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“Verified by Proof ” is taken from the broadside This is a Printing Office, written by Beatrice Warde in 1932. In a high-speed digital age, the phrase gains importance and embraces the meticulous nature of the hand-pulled print. The Verified by Proof steering committee seeks proposals that engage the message of This is a Printing Office—establishing truth, validation through proof/proofing, and the power of the press—and invites you all to celebrate print and its important role in countering the turbulent culture that we all currently face.
Providence is a city that has historically been a refuge for dissidents and a stronghold in the battle for individual freedoms. It is a city where print is celebrated in all its forms, from conceptual art to communication design. Printmaking often intersects with other media in Providence’s rich artistic community, which is host to a variety of creative spaces ranging from traditional academic settings to community shops and maker/DIY spaces. We encourage proposals that embrace this cross pollination and celebrate the broad scope of printmaking, graphic media, and independent publishing.
Our shops may be closed and we were not able to gather for the annual SGCI conference, BUT the energy of camaraderie, friendship, and love found in our printmaking community never stops traveling. The strength of the print world is boundless and our bonds are resolute. Through the distance that we are all living and feeling, SGCI is determined to help keep us together. In this spirit, we are pleased to announce MakeReady, the social platform addition to our Conference App.
MakeReady will allow our members to share resources, ideas, projects, observations, and inquiries to broaden our discourse. Like a makeready process of preparing a work for printing, this community space provides the opportunity to observe potentials, expand understandings, define contexts, and explore the resonance of printmaking history, theory, and practice.
To get started: on your phone, go to the App Store and search for SGC International. Download the app, and log in with the username and password linked to your SGCI account! A desktop version will be coming soon.
Heather Parrish, Transverse Atopia
Screenprint, 2017, 22″ x 30″, www.heatherparrish.net
Louise Fisher, our Web Editor is, an Iowa-based printmaker and a 2019 graduate of Arizona State University. She was the 2018 recipient of the SGC International Graduate Fellowship Award. Louise states about her process and artwork that she is “an interdisciplinary artist working in the expanded field of print; using methods of layering, impressing and repetition for it’s literal and visual enactment of time and the body. By integrating constructed and celestial time, geometric and organic forms, and digital and hand-drawn printmaking processes, I point to the complexities of our current experience with nature. Through an investigative visual language, I aim to rekindle an appreciation for natural light and ask viewers to consider how their rhythms are impacted by this new incessant LED world.” To get to know Louise a little better, you can read her complete bio and artist’s statement on her website and check out her interview from VoyagePhoenix.
Blake Sanders, our Web Curator, is a printmaking and foundations Instructor at Southeast Missouri State University. He has been an active member of SGCI since 2005 and has participated conference portfolios, exhibitions—both sanctioned and peripheral—and chaired two panels. His work looks “beyond anthropocentrism, emphasizing humans as a part of a global community—residents, not lords of the manor—who should be good neighbors to each other and all of nature.” In works that range from diverse print media to collaborative installation he strives to “provoke compassion within the culture” by intently observing himself and his family “to mine for the universal within the personal.” One of Blake’s most recent projects, Encountering Our Indelible Mark, is an exhibition that was installed in Santander, Spain at IMPACT10: Encuentro and an accompanying extensive web catalog. In an essay originally intended to be published in Graphic Impressions, Adriane Herman has reviewed this project. We are publishing Disrupting Our Disruption: Recycling Our Indelible Mark to mine a “wee bit of hope” here so that you can get to know Blake and his curatorial work.
Look out for further announcements about the development of the written and visual content that Louise and Blake will be leading for our website. The submission process will be launching soon.
#Repost @buttjohnson🧡 🏁 💛Prints by Emma Amos, ca 1960s-80s. She worked in Etching, Aquatint, Woodblock prints, screenprints, painting and textiles— representational and abstract. She was also one of the founding members of the Spiral group in the 1960s. She passed away yesterday at 83. R.I.P. Many of these images from @maryryangallery website. #emmaamos #spiralgroup
Link in bio to vote! ✅ The SGCI Executive voted unanimously to approve our new strategic plan on April 24, 2020 at the first half of our Spring 2020 Executive Board Meeting. We now present it to the membership for your review and vote.
In November of 2018 at our Mid-year Meeting, the SGCI Executive Board began the process of developing a new strategic plan for our organization. This process was started by identifying areas of key importance for SGCI and building working groups to examine these issues and develop goals in each area. The working groups, which were composed of board members and student and professional SGCI members, presented reports in the fall of 2019. These reports became the basis upon which the board structured our new strategic plan.
The new SGCI Strategic Plan is aspirational and concise. This two page document outlines goals for our organization in specific areas, all of which are aimed at strengthening the whole organization. This plan charts a direction for SGCI without determining a specific path or limiting the potential for new ventures. It is a guide forward to help ensure continuity of vision and continued collaboration.
Submission Forms Now Live for Providence: Verified by Proof! 🖤🤍
We all need something to look forward to these days! The SGCI 2021 Providence Call for Participation is now up and running, including the submission forms. Dream up programming, brainstorm with colleagues, and send your ideas our way! Sign into an existing account or create a free account and submit your forms online by June 15th.
@dbpjoseph and @takachpress congratulations on a job well done!! We are forever grateful. 😍😆🤗🎉 #Repost @lets_leave_a_press: “Y’all the press is now in the building at the University!!! The pandemic has really caused so much havoc and delays but I am beyond elated and thankful to receive the news from San Juan that the press is there!!! Please please send a message of thanks to the amazing Takach familia for their support and efforts with this. I @dbpjoseph and @orangebarrelindustries along with @sgcinternational would like to thank our amazing print community for coming together and showing the power of print!!! #printmaking #lithography #takach WE LEFT A PRESS!!”
