In honor of the voices in Minneapolis that have inspired communities worldwide to stand up, Stand Up Prints will showcase how contemporary printmakers are working to amplify the messages of people and communities who demand racial and social justice in America.

Printmaking has functioned historically as a means of disseminating information and knowledge, but also as a powerful tool for communicating social and political messages to a mass audience. Dissent, outrage, inspiration, hope, and calls for social justice are common themes in prints made by artists including Kara Walker (US), Francisco Goya (Spain), Honore Daumier (France), Jose Guadalope Posada (Mexico), Glenn Ligon (US), Käthe Kollowitz (Germany), Sister Corita Kent (US), and collectives like Taller de Gráfica Popular (Mexico), AfriCOBRA (US) and See Red Women's Workshop (UK).

On view at Highpoint Center for Printmaking from October 23 - November 21, Stand Up Prints is comprised of 62 works by 60 artists from 23 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The works were selected by Curator Ellen Y. Tani and Community Guest Curator Esther Callahan from a pool of more than 260 submissions through a national call for entries.

About our guest curator: Ellen Y. Tani, PhD is the 2020-2022 A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC. A Minnesota native, she has held curatorial positions at the ICA/Boston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. A historian of contemporary African American art, her broader research within contemporary art engages critical race studies, disability studies, and feminism, and has been supported by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African American Studies, the Clark Art Institute, and the Getty Research Institute.

About our community guest curator: Esther Callahan, a mixed-raced, multi-cultural American born in Minneapolis, MN,  moves across disciplines as an organizer, editor, curator, speaker and trainer. Over the past 20+ years in the Twin Cities, she has created and co-created various platforms for cultural production rooted in interrogating the impact of racial and gender equity. Most recently, she was a 2018-2019 Curatorial Fellow at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and co-curated Mapping Black Identities - still on view, and is currently Co-Directing the Emerging Curators Institute, a first of its kind in the region. She holds degrees in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and Social Justice from the University of Minnesota. 

From the curators of Stand Up Prints:

“A print happens by way of pressure: it often involves the impression of one physical surface on another,
but images can also be figuratively printed on the mind, in the form of a strong impression or image that lingers in one’s memory. 2020 has been a year of tremendous pressure and lasting impressions. We must recognize, sit with, stand up, and actively negotiate ways to be in a world of turmoil, threat, and uncertainty.

The artists in Stand Up Prints use a variety of printmaking methods to address ideas, imaginaries, and experiences rooted in our very real lives. In dialogue with the print practices on view are featured local artists speaking to perspectives on representation with/in community. From depictions of who we are to critiques of who we are assumed to be, the works here hold space for the paradoxes of today: messages of uplift in mourning, the promises and betrayals of a nation whose mythos idealizes the immigrant experience but whose reactions to demographic change reveal xenophobia, and whose promises of opportunity are deferred for many.

Some offer conceptual prompts for the imagination or declarations of solidarity, some use high-volume typography as a call to action for social change, while others depict everyday heroes, known and unknown, who have fought and died for justice and survival. All are evidence of cultural practices that sustain communities, whether as collective demonstration or individual statement, by making an impression.”

Featured Work:

Grace Sippy, Benjamin Merritt, Karmel Sabri

On View: September 14 - October 10

In August 2019, invited jurors Keisha Williams (Contemporary Art Department Curatorial Assistant and Artist Liaison, Minneapolis Institute of Art) and Bryan Ritchie (Professor of Art, University of Wisconsin-Stout) selected Karmel Sabri, Benjamin Merritt, and Grace Sippy as the 2019-2020 Jerome Emerging Printmakers. This was our offering the program funded by a generous grant from the Jerome Foundation. The residency is open to emerging Minnesota printmakers — defined here as artists who show significant potential, yet have not received a commensurate amount of professional accomplishment or recognition regardless of age or recognition in other fields.

The residency was running along smoothly until the middle of March when the pandemic abruptly forced Highpoint to close. The unexpected closure lasted until July and the Residency exhibition had to be postponed. The good news is that the Jerome Emerging Printmakers Exhibition will be Highpoint’s first public exhibition since we shut down in March. The exhibition will be on view beginning Monday, September 14 and will run through October 10.

