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.
Rob Kelsey first experienced printmaking at DePaul University, where he studied animation and developed a distaste for digital art processes. Printmaking was his first window into the joys of older artistic forms that simply cannot be replicated digitally. Intaglio led to screenprinting led to bookbinding led to a desire to dabble in as many media as possible, combining and crossing them where appropriate, and exploring themes and imagery from folklore and superstition.
Follow him on Instagram at: @truly.ghouly
Rebecca Lothan (b. 1992, Chicago) is a visual artist based in Chicago. She received her BFA from Washington University in St Louis in 2015, and is the recipient of the 2015 Peter Marcus Prize in Printmaking and the 2013 Marsha Blasingame Award in Printmaking.
Driven by a collage sensibility, Rebecca uses everyday and found materials to examine the spaces between and around traditional media.
Parita is a world traveler and a mid-western baby. She is bothered neither by the searing sunshine of Tamil Nadu, nor the frigid winds of Chicago. Parita’s creative works are generated via art and craft practices such as drawing and bookbinding. Her media comfort zones include drawing, painting, photography, print, bookbinding, paper making, music and more.
Keara McGraw is a Chicago-based illustrator whose passion for storytelling just barely eclipses that for peanut butter. She holds a BFA in Illustration from Columbia College Chicago, and was named Columbia College’s 2015 Illustrator of the Year.
Illustration is her library, and she loves archiving details through research and linework. She began screenprinting because her heart felt a calling for handmade kitchen towels, and thinks ironing is cathartic. She will never stop drawing birds.
Jessica joined Spudnik Press Cooperative in Spring 2015 as Development Manager, bringing her diverse background in nonprofit administration, fundraising and event planning. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Legal Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by her Masters of Public Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Stephanie Benhaim is a painter and printmaker born and raised in Miami, Florida. She received her BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon in 2014. Benhaim is known for creating monotype portraits that grapple with themes of diaspora and the erasure of identity. Her works have been published in Jai-Alai Magazine and OTPW Zine Works.
Eliz Kaple is a print and new-media artist based in Chicago, Il. Her practice relies primarily on printmaking, bookbinding, and video. Through the use of diagrams and architectural structures, she reimagines planes of perspective and reanimates inadequate spaces.
Darian Longmire is an interdisciplinary artist currently living in Chicago IL. He studied visual art and graphic design at Illinois State University, graduating in 2013. His work deals with conceptual approaches to exploring cosmology, the study of the universe. Monoprinting and assemblage currently drive his print based endeavors. Darian will be seeking MFA candidacy at a list of chosen institutions for the fall 2016 term.
Margaret Hitch is a printmaker, illustrator and sometimes poet hailing from the upper peninsula of Michigan. Last year, she received a BFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she spent a lot of time with litho stones and birch plywood. Margaret’s print works often illustrate or work in tandem with her poems. Through the fellowship at Spudnik, she hopes to make three small books that experiment with relationships between text and image.
Leila Abdelrazaq is a Palestinian, Chicago-based artist, author, and activist. Her debut graphic novel, Baddawi, was shortlisted for the 2015 Palestine Book Awards. She is also the author and illustrator of a variety of short comic zines. She views alternative comix as a powerful political tool in social movements.
Angela Davis Fegan is a native of Chicago’s South Side. She received her BFA in Fine Arts from New York’s Parsons School of Design and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts from Columbia College Chicago. Angela has mounted shows at Galerie F, Chicago Artists’ Coalition, the DePaul Art Museum, The Center for Book Arts (NY), the University of Chicago’s Arts Incubator and Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Hyde Park Art Center, SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries, Columbia’s Glass Curtain Gallery, SPACES (OH) and Revolve (AVL). She has held residencies at the Chicago Artists’ Coalition, F4F, Connecticut College, the Hambidge Center (GA), Revolve (NC), and Project Row House (TX). Her work has been selected for book covers including The Truth About Dolls by Jamila Woods, Secondhand by Maya Marshall, and All Blue So Late by Laura Swearingen-Steadwell. Her lavender menace poster project has been written up by The Offing (LA Review of Books), Hyperallergic, Chicago Magazine, the RedEye, Go Magazine, Pop Sugar, the Chicago Reader, and Newcity.
Angela joined Spudnik Press as a teaching artists in our inaugural 2022 Teaching Artist Cohort.