The Power of Print

Resistance, Revolution, & Resilience

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Kent State University

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The Power of Print

Prints have cultural relevance. Prints hold the power to promote social change and create a timely commentary. As a medium, print is invested in multiple, distribution, and popular culture: printmakers have a take in politics, resistance, and social justice. Kent State University, the site of a watershed moment during the Vietnam War era, is both a significant and poetic site in which to host the 2020-22 Mid America Print Council Conference. From Me Too to Black Lives Matter, our country is in another defining moment largely being led by our youth, who are invested with reinventing and reinvigorating the political landscape.

Likewise, print media finds itself at a similar moment of transformation, from traditional to contemporary processes and concepts. Print media also enjoys a long and exuberant tradition in Northeast Ohio, led by both community print shops and many academic shops. These resources will be called upon and shared in tandem with the MAPC constituents to strategize over the Power of Print: How does print and the region of Mid-America, shape culture nationally and globally? How can we work together to generate positive and sustainable change? How do we manifest Resistance, Revolution, & Resilience? The discord of this conference will draw on print’s rich history to extrapolate it’s future.

The Mission

The mission of this conference is to leverage print media's historical role in multiples, distributed art, protest art, and popular culture, to generate an event that is timely and broadly relevant both culturally and artistically. Print media is a flexible field that continues to evolve and to have powerful connections to everyday life from grassroots organizations to commercial industries and the highest cultural institutions. We will draw on this rich history and the present state of the field to showcase the diversity of the media, artists, and cultural procedures involved in print media. Our goal is to especially engage youth, students, and emerging artists in this critical dialogue.

Meet our Featured Guests

Claudia E. Zapata

Keynote Speaker

Claudia E. Zapata (they/them) earned their Ph.D. in the Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture Program in Art History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. Their dissertation is titled “Chicano Art Is Not Dead: The Politics of Curating Chicano Art in Major U.S. Exhibitions, 2008-2012.” They received their BA and MA in art history from the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Maya art from the Classic period (250-900 CE). Their research interests include curatorial methodologies of identity-based exhibitions, Chicanx and Latinx art, digital humanities, BIPOC zines, and designer toys.

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Amos Kennedy

Outstanding Printmaker Awardee

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is an American printer, book artist, and papermaker best known for social and political commentary, particularly in printed posters. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned an MFA in 1997. In 2015, Kennedy was honored as a United States Artists Glasgow Fellow in Crafts. In 2012, he was the subject of the documentary “Proceed and Be Bold!” Kennedy currently owns and operates a print studio in Detroit, MI.

Website

Josh MacPhee

Featured Speaker

Josh MacPhee is a designer, artist and archivist. He is a founding member of both the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements based in Brooklyn, NY (InterferenceArchive.org).

MacPhee is the author and editor of numerous publications, including Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now and Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. He has organized the Celebrate People's History poster series since 1998 and has been designing book covers for many publishers for the past decade. His most recent book is An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels (Common Notions, 2019), a compendium of information about political music and radical cultural production. His forthcoming exhibition project, We Want Everything, will open spring 2022 in Reinberger Gallery at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Jennifer Mack-Watkins

Featured Demonstration

Jennifer Mack-Watkins is a contemporary visual artist, illustrator, and educational consultant. Mack-Watkins’ primary studio practice entails silkscreen and Japanese woodblock prints. She holds a bachelor of arts in studio arts from Morris Brown College, a MAT from Tufts University, and a MFA in Printmaking from Pratt Institute and is on the Board of Trustees at the Brattleboro Museum. Mack-Watkins is presently an adjunct professor at Savannah State University. She has studied traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking (mokuhanga) in Japan and the United States, and has taught virtually and in-person to students of all ages for museums and institutions. In 2022, Mack-Watkins has completed her first children’s book illustration for Kokila/Random House. The book will be available in 2023.

Contact and Accessibility

For more information about the Mid America Print Council, please visit midamericaprintcouncil.org

For general questions or if you need special services, assistance, or accommodations to fully participate in the conference, please fill out the form below or send an email to Taryn McMahon, conference co-chair, at tmcmaho5@kent.edu. For accommodations, please notify us at least 30 days prior to the beginning of the conference.

Name

First Name

Last Name

Email

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Message

In Memoriam

At each conference, MAPC member Bob Erickson creates a video presentation to honor printmakers who have passed since the previous conference. To submit the name of a printmaker who has passed since 2020, please fill out this form.

COVID-19 Safety

We are closely watching and observing CDC guidelines as the pandemic continues to evolve. Kent State University monitors the spread of COVID-19 in the community and face coverings are recommended when community spread is high. Some off-campus partner conference locations currently require face coverings and proof of COVID-19 vaccination for all visitors (these will be clearly marked on our schedule along with details about what is required as proof). Conference attendees are additionally encouraged to take a COVID-19 test before departing for Kent, OH. Because of the ever-changing nature of the pandemic, our plans are subject to change to adapt to new conditions that might arise. Kent State University’s decisions will continue to be guided by the best public health science and recommendations from federal, state, and local health agencies.

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