Limón’s approach treats the printing process as a tool for excavating the past. Working across paper and fabric, they construct complex visual layers by combining site maps, archival photography, and raw line work. By incorporating iron oxide and rust pigments directly into the ink and fibers, the physical surfaces reflect the actual chemical and material history of the land, using transparency and texture to make the quiet work of memory visible.

By drawing on neighborhood oral histories alongside historical records, Limón points to local environmental organizing as a central feature of the post-migrant journey. The resulting prints reframe the remnants of industry not as industrial decay, but as testament to the resilience and placemaking of the workers who sustained the region.

Miguel Limón is a Chicago-based artist and cultural worker whose practice examines how images, materials, and local geography preserve memory and spirit. Their research focuses on Midwestern Mexican American communities shaped by industrial labor and migration. Limón is a 2025–2027 Chicago Artists Coalition Artist-in-Residence and holds concurrent residencies at Spudnik Press and Kimball Arts Center. They have received recognition and grant support from A Blade of Grass, 3Arts/Ignite, the Aperture Foundation, and the Rauschenberg Foundation, with work exhibited at Comfort Station, Mana Contemporary, and the Design Museum of Chicago.

Images:

Monumento, 2025, Latex Print on Linen and Steel Rods
Tensile, 2025, Serigraph on Steel
Quantum Flag, 2026, Polyester Flag

Patel’s process relies on a constant, physical back-and-forth in the studio. Working on canvas, fabric, and paper, she builds her surfaces through contrasting layers—allowing water-based crayons and transparent inks to sink into the weave of raw cloth, while crisp silkscreened ink sits perfectly flat on top. This physical layering creates a distinct tension on the surface, where color and material are constantly pushing against one another.

The imagery driving this body of work bridges the private mind and the moving body. Palak translates the kinetic, high-energy rhythms of her boxing and dance practices alongside the quiet, text-heavy pages of her personal journals into monumental, large-scale drawings. By printing these fluid movements on an expansive scale, the resulting pieces shift from mere images on a wall into massive, physical interventions that dictate how a viewer moves through the gallery space.

Palak Patel is a Chicago-based printmaker and painter whose work centers on material weight, physical repetition, and the hidden texture of daily life. Raised in Vadodara, India, she finds her creative footing in the tangible things she carries—specifically the tattered, peeling notebooks in her tote bag that overflow with collected ephemera. Her practice is equally shaped by her time spent outside the studio at the boxing gym and within Latin dance socials, where she studies the mechanics of rhythm, impact, and human movement.

Palak earned her degree in painting and drawing from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Vadodara, before moving to Chicago to complete her MFA in Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has developed her work through residencies at Farwell House in Illinois and Poor Farm in Wisconsin. Her pieces have been exhibited across Chicago at venues including the South Asia Institute, the Research House for Asian Art, Color Club, and free range.

After relocating to the Midwest from coastal New England, Klein became deeply attuned to the geological history of Lake Michigan and the traces embedded within its shoreline. Collecting organic forms and debris evolved into a meditative practice through which he began studying patterns of erosion, transformation, and sedimentation. The resulting works trace his movement from Michigan to Chicago, using found materials to consider grief, transition, and the emotional residue carried through place.

Through artists’ books and zines, Klein will combine experimental printmaking processes with collected imagery and textures derived from his beach finds. Working across lithography, Risograph, cyanotype, relief, and other analog techniques, he explores the tension between slow material processes and rapid image reproduction. By enlarging, fragmenting, and abstracting details from fossils and debris, the work shifts between microscopic and landscape-like perspectives, creating visual studies of accumulation, decay, and imprint. Klein also plans to experiment with printing on translucent fabrics layered with textures drawn from bones and stones, evoking the shifting surface and atmosphere of the lake itself.

Throughout the residency, Klein will use Spudnik Press’s facilities to further expand his print-based experiments and develop this evolving body of work. A public event will be announced in conjunction with the residency.

Dasha Klein (he/they) is a Chicago-based printmaker and art educator originally from Connecticut. Growing up in coastal New England, he developed an obsession with beachcombing and exploring old graveyards. His practice uses discarded materials and experimental printmaking to investigate burial, mourning, and transformation, often approaching fossils and tombs as physical records of past lives. Klein works across lithography, screenprinting, intaglio, Risograph, relief, and cyanotype. He received a B.A. in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 2023 and formerly served as Print and New Media Studio Manager at Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency. He currently volunteers at the Chicago Maritime Museum.

