The Contemporary Print 2022

P R I N TA U S T I N 2022 THE CONTEMPORARY PRINT RICHARD "RICKY" ARMENDARIZ CARLOS BARBERENA MICHAEL BARNES MARY CLAIRE BECKER STEPHANIE BERRIE MATTHEW J. BINDERT SARAH BOGDAL RAJ BUNNAG KYLE A. CHAPUT JENNIFER CLARKE BRIAR CRAIG ANDREW DECAEN JOHN DOBBIE SARAH DRUMMOND STEFANIE DYKES JUANA ESTRADA HERNÁ HERNÁNDEZ CRAIG V. FISHER J. LEIGH GARCIA KEITH GARUBBA BOB GOLDSTEIN

JON GREENE JAYNE REID JACKSON WESLEY KRAMER LAUREN KUSSRO SOPHIA LEVON LARSEN ANDREW LAWSON JUN LEE BEAUVAIS LYONS BEN MOREAU STEVEN MUÑOZ EDIE OVERTURF TATIANA POTTS CATHERINE PROSE LARS ROEDER DEBRAH SANTINI CHADWICK TOLLEY LISA TURNER TERRY VATRT BRANDON WILLIAMS

January 14 – February 15, 2022

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PRINTAUSTIN PrintAustin Collective is an artist-led nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the art of printmaking and print collecting. Our mission to the Austin art community and galleries is to share our enthusiasm for printmaking by helping galleries curate, exhibit, and promote works on paper, and to engage a wider audience through in-house artist talks, signings, panels, printmaking demonstrations, and print-focused art happenings during our annual festival held January 15 February 15.

THE CONTEMPORARY PRINT The Contemporary Print is PrintAustin’s annual juried exhibition, and features an independent survey of the traditions and innovations of contemporary printmaking. We are thrilled to partner with Big Medium for this year’s exhibition, as well as welcome selections by our juror, John Hitchcock, Professor and Associate Dean of the Arts at the University of WisconsinMadison.

Works in The Contemporary Print demonstrate the dynamic and fluid nature of printmaking happening today, offering distinct styles and techniques that give way for diverse narratives. While some artists find inspiration in their experiences of identity, immigration, and the human condition, others focus on a technical dialogue, drawing from their individual practice in other mediums as it translates into the printmaking language. While non-traditional or digital output is accepted as a print element, submissions must utilize traditional print media as their primary technique, including lithography, relief, intaglio, silk screen, and monotype.

BIG MEDIUM Big Medium is a non-profit organization dedicated to championing and cultivating artists and the contemporary arts in Austin and across Texas. Through our programs and partnerships, we are working to foster the arts and facilitate an inclusive cultural dialogue between artists and their communities.

Big Medium produces the East Austin Studio Tour, the West Austin Studio Tour, the Texas Biennial, and presents innovative exhibitions throughout the year in the Big Medium Gallery. We also provide affordable studio space to artists at Canopy, and umbrella several artists and creative organizations through our Sponsored Projects program. Further information is available at www.bigmedium.org or email info@bigmedium.org.

To all that love and support PrintAustin in all ways: volunteering, attending our programming, participating in our events, becoming a member, joining in our fundraising efforts, or collecting work from artists or galleries showing works on paper, we thank you.

We are incredibly grateful to Big Medium for their tireless support of the arts in our community, and for being a champion of PrintAustin since Day One.

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MEET OUR JUROR: JOHN HITCHCOCK John Hitchcock (he/him,/his) — Hitchcock is a Professor and Associate Dean of the Arts at the University of WisconsinMadison where he has taught printmaking for twenty years. Hitchcock uses the print medium with its long history of commenting on social and political issues to explore his relationships to community, land, and culture. Hitchcock’s artwork consists of abstract representations, mythological hybrid creatures and military weaponry. His artworks are based on his childhood memories and stories of growing up in Oklahoma. Many of the images are interpretations of stories told by his Kiowa/Comanche grandparents and abstract representations influenced by beadwork, land, and culture. Hitchcock has made prints with MATRIX Press, Hannaher’s, Inc. Print Studio at Plains Art Museum and most recently, with Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts.

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Exodus II (remix), Woodcut, 41" x 64", 2022

RICHARD "RICKY" ARMENDARIZ San Antonio, Texas I was born and raised in El Paso and currently reside in San Antonio, Texas. Romanticism for the American landscape and the hybridization of Mexican, American and indigenous cultures have always informed the content of my work. Images that have cultural, biographical and art historical references are carved and burned into the surfaces of my artwork. I use traditional painting and printmaking techniques in combination with non-traditional methods of drawing to achieve my aesthetic. The content found in classic novels, poems and song lyrics are added to elevate and reinforce the conceptual link between the nuanced meanings of words and my imagery. Themes involving power dynamics, destiny, and the role chance plays in our lives, make up the conceptual backbone of my work.