Here’s what you can expect to see from the artists:

Benjamin has created a body of work that originates from a love of language and a need to communicate what living with a chronic illness entails. He uses the etching processes to reflect on the continually changing nature of chronic illness. Benjamin is able to scrape, manipulate, scar, and erase on the copper, leaving a collection of marks in the resulting printed image that reveal the history of the plate. He also implements monoprinting techniques in much of the work, creating a play between the stagnant, repeated etching and the fluid monoprint. 

More recently, through the COVID-19 pandemic, his thinking about the role of care in our society has manifested in his work. His personal relationship to care is that which he receives in treatment for a chronic illness, as well as his own employment in the care industry. Similarly to the work about chronic illness, he is interested in highlighting how complicated and multifaceted care can be, the importance and necessity of understanding the subtleties of healthcare that are often overlooked in America.

During this challenging and unstable year, Karmel pushed her aesthetic boundaries by playing with color and texture while channeling printmaking and embroidery into a therapeutic method of expressing the pain and frustration of intimate generational and personal traumas. The title of this body of work “The Question of Palestine” relates geopolitical relations between the US, Palestine, and Israel to personal experiences. Layering legal documents, personal stories, and found materials with bold colors and sharp, organic gestures, Karmel connects themes of resistance and resilience. 

Grace developed a large series of simultaneously delicate and weighty figurative studies that she turned into photolithographs and screenprints. The lightweight, translucent paper they are printed on further enhances their aura of fragility. Grace uses the figure to explore what cannot be said, or what she does not wish to say through words, and regularly visits themes of disintegration, doubles, the Grotesque, vulnerability, and conflict. Grace's creative methodology begins with photography; using herself or her husband as a model. She makes sketches from the photographs and then toner drawings (on mylar) based off the sketches. The toner drawings are used as films to make screens and photolithographic plates, from which prints are finally made. She will be exhibiting these finalized prints, and possibly some of the toner drawings they are made from.

In November Bryan Ritchie visited Highpoint and Dyani White Hawk was here at the beginning of January to conduct in-progress critiques with the residents. Tricia Heuring joined the residents for another critique at the end of February and in August, Keisha Williams met with the Residents to advise them on the layout of their exhibition.

Posters, Patches, and Stickers
Dates: Saturday–Sunday: August 8–9, 10:00 a.m.–4:00p.m.
Ages: 13–18; for beginner to intermediate students
Cost: $100
Registration: Deadline is Friday, July 31
Enrollment: Maximum 10; minimum 5
Instructor: Nancy Ariza

Teen Screen printmaking workshops are hands-on classes for high school age students interested in exploring the basics of screenprinting. In this two day weekend workshop, participants will learn photo emulsion screenprinting and print their own designs to create fabric patches, vinyl stickers, multi-layer posters. Each session teens will be introduced to the work of a local or national printshop for inspiration.

Drawing and/or painting experience is recommended but all skill levels are welcome. All materials included with class fee.

About the Instructor: Nancy Ariza is a printmaker and educator based in Minneapolis. Her current body of work explores multigenerational relationships, storytelling, and memory through prints and large-scale, interactive installation. Outside of her artistic practice, Ariza has been developing and leading arts programming throughout the Twin Cities since 2012. She currently works as the Learning and Engagement Coordinator at the Minnesota Museum of American Art and Education and Community Programs Fellow at Highpoint Center for Printmaking where she leads the Access/ Print teen program. Ariza has taught locally at Minnesota Center for Books Arts, Walker Art Center, and East Side Arts Council. She holds a BA in Art History and a BFA in Studio Art from Minnesota State University–Mankato.

REGISTRATION DETAILS
Registration may be completed by calling Highpoint at 612-871-1326 or emailing info@highpointprintmaking.org. Registrations are finalized upon receipt of payment.

If payment is not received within one business week your place in the class will not be reserved.

Highpoint is thrilled to announce our 2020 McKnight Printmaking Fellows Drew Peterson and Mike Marks!

This year-long fellowship (February 2020-January 2021) grants the fellows extensive access to Highpoint’s cooperative printshop, technical advice and support, studio visits with nationally-renown arts professionals, career development support, a $25,000 unrestricted award, and many other benefits.

Funded with a generous grant from the McKnight Foundation, this fellowship is open to mid-career Minnesota artists who work in printmaking — defined here as artists who demonstrate a sustained level of accomplishment, commitment, and artistic excellence. The artists were selected on the basis of the artistic merit of their work, and their dedication, interest, and continued growth in printmaking.

Highpoint would like to thank our esteemed panelists Delita Martin (artist, Black Box Press Studio) and Michelle Grabner (Crown Family Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), who reviewed application materials, conducted in-person studio visits with the finalists, and selected the 2020 fellows.

The panelists offered the following remarks about the selection process:

This was a rewarding, but also challenging task. The work presented by each artist was exceptional, we had some difficult decisions to make.

There are several elements and factors that I took into consideration. I began this process by first looking at the quality of each artists’ work; Did the work show craftsmanship, technical skill, presentation, and creativity? Did the artist push boundaries, take risks, or try something unique? I considered the professional accomplishments of each artist, reviewing the artists’ resume. I concluded my evaluation, posing the question, “What is the artists’ promise for continued growth and how will the fellowship impact this growth”? Following hours of deliberation, I selected artists whose work I believed would challenge the viewer and make them interact with the work. I selected artists who pushed printmaking beyond its boundaries of traditional process into new and innovative directions.

I would like to thank all the artists who submitted work for consideration. The jury process is a difficult one, but I hope that each will constructively use the feedback as a way to propel themselves further in their careers as artists. It is my hope that they will be encouraged to continue to submit works in pursuit of opportunities such as the McKnight Printmaking Fellowship.

-Delita Martin

This year’s recipients not only exemplified a rigorous engagement to artmaking but also demonstrated an ethical commitment to local communities and the natural environment. An imaginative range of varied print processes combined with experimental visual vocabularies, these two artists convey compelling interpretations of the complex social realities that we encounter in contemporary life. A love for the process of print media and its unique ability to foreground time and attention was also a vital and urgent component to both of the fellowship recipients.

-Michelle Grabner

More about each artist can be found below:

Mike Marks lives and works in Minneapolis. He holds a BFA in Drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Delaware. His prints are included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Museo do Douro (Douro, Portugal), Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art (Aomori, Japan), Zuckerman Museum of Art (Kennesaw, GA), and the California College of Arts (Oakland, CA). Marks has been an artist-in-residence at South Dakota State University, the University of Evansville, the Tides Institute and Museum of Art, Crooked Tree Arts Center/Good Hart Residency, Stone Trigger Press, and Acadia National Park, to name several. His work has exhibited both nationally and internationally. He recently received an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, producing his latest solo exhibition, No Trace (2020).

In the coming year as a McKnight Fellow, Mike will be focused on using intaglio and relief processes to reflect the potential for environmental loss. This work will focus on critical habitat and landscapes under duress of change, using printmaking as an analogy for the mechanisms that reshape the environments around us. The prints will incorporate an act of deletion in their image-making process, part of an ongoing interest in unmaking one object in order to create another. 

Drew Peterson received his BFA from the University of Minnesota and attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School for Art before earning an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. He is a lecturer in printmaking and drawing at the University of Minnesota and Lead Instructor in Contemporary Art at Juxtaposition Arts in North Minneapolis.

Peterson received Artist Initiative grants in 2011, 2018, and 2020 and an Arts Learning grant in 2017 from the Minnesota State Arts Board. He is currently completing a Next Step Grant through the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and VAF grant from Midway Contemporary Art through the Andy Warhol Foundation.

His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at The Burnet Gallery, Public Functionary, Kiehle Gallery at St. Cloud State, Sabina Lee Gallery (Los Angeles), and Twist Gallery (Nashville). Recent group shows include Future Future at Hair and Nails (Minneapolis), Outstanding Affiliates at CC Gallery (University of Wyoming), and Octillo at Stella Elkins Gallery, Tyler School of Art.

In 2018, Peterson developed Entity Editions + EDU--a fine art printmaking resource committed to the publication, production, and education of print media through collaboration with emerging  artists, educational workshops, and consultation. Peterson’s south Minneapolis studio functions to serve his own practice, Entity Editions collaborative projects, and print exhibitions under the name Manager Gallery.

With the McKnight fellowship through Highpoint, Peterson looks to expand the technical and material aspects of his work by combining traditional and contemporary approaches to printmaking.