Through out the spring, we have had the honor of working with animator and printmaker, Ali Aschman, as our 19th Artist in Residence.

From March through May, she has been diligently working in the studio, creating a ton of new artwork.  Her portfolio of woodcuts and screenprints that will be used to create a stop-motion animation, integrating the process of printmaking with a filmed narrative. Ali starts with flat prints, then cuts, collages, and photographs to create new environments reminiscent of the dioramas we made as youth. Within these hand-made worlds, characters enact mysterious, melancholy narratives that question innocence, violence, and moral grey areas.

Her allegorical new animation will screen in The Annex at Spudnik Press as part of her solo exhibition, The Wrong Story, on July 19. Spudnik Press Cooperative’s next resident will begin their sojourn in September of 2014. Applications will be available on July 1.

We are thrilled to announce that we just brought home our newest addition to the Spudnik family: Our very own Risograph! Staff has a little work to do before we will be able to authorize artists. But rest assured, this Risography will be making itself useful in the near future.

More details are coming soon!

Hold on tight, Spudnik is switching things up! Beginning Tuesday July 1st, we will no longer be offering an orientation on Monday evenings. Instead we will be offering studio orientations regularly on Tuesdays & Fridays. Don’t worry—they are still free and you still do not have to make an appointment.

Why the switch up? By offering orientations on Tuesdays and Fridays Spudnik will be able to do a better job providing consistent and reliable orientations. To maximize our bandwidth, the weekly orientations will now align with our business hours.

What’s that you say? Monday is the only day of the week you have available?! Spudnik still offers by appointment orientations for those who cannot make the standing orientation sessions. Here is the Recap:

Spudnik Orientations:

MONDAYS:  6 pm sharp
TUESDAYS:  6 pm sharp
FRIDAYS:  Noon sharp

This week our online store has gained prints from two of our most recent Artists in Residence: Veronica Siehl and Hannah Ireland.

Veronica Siehl spent her summer 2013 residency creating a series of cyanotype and letterpress prints. She combined a series of poems with cyanotypes to create suites of delicately printed poems. Additionally, Siehl completed a series of large cyanotype prints.

Hannah Ireland based her Fall 2013 residency work on exploring and creating around a hiking trip in Spain and Portugal in the summer of 2013 – specifically walking portions of the long distance hiking track the GR11, which follows the peak of the Pyrenees, and El Camino de Santiago del Norte, a pilgrimage route along the northern coast of Spain to Santiago de Compostela. According to Ireland, she was interested “in how recognizable imagery from nature and the actual locations I visited – which are tangible, real, and lasting – will combine with abstracted imagery from the subjective memory of my experience there – which is intangible, enigmatic and changes as time passes.”

This spring, Spudnik Press has working with Keith Herzik, known both for his gig posters and his non-linear colorful zines under the moniker Alamo Igloo. When creating our short list for who we would like to work with in 2014, we got obsessed with the idea of translating a loose hang-drawn line to a carved wood block. We aspired to merge the best of two distinct print processes: The loose, flowing, and graphic marks of a screenprint and the textural physicality of a relief print.

We still have lots of carving, proofing, and printing before we are ready to unveil this year’s print. In the mean time, Spudnik just joined Instagram and will share progress as we complete this epic print! Plus, pre-orders will be available soon!

This week we are adding two unique sets of prints to our online store:

In 2010, a group of Spudnik artists collaborated to produce a suite of prints to celebrate Issue #1 of Artiface Magazine. The suite consists of 10 stylized and colorful prints that each correlate with a written work found within the magazine.

Printers Ball is a celebration of literary and printmaking culture in Chicago. Join us for a summer afternoon and evening of conversation with more nerds than you can shake a stick at.

Are you a secret nerd?

Plan your Printers Ball itinerary:

Brain Frame Comix Reading
Bookmaking w/ Leah Mackin
App Development Ink-U-Bator
Printmaking Demos
Comic Jam with Trubble Club
Chip Kidd on Design

Plus a BEER GARDEN sponsored by Maria’s Packaged Goods and more!

For full details, check out printersball.org

Three more collections of prints from some of our past artists in residence have been added to our online store: Ingrid Olson completed her residency in the summer of 2011. Interested in the concept of slowing down time, Olson enlarges her works in an attempt to make small moments less manageable. Her process begins by enlarging original grease pencil drawings which carry the slight texture of paper through the mark making. During her residency, Olson completed a series of singular screen printed drawings, enlarged from smaller charcoal drawings. During her summer 2010 residency, Jessica Taylor Caponigro examined the psychological affects of seemingly faux luxury materials and artificial domestic items. She is interested in the dichotomy of synthetic materials and their ability to maintain beauty while inherently retaining a sense of their own failure. During her residency, Taylor Caponigro printed a subtly complex edition of etchings; wallpaper patterns inspired by class differences in George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1874). Nicole Kita was our artist in residence in the fall of 2011. During her residency, Kita investigated the mimetic qualities, transactional symbols, and legitimizing practices of ritual, or symbolic healing. A healer evokes symbols or metaphors in dramatic action and aesthetic performance that provide a material language through which a patient can express, understand, or transform the personal or interpersonal conflicts underlying his or her illness.

This week we have added a significant collection of artwork by Jeremy Lundquist to our online store. Lundquist was the Artist in Residence at Spudnik in the summer of 2009.

Lundquist’s work in print, drawing, installation, and cut and collaged paper examines and organizes decay, specifically, the mundane and outmoded objects of Middle America. During his time at Spudnik he utilized the subtle line work of etching and soft ground. Each state of etching was printed from the same plate and the image and text scrapped out to create a ghost image and a new print. His suite of prints resulted in a body of work questioning contemporary notions of progress and cleanliness by presenting images of loss and disillusion/ dissolution.

Our poster collection has expanded! Head on over to our online store to check out new posters celebrating an assortment of Spudnik and Chicago-area events from years past. Designed and printed by many of Spudnik’s own artists and printmakers, each poster is an example of excellent printing and graphic design. Take one home today and own a part of Spudnik’s history!

AmazonSmile does just that! It is a simple and automatic way for you to support your favorite charitable organization every time you shop, at no cost to you. Follow the link below to support Spudnik Press! While you are there, visit our wish list, our ongoing and ever evolving index of materials and tools that would make Spudnik a better place! Every little bit truly helps.