Spudnik Press currently has 3 Staff Members and 6 Teaching Artists.
Our Member Directory highlights the amazing community of artists involved with Spudnik, including the Volunteer Studio Monitors that you meet during our Open Studio hours.
Spudnik Press currently has 3 Staff Members and 6 Teaching Artists.
Our Member Directory highlights the amazing community of artists involved with Spudnik, including the Volunteer Studio Monitors that you meet during our Open Studio hours.
Kristen is Vice President, Corporate Affairs for Mars Food North America, one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of rice products, and serves as a member of the business’s management team. Kristen is responsible for public relations, public affairs, strategic business communications, consumer care and crisis management to drive the company’s reputation by delivering on its purpose— Better Food Today. A Better World Tomorrow. through a portfolio of iconic brands, like Ben’s Original and Seeds of Change. In her free time, Kristen enjoys practicing Pilates and making meals – often experimenting with new recipes when entertaining friends and family!
Riesling Dong is a Chicago based book artist and graphic designer. Her bold experimental approach to her book publishing projects often challenges the convention of traditional books in both physical design and printed content. Riesling’s books take on sculptural form and she views them as a unique medium for delivery of information, storytelling and embodied experience. Her aim is to enhance the viewer’s experience and understanding, meanwhile creating an object that holds meaning from typography to material.
Amira is a multi-disciplinary artist working within artistic, publishing and scholarly practices: her artwork addresses the fragility of memory, and the inevitability of loss; while her research includes investigation of letterforms and how the way we write is related to the politics and ethics of love. She is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia College and at the University of Illinois Chicago, as well as a TERRA Foundation Research Fellow at the Design Museum of Chicago. In her free time Amira enjoys live music and good food around the city.
Email: boardofdirectors@spudnikpress.
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
Wes Kendall is a letterpress printer, textile artist, and poet. Across disciplines, his work is bright, playful, and filled with language. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Wes earned his BA from the Evergreen State College before relocating to Chicago in 2020. When not making art, Wes cooks for his friends and rides his bike around the city.
Alex Belardo Kostiw is a graphic designer, artist, and educator whose work is rooted in storytelling. She has an MFA in visual communication design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA in English literature from the University of Chicago. In her own projects, Alex deals in poetic, adapted, and iterative elements, visual structures of comics, and conceptually driven forms. Her work explores primordial and personal forms of knowledge, investigating the complex ways that the self and reality interact.
Image Credit: Collectivo Multipola
Chris Perzan is currently Vice President, Environment and Sustainability at a Chicago manufacturer and has also worked at the city, state and national level as Environmental Counsel. He has a wealth of experience working with Chicago arts based, non-profit organizations and became familiar with Spudnik helping with their strategic plan and, as a result, in 2022 he joined the Spudnik Board of Directors. In his spare time, he is an amateur visual artist in painting and sculpture.
Patti Swanson is an educator, historian and artist whose work focuses on community activism, memory, place, and the accessibility of the arts. After many years printing letterpress and volunteering at Spudnik Press, she joined the board of directors in 2022. Outside of her art practice, she can be found working in the construction industry and running Chicago for Chicagoans, a non-profit that offers neighborhood history tours and lectures within the city.
Email: boardofdirectors@spudnikpress.
Anna Wagner is an American/Brazilian artist and educator based in Chicago, IL. A dedicated craftsperson, Anna is invested in working with antiquated techniques to explore how marginalized histories resurface throughout time, ever-present and existing in the contemporary world as informed by the past.
Anders Zanichkowsky came to Chicago in 2019 after getting their MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where they concentrated in printmaking and religious art & studies. They are an interdisciplinary artist who also works in papermaking, textiles, neon, video, poetry, and performance, and they are the owner of Burial Blankets, weaving custom shrouds for green burial that are meant for enjoyment and reflection during life. In 2016 Anders was an artist in residence with The Arctic Circle sailing expedition in Svalbard, and their work has been shown across the U.S. and abroad including The Wisconsin Film Festival and the Ukranian Institute of Modern Art. Anders has taught all ages and backgrounds with a focus on printmaking, drawing, and DIY-style professional development for working artists, including while on staff at Spudnik from 2019 – 2021.