These decks are designed in reflection of a “re-telling of” or alternate ending of specific memories they’ve experienced throughout the city. The deck is formed from reworked quilted prints of inherited photo archives depicting people, homes, and third spaces throughout the South and West Sides. Each playing card displays specific places, bodies, and moments in time that have deeply affected them.

The deck functions as an intimate record of relationships, neighborhoods, and encounters that continue to shape their understanding of place and belonging. Accompanying the cards will be a large-scale visual mapping project tracing patterns of movement, care, and connection between significant people and locations throughout the city.

In tandem with the deck, they’ll be cyanotyping a personalized quilted ecomap to track the movement patterns of people and places in the city that they hold reverence for. Harlem’s practice is rooted in analog experimentation and archival inquiry, often exploring how Black life is carried through memory, sound, image, and everyday ritual. Through layered photographic processes and material transformation, their work considers the ways personal archives can become sites of reflection, inheritance, and world-building.

During the residency, Harlem will use Spudnik Press’s facilities to expand their experimentation with cyanotype and print-based processes while continuing to develop this evolving body of work. West will give an artist talk on June 3rd at 6 PM to speak about their work and time at Spudnik.

Harlem Masimba West is a playground, sonic griot, and archival imagemaker from Out South Chicago. Anchored in analog media, their work centers the crossroads and portals that find Black folks. They’re a fellowship alum of Brooklyn Poets and Earthseed Family Archive Project, having been published in APOGEE and the Chicago Reader. They’re presently the 2026 Curatorial Resident at Elastic Arts, and artist in residence at Spudnik Press, ILA, and the Kimball Arts Center. At their center, Harlem is an eldest sibling doing their best to honor the name their momma gave ’em.

Programs at Spudnik Press are partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Driehaus Foundation, and the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.

Kacie Lees is a Chicago-based neon artist, printmaker, and metalworker whose interdisciplinary practice explores nature and history through the phenomenon of light. Grounded in craft and informed by research into optics and chaos theory, she fuses time into matter, using light as both subject and medium to reveal shared atomic origins and ideas of universal interconnection. Fire and electricity are central to her process — from molten glass to radiant plasma, Lees creates sculptures that glow, existing somewhere between natural phenomena and human perception.

Lees teaches neon fabrication nationally at institutions including New York University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and strengthens the voice of glass craft through public workshops in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Corning, and Seattle. She is the author and illustrator of Neon Primer: A Handbook on Light Construction, a 200-page, hand silk-screened technical manual that serves as a crucial resource to preserve material and fabrication history, define a contemporary visual language for neon, and expand its interdisciplinary reach.

The show, centered on printmaking, featured large mixed-media murals, linocut prints, collage, monoprints, risograph prints, 3D modeling, and stop-motion animations. Alex continually returns to printmaking as a medium for exploration and expression. They view printmaking as a way to celebrate creativity, and with Riso, they enjoy experimenting while pushing the boundaries between spontaneity and precision.

Santana works across a wide range of mediums, including Risograph printing, screenprinting, sewing, and crochet, often combining multiple processes within a single piece. Her practice draws from formative childhood experiences, integrating character-based imagery and vibrant visual language as a means of examining memory and identity. Beneath their bright palettes and approachable forms, her works carry layered reflections on belonging, family, inheritance, and cultural pride.

Loteria draws inspiration from the iconic Mexican card game of the same name, using its symbolic structure as a framework for personal storytelling. Santana outlines the complex  relationships to culture that can be shaped by periods of embarrassment and shame, as well as deep love, gratitude, and pride. Through this series, she revisits pivotal stages of her life, pairing each with cultural symbols that have followed her family across generations.The project offers a space to reconsider family narratives with appreciation and to arrive at a powerful realization: “wow, de verdad gané la lotería” (“wow, I really won the lottery”).

Throughout her residency, Santana will utilize Spudnik Press’s print facilities to expand the scale and technical complexity of the series. A public event will be announced in conjunction with the residency.

Karla Santana is a first generation Mexican-American designer and illustrator from Chicago. As a self proclaimed “serial-hobbyist,” Karla enjoys exploring a variety of mediums from Risograph printing, screenprinting, sewing, crochet and more. Karla often combines multiple mediums to create whimsical pieces that integrate nostalgic elements of her childhood with silly characters and cutesy styles.

Email: boardofdirectors@spudnikpress.org