Development & Marketing Director
Mikky Wright is a marketing and development professional with strong business ties to the Chicago community. He moved to Chicago via Seattle in 1997. Mikky holds a B.A in Liberal Arts from the Evergreen State College with a focus in Screenwriting and Sculpture. Over the years he’s volunteered for a number of neighborhood non-profits including Do Division, Chicago Bed & Breakfast Association and LEEP Beyond and has been employed by places as The National MS Society, Draftfcb, Upshot & Odwalla Juice Co. has two children, owns a cafe in West Town, enjoys being a Noble Charter substitute teacher and recently added a rescue cat to his family.
Mikky joined Spudnik in February, 2015 as the Development & Marketing Director. In this role, he will work directly with the Executive Director and Studio Manager to increase Spudnik’s membership base, produce donor events and increased media exposure.
Website:
www.linkedin.com/in/mikkyjwright/
Ryan Standfest is an artist and art educator who lives and works in Detroit. He is the publisher and editor of ROTLAND PRESS and founded the performance group Cabaret BLACK EYE. He holds an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa.
Website:
ryanstandfest.com
Classes by this Artist:
BROADSHEET! Sensations of the City in Print
Products by this Artist:
Hannah King received her MFA from Columbia College Chicago in Interdisciplinary Arts: Book and Paper Arts in 2013 and her BFA from Memphis College of Art in 2008. Her practice incorporates a wide range of mediums with an emphasis on alternative image making techniques in letterpress printing, hand papermaking, and bookbinding. She currently lives and works in Chicago.
Website:
hannaheking.com
Classes by this Artist:
Letterpress Print Your Own Valentines
Letterpress Print Your Own Cards (WI2015)
Mothers Day Letterpress Workshop
Letterpress Your Own Cards (SU2015)
Letterpress Your Own Cards (11/8/2015)
Letterpress Your Own Cards (12/6/2015)
Letterpress Your Own Cards (Winter 2016)
Ashley Shaul is a Chicago artist, printmaker, and taxidermy hobbyist hailing from Detroit. She received her BA in 2012 focused on traditional illustration and art history at Columbia College Chicago and her MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2014. Her work revolves around figures that depict objectification and zoomorphism. Pieces can be found in the permanent collection of The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and various private collections throughout the US.
Website:
ashleyshaul.com
Classes by this Artist:
Utilitarian Printmaking: Leather Keychains
Utilitarian Printmaking: Leather Keychains
DIY Greeting Cards: Linoleum Block Printing (April 2016)
Littlehahas, HKAnders, ThisNewForest
As, Lookingglass Theatre’s first graphic designer, Heather worked on promotions from concept to finish and became a design resource for the company. Currently she runs her own studio This New Forest, works on illustrations through Little Hahas (commissioned illustrations, cards and wrapping papers) and produces art, HKAnders.com. Her personal work focuses the fleeting reality of life and explores natural elements . She is on the working board at the Chicago Design Museum, where she actively volunteers as an Event Director. She also prints, makes and creates at Spudnik Press.
Services Offered:
- Exhibition Opportunities
- Graphic Design
- Illustration
- Printmaking Commissions
Website:
littlehahas.com/ thisnewforest.com/
Classes by this Artist:
Pocket Movies: Make Your Own Flipbooks
Screenprinting for Tree Huggers
Products by this Artist:
I am a painter and printmaker currently residing in Chicago, IL. I attended Cornish College for the Arts in Seattle, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My influences include; but are far from limited to, vintage photos, color theory, street signs, calligraphy, and patterns (both synthetic and organic).
I have exhibited at the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage, and Construction, and the Jane Addams Hull House Museum. As well as in a variety of other group shows. In addition I am currently illustrating a Children’s book.
Website:
www.Thorstensahlin.com
Kate McQuillen is a Chicago-based artist working in print and installation, and is represented by O’Born Contemporary. She has shown in Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, and Boston, and has works in public and private collections in Europe and North America. Writings about her work have been included in such news outlets as The Chicago Reader, Time Out Chicago and Rabble.ca, and in publications by Columbia College Chicago and Rutgers University.
In recent years, she attended residencies in the U.S. and abroad: Ox-Bow(Michigan), Open Studio (Toronto), Frans Masereel Center (Belgium), the Center for Book & Paper Arts (Chicago), the Ragdale Foundation (Lake Forest, IL), Elsewhere Artist Collaborative (Greensboro, N.C.), and Lillstreet Art Center. She has been the recipient of numerous City of Chicago Cultural Grants and Illinois Arts Council Professional Development Grants. She has received visiting artist teaching positions at Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, and at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, IL, and was elected Director of the Chicago Printer’s Guild for two consecutive years. In 2009, she received her M.F.A. in Visual Arts from York University.
McQuillen uses collage, portraiture, and landscape to discuss issues of surveillance and Big Data. In her portraits and installations, whistleblowers and information leaks seek to undermine government watchdogs.
Website:
www.katemcquillen.com/
Residency Period:
Sep 2014–Dec 2014
Project Statement:
I begin by creating large monoprinted images around a central theme--flashes of light, lenses, and eyes. The markmaking is physical, made by scraping razor blades across the plate, and the lines are visceral, often chattering across the surface. Their physicality acts as evidence of my hand in the work, and their photographic appearance implies a recording of my presence. I then cut up these finished images into smaller squares and combine them with other prints, creating a web of my own information that, once whole, is now scrambled.
Through this, I reference the processes in which our information is generated and sent out into the world, and how our trails of information can indicate where our physical person is located. In my final images, I reassemble these prints to create constructed images that just barely hold together, and never quite resolve. I burn the surfaces with matches, and obscure the markmaking with puddles of milky india ink, as a means of destroying my paper trail and evading being watched. Tiny explosions appear the surface of the images, blowing up my trail.
Themes of tracking appear in the work through images of triangles and geometric forms, and reference the tactic of Dead Reckoning, a means of determining a person’s location based on knowledge of their previous whereabouts. These works express my desire to go off the digital grid, to erase my information trail and regain anonymity and privacy.
Printmaking, a medium generally known for its role in the dissemination of information, becomes in this process a platform for discussing how personal information is now public and/or stored by independent and government agencies. I do this by employing the most singular type of printing–monoprinting–as a representation of individualized information. The dangers of recording personal information are discussed through my desire to burn and blot out my images.
Products by this Artist:
With a background in the independent punk rock, DIY and zine communities, letterpress was a perfect fit for artist Rebecca Ann Rakstad. She began RAR RAR Press during her first letterpress class in 2004. She has a studio in Humboldt Park filled with type and a 1,000 lb Chandler and Price platen press named Gary. Rebecca received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000 and MFA from Columbia College in Book and Paper Arts in 2008. Rebecca is a member of the Chicago Printers Guild and a Charter Member of Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
Website:
rarrarpress.co
Classes by this Artist:
Holiday Card Printing: Letterpress (11/23/14)
Hybrid artist Jay Besemer is the author of several poetry books and chapbooks, including Aster to Daylily and A New Territory Sought, and (as Jen Besemer) Telephone, Object with Man’s Face, Quiet Vertical Movements, Ten Word Problems, and What Is Born. Jay’s recombinant poetry projects are featured in issue 25 of TENDE RLOIN and anthologized in Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. They can also be found in Monsters & Dust, Aufgabe, BlazeVOX, e-ratio, Sentence and other delicious publications. Jay also curates the occasional poetry event, writes feature essays and reviews, and teaches art and poetry workshops in and beyond Chicago. To find out more, visit www.jenbesemer.com.
Website:
jenbesemer.com
Classes by this Artist:
Create Your Own Broadsides
Experimental Poetry for Everyone
Brad Rohloff is a artist, printmaker, and comics maker hailing from Wisconsin but living in Chicago. His work ranges from appropriated sculptural and printed material to self published and performed comics. Brad runs an comics, zines, and artists’ books publishing house in Chicago called Bred Press, which looks to provide a platform by which to support domestic and international contemporary artists working within the medium of printed and published matter. Brad likes big dogs and jokes. He has also helped organize the performative comics reading event Brain Frame, and used to be a Spudnik Press intern a long time ago.
Brad got his BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2014.
Website:
www.brohloff.me/ www.bredpress.com/
