their 3D practice, Gidon explores concepts of change and movement through processes of material manipulation, particularly using wood and metal.
Their design work emphasizes principles of ergonomics, multi-functionality, and sustainability with a sculptural approach. Part of their time is spent working with steel at Manifold, a metal furniture fabrication studio.
Classes by this Artist:
Screenprinting 201: Textiles
Relief Printing & Repeat Patterns (June 2017)
Screenprinting on Textiles (March)
April Sheridan is a letterpress printer who is particularly interested in the artistic and experimental possibilities of the broadside and its historic place in American culture. For ten years she ran the letterpress printing, papermaking, and bookbinding studios at the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. As an advocate for book arts education she has spoken at Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum Wayzgoose/Educators Conference, Letterpress: Forward Thinking Conference at St. Bride Library in London, and at the &Now Conference at CalArts. She currently serves on the boards of the American Printing History Association, Inland Chapter and the WasteShed and was previously assistant director of the Chicago Printers Guild.
Website:
www.instagram.com/april.sheridan/
Classes by this Artist:
Letterpress I: Wood and Metal Type (Sep 2016)
Letterpress I: Wood and Metal Type (March 2017)
Printing for Poets: Chapbooks & Movable Type (October 2017)
Working with Woodtype
Vandercook SP-25 Authorization Workshop
Vandercook SP-25 Authorization Workshop (June 5)
Vandercook SP-25 Authorization Workshop (June 20)
Letterpress I: Wood and Metal Type (Sept 2017)
Letterpress I: Wood and Metal Type (Oct 2017)
Letterpress Refresher (Nov 2017)
The Artist Book: Design & Construction
Letterpress Authorization Workshop
Advanced Bookbinding: Artists’ Books (March)
Viraj Mithani is an interdisciplinary contemporary artist. His works derive from historic artistic cultures and worldly traditions. His practice floats between print, painting and sculpture. Native of Mumbai, India, he began with a traditional background in the arts. He graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. He also holds a diploma degree from Chelsea Camberwell Wimbledon College of Art and Design (CCW) of University of Arts London (2012). His selected exhibitions include: Dalarnas Museum Falun in Sweden – Falun International Print Triennial, International Competition Lithography Litho – Kielce/2015 Kielce in Poland, Hammond Museum in New York, Williamsburg Art and Historical Centre in New York, Flushing Town Hall in New York, Sullivan Galleries in Chicago, Gene Siskel Film Centre in Chicago, and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal U.S.A’s Chicago Gallery. Viraj Mithani currently works and resides in Chicago, IL pursuing his art practice and teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Website:
www.virajmithani.com/
Residency Period:
Sep 2016–Dec 2016
Project Statement:
I make prints and paintings that attempt to encompass the historical and autobiographical history of art within a single frame. My artworks revolve around several distinct cultures and traditions; drawing influence from Indian miniature and Warli paintings, Chinese opera art, Japanese woodcut prints, and European/ American western art movements, to name several. As Roland Barthes suggests in his essay “Rhetoric of the Image,” each image has both a coded iconic message and a non-coded iconic message. My images have a literal linguistic meaning, relating to the physicality of medium but are simultaneously ciphered with personal content. At the heart of my practice is a relationship between deep-rooted world techniques like lithography and new world technology like digital printing. For example, I paint on plexi-plate and then run it through the press. I repeat the process with specific adjustments made to the pressure of the printing press amounting to overlapping of the image. The mono print is then layered with translucent images/patterns, a technique called Giclee.
My goal is to strike a balance between the traditional and progressive. Color psychology and color symbolism play an integral role in my prints and paintings. I want to explore and create visual semiotics of motifs that are borrowed from several of these mentioned art traditions. I attempt to relate my art to how it affects the viewership (audience reacting to colors, imagery and symbols) and in turn, the stimulation and psychological response it produces. These medias extend human perception, which result in private space no longer being personal. Developing medias blur the boundary lines of space and mediums. Media is not limited to digital products. Body, objects, text, mark making and other elements are also medias for space phenomenon. From traditional to progressive mediums, I create a conversation and study between the privatized space and the imaginary private space, which also includes various dimensionalities (2D, 3D and 4D).
My works are produced on traditional materials like canvas and paper, but also on unconventional matter like fabrics such as felt and vinyl, each featuring a blend of representation and colorful abstraction. My prints and paintings consist of blocks of color, splatter, loose grids of varying line weight, washes and deft use of found materials. I also aim to build intimations of depth but in a distinctly painterly manner, with great sensitivity to facture and tonality. These works are a hybrid of discarded materials, available techniques—both old and new, tying them back to the source of my inspirations. My goal is to retain my traditional artistic background and culture while embracing the constant change that impacts my practice.
Products by this Artist:
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:
Teaching Artist
Grace Calderone is a Graphic Designer, Calligrapher, and Printer. She earned her BFA in Graphic Arts from Columbia College Chicago in 2015. Her work can be found in breweries across Indiana, and focuses heavily on the uses of hand lettering and typography. She currently lives and works in Chicago.
Website:
www.gracecalderone.com/
Classes by this Artist:
Modern Calligraphy
Modern Calligraphy
DIY Greeting Cards: Calligraphy (Nov 2017)
Calligraphy Crash Course
Rachel Foster is an artist and printmaker living in Chicago. She has an MFA from the California College of the Arts and a BFA from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been shown at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, and Western Exhibitions, amongst others.
Website:
rachelefoster.com
Classes by this Artist:
Screenprinting Photos: Halftones and Found Images
Printmaking Foundations (July 2017)
Print As Protest: Posters for the People
Matthew Owen Wead is an interdisciplinary artist and a native of Chicago, IL. He received a BFA from Morehouse College (2006) and an MFA from University of Maryland (2009) with a focus on printmaking and mixed media. His prints can be found in collections and museums throughout the United States. He often incorporates multiple media in his work that focuses on identity and the hierarchy of power.
Website:
matthewowenwead.com/
Classes by this Artist:
Community Workshop: The Exquisite Risographic Flip Book!
Products by this Artist:
