Power in Print Partnerships

Panel chaired by Blake Sanders

Description

“Power in Print Partnerships” celebrates the resilience and resistance possible when printmakers band together. This panel features teams whose voices have been amplified, opportunities multiplied, and creative fires stoked by each other, multiples creating multiples. The conversation will emphasize printmaking’s uniquely communal nature, a model that, if followed, could help reform society for a better tomorrow.

The power of the print is in the multiple. Printmaking is the original social media, and by nature or coincidence, printmakers tend to be social creatures—or at least very good at sharing. The democratic possibilities of the print, paired with innumerable hours in often tight studios relying on clean hands and fresh eyes, lead naturally to collaboration and coupling in the print shop. Over time this phenomenon can be nurtured along multiple paths, from sustained creative coupling with those we build our lives around, to professional pairings, to commercial collaborations that bring artists into the print fold, to community-based print studios and concerns that further extend the reach of the print’s inherent camaraderie.  

Printmakers learn to play well together because we must, a model that has value in our current caustic political climate. The relationships that grow out of studio fellowship provide creative fodder as well as crucial comfort and cover that in turn promote creative, social, and professional risks. Our partnerships make us more resilient in the face of professional adversity and provide the support to resist a status quo bent on pulling society apart.

Collectives of all kinds continue to push the revolutionary joy of the communal nature of printmaking into the future. Numerous models of successful print partnerships will hopefully encourage future generations of pairing and collectives. We will continue highlighting these cooperatives as a celebration of our unique community.

About the chair

Blake Sanders is an instructor and recently the Catapult Press Coordinator at Southeast Missouri State University. He has taught art and printmaking at universities, as well as workshops at colleges and community-based art organizations around the United States. Blake is one half of Orange Barrel Industries, an artist partnership and international curatorial endeavor with his wife, Hannah March Sanders. Recent juried exhibitions include The Fierce Urgency of Now, at the Janet Turner Print Museum; International Academic Printmaking Alliance (IAPA) 3rd Printmaking Biennale, Beijing, China; and the 5th Global Print 2022 in Douro, Portugal. His work supports environmental mindfulness by emphasizing the inextricable links between humans and the natural world.

Panelists

Sage Perrott, aka Haypeep, is a printmaker and educator originally from West Virginia. Her artwork features grumpy, lumpy, ghost-like creatures situated in cramped, often humorous circumstances. Perrott’s preferred process is screenprinting. She has degrees in printmaking from West Virginia University (BFA) and from Ohio University (MFA). Perrott is currently an Assistant Professor teaching printmaking at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN. Her prints, drawings, and zines have found their way into the hands of folks all over the United States and the world.

Patricia Villalobos Echeverría has a hybrid practice of prints, photos, video, installations and participatory projects that pivot around issues of migration, navigation, displacement and transformation. She was born in 1965 in Memphis, Tennessee to Salvadoran parents and grew up in Managua, Nicaragua. She received an MFA from West Virginia University and a BFA from Louisiana State University.

Her projects have been exhibited in North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. She is the recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Artist Grant, the Oregon Arts Council Fellowship, PA Council for the Arts Fellowship, Creative Heights Residency Fellowship from the Heinz Endowment and has been an artist in residence at Ox-Bow, Artist Image Resource, The Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and the MacDowell Arts Colony.

David Jones is an artist and educator. He is the Executive Director and co-founder of Anchor Press, Paper & Print (AP3) in Milwaukee, WI.

Time

4-5:30pm Thursday

Location

University of Akron Mary Schiller Myers School of Art

Folk Hall

Room 165

Wearing face coverings and being up-to-date on Covid-19 vaccinations are strongly recommended at this location.