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms ❤️ Betye Saar, Anticipation, 1961, Screenprint
From @themuseumofmodernart:
Dimensions
composition (irreg.): 18 1/8 × 14
7/16" (46.1 × 36.7 cm); sheet: 21
11/16 × 16 15/16" (55.1 × 43.1 cm)
One of Saar’s few early experiments with screenprinting, Anticipation depicts the artist pregnant with her third child. The seated female figure, holding flowers, recalls Western religious imagery of the Virgin Mary, but Saar captures both the joy of impending birth and the exhaustion of pregnancy. If her back is straight and her gaze serene, her body is heavy as she finds a moment of calm. Anticipation also shows Saar’s interest in exploring different textures and patterns in her printed work, from the wall she rests against to her richly colored dress.
#betyesaar #alisonsaar @alison_saar
Anni Albers, Untitled, 1969, 30 x 24.5 in. #serigraph #silkscreen
From nmwa.org:
About This Work
Anni Albers retired her loom after 40 years and stepped into the printmaking studio in 1963, at a time when serialization in the Op and Pop Art movements held sway. Transitioning from making one-of-a-kind weavings to lithographic and screen-printed multiples recharged the artist’s lifelong investigation of the relationships between colors and forms.
Untitled, a hard-edged geometric composition, is characteristic of Albers’s prints of this period. By employing two constants—hundreds of identical turquoise blue triangles atop a red background—the artist creates a sense of harmony. Simply by varying the rotation of individual triangles energizes the composition, revealing an array of red shapes. Viewers immediately notice the dynamic—almost dizzying—quality of this screen print.
Albers’s juxtaposition of two similarly saturated primary colors establishes a pulsating sensation. The color theory phenomenon in which warm colors appear to advance and cool hues recede further amplifies this vibration. The artist’s color experimentation offers a compelling push/pull sensation—the richness of color and diversity of forms lure viewers in while the jarring visual effects compel them to divert their eyes.
#Repost @chicagoprintersguild 🖨Finally we answer the age old question, What is Printmaking? The answer is todo. ¡Todo es gráfica! (Printmaking is everything) Thanks for coming along for the ride everyone, stay safe and get your print on!
#printmakingiseverything
#Repost @ipcny: Announcing our very first online webinar coming up on May 14 from 6–7pm! ⠀
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Join artist Enrique Chagoya and Bud Shark (bud_shark) in conversation with Sarah Kirk Hanley (sarahkirkhanley), a Chagoya scholar and Executive Director of Manhattan Graphics Center (@manhattangraphicscenter), and Judy Hecker (judy_hecker), Director of IPCNY about art, cultural dialogue, collaboration, and the current crisis.⠀
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This webinar is co-organized by MGC and IPCNY. It is free and open to the public! Click the link in bio to register. See ya next Thursday!⠀
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Image 1: Enrique Chagoya, Detention at the Border of Language (2019), color lithograph, 30 x 22 inches. Printed and published by Shark’s Ink, Lyons, CO, edition of 30. © Enrique Chagoya 2019. ⠀
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Image 2: Clockwise from Top left: Enrique Chagoya, photo by Kara Maria 2014. Bud Shark on a roll in his Lyons studio, photo by © Jamie Kripke 2014. Judy Hecker, Director of IPCNY. Sarah Kirk Hanley, Director of Manhattan Graphics Center. ⠀
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#EnriqueChagoya #artisttalk #RePrintIPCNY #IPCNYfromHome #CultureFromHome #BudShark
Welcome to the 2020-22 Executive Board! This accomplished and engaged group of printmakers will lead SGCI to exciting new places. We invite you all to welcome and extend your support to Sarah Ellis, Zach Fitchner, Faisal Abdu’Allah, Claire White, Cat Snapp, Aleksandra Janik, Sabrina Pastard, R. L. Tillman, Arron Foster, and Nicole Geary. Thank you all for the commitment you have made to SGCI!
For an update on all that’s happened in the past few months at SGCI, please visit the link in our bio for the Outgoing Presidents’ Letter to the Membership & Report from the 2018-20 Executive Board.
David Hammons, Moving to the Other Side, 1969, #screenprint #davidhammons
This Saturday, May 2, is Print Day in May! @printdayinmay
Shout out to SGCI member @henrygepfer for his film noir-themed quarantine printmaking videos 🖤🤍🖤 Find them on YouTube or linked within MakeReady, our new app!
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Looking for inspiration on how to make art within your home? Curious how to best structure your assignments? Quarantine has made our resilient members innovate, finding new ways to teach, make prints, and show our work from inside our homes. And they are sharing their results on MakeReady, our new app!
Find the pleasures of unexpected textures, visual noise, and broken lines in L'impression est grand, je suis toute petit (Print is great and I am not), SGCI member Henry Gepfer’s amazing YouTube tutorials on frottage, trace monoprints, and spray paint pochoir. And other artists are uploading demonstrations and informational videos to various platforms, which they have kindly linked on MakeReady to share. Find reading lists for the time of Coronavirus, links to inspiring artist documentaries, and more! Download the app to your phone (search for “SGC International”) and click on the Social Distance Learning icon.
Have you found any news ways of making? Share them on MakeReady!