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Undocumented, Linocut on handmade (Rives BFK) shopping bag, 24" x 18", 2020

CARLOS BARBERENA Chicago, Illinois In my art, I have consistently reflected on the cycles of repression and resistance and its relationship to the diaspora in which I have lived, throughout dictatorship, revolution, erasure, renewal, hope, dictatorship and repression. My prints center these types of life experiences occurring far beyond my country.

I create to counteract great silences, demystifying “foreign” experience, bridging the distances and bringing awareness to the ways our lives are intimately connected through the lens of justice. Closest to me are ways migrants’ humanity—our memories, attachments, relationships and traumas— is swept aside leaving visible only our work value. In my “ESSENTIAL: For Your Colonizer Comfort” relief print series, I honor the farmworkers, most undocumented, whom the US population and Federal government labeled “Essential” in the context of COVID, a so-called honor for their centrality to the food system, while doing little to alleviate their lack of basic rights and vulnerability to exploitation and imminent deportation.

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On the Road to Bremen, Lithograph, 17" x 22", 2020

MICHAEL BARNES Saint Charles, Illinois My recent series of lithographs were begun during a residency at Steindruck München, in Munich, Germany. The images present personal themes and responses to my time at this particular studio and place in the world. The images explore personal ideas such as nostalgia, coping with daily existence and challenges, and investigating traditional folklore that conjures related themes in my current life and times. The piece in this exhibition, "On the Road to Bremen" draws on the Brothers Grimm's tale of a group of animals who have left their homes to pursue a better life as town musicians in the city of Bremen. On their way they come onto a farmhouse that is being robbed. Through their collective efforts they scare the robber off and move into the house to live happily ever after. This tale brings about many wonderful thoughts in my imagination regarding life journeys and the unexpected encounters one may have in this time. The exploration and personal re-interpretation of folklore and fairy tales is a theme I am interested in further investigating in future work.

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Mosaic Virus IV (Ruysch Redux), Handcarved linocut and laser-engraved woodblock, 30" x 19", 2021

MARY CLAIRE BECKER Stillwater, Oklahoma My Mosaic Virus series uses a combination of digital and traditional printmaking techniques to alter and distort images taken from 17th century Dutch Golden Age still life paintings of Semper Augustus tulips. During the Dutch Tulip Mania financial bubble, Semper Augustus tulips were prized because of their variegated stripes, yet the stripes were in fact a side effect of a mosaic virus that weakened the bulb and hindered the plant’s propagation, rendering them a poor investment. The print Mosaic Virus IV erodes the image of a painting in an echo of the mosaic virus’ degradation of its host. The resulting distortion serves as a reflection upon the persistent appeal of bucolic nature imagery amidst the 21st century shift from physical media to digital media in industrialized society. Climate change due to industrial resource use has altered our relationship to our environment, and the emergence of the digital has altered our relationship to physical objects. The Mosaic Virus series represents a reflection on the shift from the physical pastoral to the digital pastoral, with its increasingly more tenuous relationship to the original ecological phenomena it references.

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Roadkill Diaries, Entry 02: Unlucky Rabbit's Foot, Soft and hard ground etching with screen print, 11" x 11", 2021

STEPHANIE BERRIE Cincinnati, Ohio This current body of work, The Roadkill Diaries, is a collection of prints depicting dead animals (“roadkill”) that I’ve found around my neighborhood in southern Ohio. Each print has an entry, or story, written for it that describes the monotony of living in COVID-19 quarantine, my relationship with death and rebirth, how nature functions and exists on what I believe to be a higher level than humanity, and/or a whimsical story of the animal’s life and how it came to its unfortunate demise. All of the prints together complete the “roadkill diary.” In my other work I’m drawn to internal bodily matter, violence, death, and trauma on a body, while also being inspired by my natural environment and what lives in it. This series is a culmination of those themes and has been cathartic in accepting my mortal existence and impermanence. This project is ongoing without a foreseeable finish date and is currently up to 7 entries. The print processes used for this project range from mezzotints to soft ground etchings, screenprints, lithographs, monotypes, and mixed media.

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Untitled, Woodcut and screen print collage on wood panel, 36" x 24", 2021

MATTHEW J. BINDERT Saint Paul, Minnesota I create large-scale mixed media individual works and installations utilizing woodblock printing, serigraphy, and painting on both traditional and upcycled materials. The process typically begins with hand carving woodblocks that are primarily four by eight feet in scale, using imagery pulled from a variety of personal and historical sources – the iconography of the Roman Empire, camouflage, textile patterns, logos, DNA charting, empirical symbols and military graphics. My work is a response to globalization’s dual nature as a force for both prosperity and destruction, that represents the complex social, religious, economic, health, environmental, and political interdependence of the contemporary world. These ideas are expressed through the layering of marks, symbols, patterns, and the building of imagery that draws parallels between the past and the present. The resulting images are both representational and abstracted while revolving around interconnected issues such as poverty, war, racism, consumerism, exploitation, and the conservation of nature and culture.

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The Thunder Breaks, Linocut, 9" x 12", 2019

SARAH BOGDAL Nashville, Tennessee My work is influenced by two things: the linoleum block and the carving knife. Every block is a puzzle to be solved: how do I depict the gossamer translucency of sheer drapes in front of a window, as well as the view behind it? How do I create a sea of thick grass populated by various animals hiding within? In a way, I see the carving knife as a constraint, but a positive one. Using the knife instead of pencil or paint challenges me to find new and exciting ways to create imagery.

I aim to make each print lie just on the cusp of disorienting. I don’t want to fill every corner with so much information that viewers lose what’s happening, but I want there to be enough going on that it's not easy to take it all in with a single glance.

Forcing viewers to move a little bit closer allows them to notice small details they wouldn’t have before, like a flower sprouting at the edge of a path or a tiny fish peeking out between two reeds.

The process of printmaking is of the utmost importance to me. All else comes second in my work, including the finished piece.

My goal is for viewers to enjoy the print in its totality, but also to delight in each mark, squiggle, line, and curve as much as I do.

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Weedsquatch & the Gorilla Glue Guardian, Relief-printed linocut, 23" x 40", 2017

RAJ BUNNAG Durham, North Carolina My ongoing print series, March of the Druggernaughts: Fantastical Manifestations of the War on Drugs, is an ever-growing body of work about the failures, fallacies, and players in the war on drugs. In this series I am examining the monstrous impact our nation's policy and failed prohibition have had on the world at large. Viewing the drugs through the lens of monster theory I am turning each drug into Godzilla-like monsters, or in my mind: Druggernaughts.

Using drug pop culture and graphic imagery of violence and terror, I create scenes of chaos and destruction that seem almost too fantastical to exist. The truth of the matter is that nothing truly compares to the horrors surrounding the War on Drugs. No matter how crazy or depraved or violent my imagery may be, nothing fully compares to the bleak reality our appetite for drugs has inflicted upon this world. From police violence to addiction, drugs and drug policy shape the world we live in whether you use drugs or not.

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Rio Bravo from Dusk, Woodcut, 11”x 14”, 2020

KYLE A. CHAPUT Hewitt, Texas My work is an attempt to reveal internal struggles with a chronic illness while referencing chaotic, often conflicting aspects of ‘border’ life. These aberrant sites and abandoned still lifes reflect a broken condition within an alienated community, the Rio Grande Valley. The manifestations of these vessels tend to pierce through subconscious thoughts, forcing me to continually question my sense of place and inner stability.

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Dusk, Mezzotint, 6” x 11.5”, 2020

JENNIFER CLARKE Green Valley, Arizona My home is in the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona. Environmentally, it can be inhospitable with the driest of driest heat, yet it teems with life, as it is in fact one of the most bio-diverse places in the United States. I spend hours drawing in the desert where plant life allures and repels as everything is adorned with spines and hooks. It is this contradictory beauty, that’s both guarded and repelling yet fragile and beckoning, that I so try to capture in my mezzotints.

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BLACK AND WHITE AND RED, Ultra-violet screenprint, 30" x 21", 2021

BRIAR CRAIG Lake Country, British Columbia I have often used words and letters like pieces in a game, often scrambling or otherwise jumbling them in order to create some confusion and to initiate a re-thinking of what the words might actually be saying. This, I believe, is also a reflection of the ways in which we are fed information by those in positions of authority and power. Information is often jumbled, fragmented, politically biased and therefore misleading.

I am attempting to provide the viewer with words and phrases for interpretation and reflection that will lay bare their own biases and personal points of view.

Often, my works have as their base discarded and tactile objects. I am using that allusion to the material nature of things as a lure to draw viewers into the works for close inspection.

Ultra-violet cured inks allow the medium of screen printing (a form of mass production/reproduction) to synthesize refined details and subtlety with the boldness, immediacy and directness associated with traditional forms of propagandist poster making.

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Little Kitchen Situation 7, Lithograph, screen print, 27" x 22", 2020

ANDREW DECAEN Denton, Texas For the last twenty years, my work has centered around themes of eating and other rituals surrounding food. I am interested in slowing down mundane experiences to linger in the smallest moments. The Little Kitchen Situation began after I created a 2/3 scale modular kitchen and asked a newlywed couple to act out a series of ordinary kitchen experiences in this awkwardly small space. The series uses the layering inherent in printmaking to explore remnants of time with residual gestures and shifts in lighting. As my models negotiate their space like a dance, the modular kitchen itself moves and changes around them and becomes a third dynamic character. These images explore the intimacy and awkwardness of familiar experiences while asking fundamental questions about who we are.

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Atomic Sediment, Screen print, 18" x 18", 2021

JOHN DOBBIE Menands, New York I have always been able to see the life and personality in inanimate objects. When looking at a two-dimensional representation of something three-dimensional, I love how the spaces and volumes in between objects can turn into their own forms and silhouettes. By going further and further into a still image, I explore this alien microcosm and discover strange forms and potential life. Through value, line, and color, I try to document this new universe where the viewer should be able to explore multiple times and discover new things too.

Technology has allowed me to go further inside an image than the naked eye. By working digitally, I can delve into the depths like I’m a deep-sea scuba diver and forget about which way is back up to the surface. It is there in the depths where the composition starts to reveal itself. Having the digital turned physical by way of screen printing is an important aspect of my work because it allows for precision but gives it a warmth only a human touch can bring.

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Tidal Tapestry, Reduction linocut, 30” x 10”, 2021

SARAH DRUMMOND Loveland, Colorado I am enthralled by the natural world and love to explore its eternally shifting hues and habitats, ecology and essence. Art is the best way I know to document the beauty and intricacy of nature and to ignite that same passion in others. My goal is for viewers of my artwork to do a double-take and be inspired to look at their universe with new eyes. In a world where photographic images are so universal, I believe that an artist’s rendition sends a message to the viewer that the subject deserves a closer look and greater attention than a “snapshot.” An artist, therefore, can be both a journalist and a visionary.

To that end, my work is realistic and representational but often includes abstract or philosophical components. While I sometimes use my own photographs as references, I much prefer to work from life and often my work is either completed outdoors or from sketches created through patient hours of watching. One of the most important tools in my artistic repertoire is a pair of binoculars! I enjoy the challenge of creating multi-color reduction prints to capture brilliant colors and more subtle variations, as well as the ever-prevalent element of surprise in printmaking 20

At the Edge, Apausecalypse, Relief & collagraph prints, installation size varies, 2021

STEFANIE DYKES Salt Lake City, Utah At the Edge, Apausecalypse - “Nature metaphors work because we are nature.”

During the last round of Apausecalypse an old Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale caught my attention. I first heard the story told by mythologist Martin Shaw.

Once upon a time a wagoner's cart which was heavily laden with wine had stuck so fast that in spite of all that he could do, he could not get it to move again. Then it chanced that a small woman just happened to come by that way, and when she perceived the poor man's distress, she said to him, "I am tired and thirsty, give me a glass of wine, and I will set thy cart free for thee." "Willingly," answered the wagoner, "but I have no glass in which I can give thee the wine." Then the woman plucked a little white flower with red stripes, called field bindweed, which looks very much like a glass, and gave it to the wagoner. He filled it with wine, and then the woman drank it, and in the self-same instant the cart was set free, and the wagoner could drive onwards.

Where do you look for help when you are stuck? In old myths, if there’s a crisis in the story, the remedy always come from the edge and not the center plot. And certainly not by traveling the same old road.

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It Began With Us, Mezzotint, Lithograph, screen print, and hand-coloring, 18” x 24”, 2020

JUANA ESTRADA HERNÁNDEZ Hays, Kansas It Began With Us is a piece that addresses the importance of farmers in Latin America and the significance of Maiz in indigenous cultures throughout Mexico. Maiz is not a crop but a cultural symbol intrinsic in daily life. In contemporary Mexican and Central American life, Maiz and its symbol is used in food, traditional dances, songs, and pop-culture. Its existence today is a testament to the ways that indigenous people resisted colonialism inflicted by Spanish Conquerors and the Catholic church. This piece is an ode to my country of origin, the strength of my ancestors, and the power of intergenerational traditions of growing foods beyond borders.

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Pale Blue Passage, Aquatint, etching, mokuhanga, and chine collé, 34” x 26.5", 2021

CRAIG V. FISHER Toledo, Ohio This artist statement is being rewritten in the middle of a global pandemic. Nothing seems more leveling than disease.

Unfortunately for many of us, isolation is a byproduct of a pandemic. As a mid-career artist one is not often gifted with broad moments of time, yet here we are in self-imposed quarantine. If there is a positive note to this it’s the unbroken hours of creativity that it has afforded us. The down-side is that one is removed from the greater community from which we look for affirmation and exposure. This makes me look to my art as a catharsis of sorts. It helps me work through these difficult times. As in centuries before, prints and drawings were part of science’s arsenal to dispel myths and deception.

Likewise, I see the connection with the artist/craftsmen of the past, and their visual quests. It's an unbroken line in the same pursuit for answers in an evolving world. In many of my prints, I take keen interest in the “monumental,” the pillared icon and the undiscovered remnant. While some of today’s monuments are coming down, I like to create new geometric of organic edifices that hint at a background narrative yet to be realized.

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Más que Hoy, PVC relief, 22" x 15", 2020

J. LEIGH GARCIA Kent, Ohio In 1520, 10,000 years after the first Indigenous people, Spanish explorers set foot in present day Mexico. The next 300 years were marked by battles between European countries to colonize the land, resulting in Mexico’s independence in 1821 and loss of 55% of its territory to the United States in 1848. In more recent years, policies such as NAFTA, the Zero Tolerance Policy, and DACA have resulted in an immigration crisis, the racialization of Latinx people, and profuse negative stereotypes.

However, Latinx/Chicanx people are not defined by contemporary immigration policies. We have a beautiful, rich history, and we are more than what is happening now. Nosotros somos más que hoy.

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Auto Amulet to Ward Off Envy, Silkscreen fused glass, 10" x 6", 2020

KEITH GARUBBA Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Bright red taillights stare out at you, cutting through the dark, like migrating lighthouses. They are beacons trailing the path of others who go before you in the same direction, not necessarily to the same destination. Modern pilgrims in the night, you share nothing but this momentary journey.

As a printmaker and glass artist, I create abstract visual artworks that reinvent iconic symbols, charging them with mythic meaning, making works to ignite deeply-felt daydreams.

My Midnight Pilgrim project is works on glass and paper encouraging people to rethink vehicles and the driving experience, aiming to twist their aesthetic experience of the road, and imbue their driving activity with romance and importance. The zen of the road speaks to the mind and the soul on a meditative level at times. The moving body, lulled by the hum of the road, carried in the cocoon-like chariot that is the modern car, prepares for its destination while active in its course. One's mind attempts to move inward while a duty to fellow travelers is a constant imperative. In this state of mind, the immediate visuals and our functional accessories become elevated in importance.

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Post-Human #1, Serigraph, 25" x 19", 2021

BOB GOLDSTEIN Carrboro, North Carolina This serigraph is part of a series that envisions a near-future in which humans have failed to save the earth for future generations. Pandemics, global warming, and our own divisiveness have finally eliminated us. But this imagined apocalypse comes with a silver lining: plants and animals will probably thrive in our absence.

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Partitions, Lithograph, 27” x 20”, 2021

JON GREENE Iowa City, Iowa Architectural and environmental boundaries define regions of empty space in the prints and installations I create. Linear fragments of artificial texture make up walls, cliffs, and hedges. I use synthetic materials and thinly-layer ink on paper to depict familiar surfaces. Each work follows basic principles of two- and three-point perspectives, but spatial illusions and diversions optically distort the compositions, making them ambiguous in both scale and form. My work illuminates how people observe their surroundings and the defining social, economic, and ecological barriers of society. I draw from and respond to personal experiences in psychoanalysis and a childhood of privilege and isolation. My precise and rigid art practice is a symptom of that time and how I attempt to regulate my life. The sites I create are a product of my fraught relationship with contained spaces and demonstrate how natural and built environments can be sources of restriction and restoration.

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Convergence, Mezzotint, 12" x 18", 2021

JAYNE REID JACKSON Madison, Wisconsin As a printmaker I am interested in depth and light and I concentrate on etching techniques that require drawing and painting skills. This has led me to the process of mezzotint, a technique that is experiencing a rebirth among printmakers for its rich velvety blacks and its nontoxic process.

My mezzotints are an examination of light and dark using primarily the still life as a vehicle to study how glass and simple objects from nature can create mystery and visual poetry. By manipulating the shadows and reflections of the objects and their surroundings, I record the changes that occur as I try to capture what is special about everyday things.

Like memory and time, my images deal with repetition, reflection and fleeting moments. They convey what is real, what is reflection, what comes into the light and what is hidden in the depths.

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Grand Voyage, Multi-block woodcut, screen print, and etching, 40” x 24”, 2020

WESLEY KRAMER Norman, Oklahoma From my art practice, I have created an alternate world that reflects our own and the issues within it. The stories revolve around characters that may have not made the correct decision but are trying their best to help out their world and fellow companions. In these narratives, I have created a series of characters that exist in their own reality, where they live interacting with one another. By filling this world with humor, whimsical environments, and chunky creatures, I entice the viewer to participate in my world. As these stories progress, I expand the world visually and narratively, showing how a character's actions can impact the environment they live in. While showing these characters' interactions with one another in my prints, I ask the viewer to reflect, thinking about how our own actions affect the world around us.

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Sustained Song, Color intaglio, 11" x 9", 2019

LAUREN KUSSRO Houston, Texas My creative process is centered in the space between play and discovery. I work intuitively, experimenting with drawings or materials until I find a form that excites me and causes me to investigate further. Not having a set idea of what I want a finished piece to look like enables me to respond to the form and materials as I work. My investigations often lead to the creation of amalgams, combined ecosystems that can reflect aspects of both the ocean life and forest floor. Nature is bizarre but wonderful, majestic yet whimsical, and my work is most successful when it demonstrates a balance of that same tension.

Color is a vital component, and I find myself becoming increasingly sensitive to the nuances of colors, the way they interact, and what they can communicate. I see colors functioning much the same way notes do in music - the wrong color combination is like having an off-key note or a flawed chord. I'm always looking for just the right color balance so that the viewer can sense and enjoy visual harmony.

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Sewing Box, Lithograph, monotype, and oil pastel, 26" x 20", 2018

SOPHIA LEVON LARSEN Portland, Oregon My work explores communication, queer identity, sex, and intimacy. I use repetition of symbols and imagery to form my own language to dissect the multiple ways to interpret a single item, idea, event, or relationship from different angles.

Building connections with people has always been difficult and through my work I seek to recontextualize my experiences and deepen my understanding of the nature of social roles and personal identity. My iconography draws from Native American symbolism, memories, references from film photos I take of friends, partners, and personally significant locations.

In the past few years I have lived in four different states, and with so many different places feeling like home my current body of work is focused on remembering what comfort feels like. My images are portraits of specific moments, places I don't want to forget, or representational of how I felt at a specific time.

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Higher Power, Etching, 24" x 18", 2021

ANDREW LAWSON Midland, Texas My work illustrates the mediation of the relationship between humans and technology in our theorized post-humanist existence. As material products become a second-tier commodity, the product of information, or disinformation becomes the most valued resource. I like to show the dichotomy between nostalgic ideas and objects of our past, with newer trends associated with our dependence upon technology and the future trajectory of our existence. In using narrative and illustrative based designs, I like to play with the dichotomy of whimsicality and the dark nature of the overall themes of my work. I hope my work engages any regular person walking by and creates questions within the viewer about their own role in our late, image-based capitalist society.

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Whisper and Wait, Reduction woodcut, 30" x 43", 2020

JUN LEE Washington, D.C. My body of work attempts to evoke the different moments of our competitive lives: pieces that express the spectrum of competition from hiding away to preparing for a fight. The reality is that all life is competition and we create barriers in our minds that allow us to think we have a space we can step into where the competition stops. That constructed space allows us to regroup and enter the next fight toward our goal. Every attempt might not succeed or look glorious, but every victory is built upon the foundation of loss, suffering, effort, and sacrifice. The ability to be successful is not dependent on the number of triumphs that you have, but rather your willingness to get up and continue the struggle after a defeat.

These prints channel the ensuing emotions which follow competition: waiting, anticipating, and regrouping yourself for the next upcoming fight. Whether we win or lose, the fight is never over. We can't all be winners in every battle, but you will always still find fellowship in other losers. You will never be all alone in the end.

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Circus Orbis Dimensional Showcard: The Bug Man, Lithographic pop-up book, 10” x 18” x 10”, 2021

BEAUVAIS LYONS Knoxville, Tennessee For the past four decades my studio work has explored various forms of mock-documentation, fabricating and documenting imaginary worlds. My subjects have included archaeology, folk art, medicine, zoology and always include various forms of biography. Prints are central to much of my work, as printed culture is central to science, history and commerce. My most recent and ongoing project, Circus Orbis, includes prints and other artifacts from a hypothetical early 20th century American circus founded by Thaddeus Evergood from Jacksboro, Tennessee. My process involves research into the history and scholarship of the circus, while using my invented circus to mirror this history and its representations. The themes in the circus include archetypes associated with circuses, and works that reference ancient mythologies including a menagerie of hybrid animals. The project includes prints, printed ephemera such as tickets and dimensional showcards, hand-painted banners and other artifacts providing a tangible, visual record of this work of fiction.

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We've Seen The Future, and We've Left It Behind, Etching and aquatint, 8" x 10", 2019

BEN MOREAU Seattle, Washington My still life and object images are reflections of anxiety and fears, and I view them as an extension of my previous work investigating self-portraiture and the human condition. This body of work is an interpretation of vanitas still life images imbued with a dark sense of humor. The objects in these contemporary memento mori pieces are related to everyday life, and primarily consist of skulls, unread or unfinished books, children’s toys, empty beer bottles and cans, or scrabble tiles.

The mood is bleak, and there is a pessimism that borders on the nihilistic. A general sense of ennui permeates the work as I struggle to find my place and inject meaning into my life while examining the overwhelming presence of my failures as a husband, a father/provider, an artist, and an educator. The divisiveness and binary nature of contemporary American politics begins to infiltrate my art adding to a general sense of helplessness and hopelessness. The images are designed to be open-ended and accessible, to invite contemplation, subvert expectations, and welcome individual experiences with various readings and interpretations.

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A Menace to Monarchs, Reduction woodcut, 24" x 18", 2018

STEVEN MUÑOZ Washington, D.C. Since 2017 my body of work focuses on pollinators, primarily bees. As a printmaker, certified in Master Gardening and Sustainable Urban Agriculture, I have been fascinated and passionate about nature. At first glance, my work appears scenic and bucolic, but upon closer examination, themes of man against nature, life and death, and social commentary on environmental issues are revealed. I seek to bring attention to the vital yet perilous plight of pollinators. In many ways bees are like air: everywhere; essential and for the most part unseen. We know they exist, but few understand them. To the detriment of our shared existence, fewer value them. To know the bee isn’t just understanding a fascinating and beautiful insect. It is to glimpse a profound web of relationships, great and small, that binds together the human and natural sides of our one world.

I believe in the integrity of art as a means for sharing thoughts and ideas. Art can engage, open, and change minds through images, senses, and perceptions. Through art, that which is small, misunderstood, or ignored can be given a voice to influence and inspire action.

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Stretched Thin, Etching and woodcut, 12" x 18", 2021

EDIE OVERTURF Portland, Oregon The image and text relationships in my work reflect doom spirals. These spirals are fueled by frustrations about uncertainty, inequity and deeply rooted political and social problems that feel too big for one person, despite best efforts. The forms I choose to deliver the satirical text are often meant for advertising or celebration. Yet in the context of my work they take on a role of inciting empathy and connection through discontent. Though most of my work is fueled by my personal reactions, I know that they are not unique and can be felt by a large percentage of my audience. The audience is on my mind as I place them in the narratives I create.

In my work, there is comfort in the remnants of a more analogue age; the marquee, an ancient mode of advertising, and pennant flags that could be used anywhere from car dealerships to a baby shower. Both holding fewer characters of expression than a tweet. This abbreviation of opinions can mirror the abrupt and meme-like way we currently communicate to add a sense of brevity.

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French Portal, Screen print, 96” x 72” x 3", 2018

TATIANA POTTS Oak Ridge, Tennessee My work incorporates images, artist books and paper installations into a form of world making. These manifest composite memories that reflect my experiences and perspectives living, traveling and studying in Europe and the United States.

Being a person from a country that no longer exists, I find myself cobbling an identity from my adopted country (US) and my country of origin, Slovakia and the places I have lived in between. This world making is important because as a non-native speaker I am often put in the role of “other.” By creating my own country, Tajtania, which is derived from my name and nick names, I am creating a phenomenological space that can be experienced by viewers based on their own familiarities. The unit based folded paper pieces act as a grammatical structure from which I can construct architectural spaces drawn from my wide travel experiences and can be taken down and reconstructed in response to new spaces and new challenges all the while absorbing and combining these new experiences.

I combine the constantly changing nature of culture, language, physical geography and architecture to make my own fluid and responsive language.

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A Central Mountain In Oklahoma, Lithograph, 25" x 25", 2019

CATHERINE PROSE Wichita Falls, Texas A Central Mountain in Oklahoma was printed at the esteemed Tamarind Institute in collaboration with Master Printmaker Valpuri Remling. It is a four run, six color hand-drawn lithograph printed in a limited edition of twenty impressions. Making a print at Tamarind had been a professional goal of mine since learning about the visionary founder June Wayne as an undergraduate student in the mid-90’s. It has taken me years of hard work to be awarded such a privilege through a grant from Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, Texas.

The imagery I used for A Central Mountain in Oklahoma was inspired by mythical, political, and environmental symbols that dwell together in a barren landscape. The mountain range on the horizon is known to me and one I have drawn from many times en plein air. The silver dots falling onto the landscape are intended to play a role in both the composition's harmony and disruption.

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Built Environment I, Woodcut collage on plywood, 41” x 6” x 6”, 2021

LARS ROEDER Corpus Christi, Texas I make prints that insert the viewer into a discourse of contradiction and satire. My work displays a conflicted point-of-view, a sarcastic parody, or an idiosyncratic composition that requires dissection and critical questioning. Familiar iconography engages the viewer to unpack a more nuanced critique. When this fails, I resort to literally inserting the viewer into the composition by using printmaking to create interactive installation. Spatial relationships add context to the viewer's experience and generate implicit engagement as the viewer physically navigates the piece.

This series repurposes and reimagines a series of color woodcuts to represent an intersection of built and natural environments. The rigid symmetry of the interior structure implies a minimal, manufactured, efficient design, and contradicts the exterior collage, which is organic, textural and intuitive. There is a dialog between the assertive and the adaptive.

Society embodies this contradiction as it can both dignify and undermine natural processes in a single instance.

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Ricordi Compromessi (Compromised Memories), Linocut, chine collé, and milagro, 13" x 16" x 3.5", 2020

DEBRAH SANTINI Carrollton, Georgia Those things which conjure up memory are the collage of objects which randomly fill my work. The allusion to childhood objects and nursery rhymes take on a sinister/mocking tenor within the context of image to structure. I use this device to lure the viewer into my images with their familiarity and innocence.

Although I often begin with a clear concept, I allow the process to remain fluid throughout development, like a net, it catches whatever is in range. These additions often appear in the form of objects or animals, plucked from my treasure trove of symbols, which I am constantly adding to.

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He's a Tool, She's a Fool, Screen print, 14" x 19", 2021

CHADWICK TOLLEY Evans, Georgia The process of making work is equal to, or more important than the final outcome. Each piece begins as an idea or desire to explore one of the many technical aspects of printmaking. I start by collecting images, sketches, and textures and use these to begin creating prints, drawings, or collages. As I develop the image, I try to avoid planning too far ahead by intuitively responding to each step of the process. I deliberately leave visual evidence of deletions, corrections, or accumulation of marks as a form of documenting the process.

I do not intend to create autobiographical images but through the process of developing meaning, I often create narratives that are based on personal experience or point of view. It is through my own experience I hope to explore and relate to universal human themes.

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Future Memory #1, Screen print, 15" x 11", 2021

LISA TURNER Bellingham, Washington During the past number of years, my creative practice has made use of popular imagery to examine mass media, material culture and consumerism. This has led me to reflect on the absurdity/vast number of objects available for purchase, the social implications of consumption, and the psychology of desire. In my recent works, consumer objects are juxtaposed with the visual language of medical illustrations. The resulting compositions appear as piles, (un)traditional still lifes, or as Frankenstein-like figures/masses. By linking consumerism with the science of the body, it is my goal to foster multiple interpretations that might lead to discussions surrounding the ephemeral nature of consumption, environmental concerns, and genetic manipulation/mutation.

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Standing on Their Shoulders, Intaglio, collagraph, embossing, chine collé, and handstitching, 19" x 14" x 7", 2020

TERRY VATRT Victoria, British Columbia My artwork explores relationships. I’m intrigued by the connections between people, ideas, and the natural world. The connections are sometimes obvious, frequently subtle, often invisible, but always present. The complexity and consequences of different interactions are interesting.

The pandemic highlighted the visible, and invisible, interdependence of humans within nature. Our lives were irrevocably changed. The restrictions I experienced during lockdown as a result of public health mandates - such as freedom to travel, attend dance classes, socialize around a table - represented my greatest loss: the yearning to spend time with other humans: friends and family.

Standing on Their Shoulders is influenced by Louise Bourgeois’ Personages: sculptures she created to represent people she missed after relocating to the USA from her native France. As were Bourgeois’ sculptures, Standing on Their Shoulders is portable, three dimensional and totemic in appearance.

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20k More 20k Less, Multi-plate etching, 12" x 17.5", 2021

BRANDON WILLIAMS Nashville, Tennessee I am inspired by areas and the history within them. I am interested in time and how it visually affects locations. Creating an atmosphere that emphasizes the past while capturing the complexity and beauty of decay or growth is a major theme in my work. The tension between the built environment and the natural environment, and how the two compete over the years against each other is fascinating to me. The everyday constant power struggle of life in the natural world and society are expressed in the pieces. Memory, both episodic and semantic are integral in my research. Conceptually, they are selfreflections and recollections. Ideas of change, conflict, and finally acceptance are key parts in the work. Time only moves in one direction. This unidirectional path leaves behind both positive and negative aspects. What will remain?

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A special thanks to our sponsors for helping to make PrintAustin 2022 possible: This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department and other private donors.