Wandering Spirits 

with Joseph & Sarah Belknap
$175 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Exploratory

What does it mean to make an image? In this course we will make images and photographs using the Earth’s Sun in collaboration with photographic techniques that emerged in the 1800s and continue to be used in contemporary art. We will play with digital photography, anthotypes, cyanotypes, chlorophyll prints, and other alternative photographic techniques. We will utilize photography, drawing, painting, and collage to make images with depth, vibrancy, and wildness. Our images will be experienced through virtual worlds and platforms as well as physical spaces of the home, communities and other locations through posting, installing, inserting, publishing and other possible ways where images can be transmitted. The acceleration of image production has transformed our understanding of ourselves by folding the horizon in on itself. We will look into phenomenological studies of being while making images that examine our contemporary conditions of the power within our lives that these images can serve, deconstruct and reinvent. From social justice, deep fakes, intimacy, ecology - the political impact of images shape our existence. While we look at contemporary and historical image making we will look at ways of seeing. Artists will include Anna Atkins, Kiki Smith, Candice Lin, Zadie Xa, and Dario Robleto. Readings and screenings for this course will include Rebecca Solnit, Susan Sontag, Jean Painlevé, Sara Ahmed, and Hito Steyerl. Assignments will invite students to respond to the reading and viewing of Hito Steyerl’s work How Not to be Seen and create a series of images using the Cyanotype process. We will also consider the perspective points of the viewer and the processes of concealment that make this object or subject hidden in plain sight.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PHOTO 615 001. 

Sarah Belknap and Joseph Belknap (they/she and they/he) are partners, interdisciplinary artists, and educators. Playing with pareidolia and mythology, their work draws on the cosmos, deep time, conspiracy theories, science, and speculative fiction. Working as a team since 2008, they have had art exhibited in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Detroit, Columbus, Minneapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Oleśnica, Poland. In addition, they have presented performances, public programs, and workshops at institutions throughout Chicago, including the Chicago Cultural Center, Hyde Park Art Center, Links Hall, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Their work has been shown in many group exhibitions and solo shows, including at the San Francisco Art Institute Galleries; the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; The Arts Club of Chicago; the Chicago Artists Coalition; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; Comfort Station, Chicago; and the MCA Chicago. Their work has been published in journals such as Afterimage, the Chicago Tribune, and books including, most recently, Weather as Medium by Janine Randerson, part of the Leonardo Series through MIT Press (2018).

The Nature of Mokuhanga: Modern Japanese Woodblock Printing

with Mary Brodbeck
$100 lab fee | June 28–July 4 | Skill-building

Mokuhanga, or woodprint, is the modern Japanese term for woodblock prints made with traditional Japanese tools and materials, a process that flourished from the 17th through the 19th century. Students in this class will learn the time-honored methods and techniques of Japanese woodblock printmaking in a contemporary way. Focused demonstrations will feature wood carving, kento color registration, watercolor printing, and pressing with a handheld baren. Design prompts may be provided alongside Japanese design, aesthetics, and process books, including Arthur Wesley Dow’s Composition: Understanding Line, Notan and Color and April Vollmer’s Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop. Students will view examples of mokuhanga, including historic process prints and contemporary Japanese pieces. Additionally, the class will screen Mary Brodbeck’s 35-minute documentary, Becoming Made (2014), in which artists Annie Bissett, Yoshisuke Funasaka, Tuula Moilanen, Richard Steiner, April Vollmer, and Karen Kunc share their insights into this process and the nature of creative work. Focusing on the process, students will be assigned to create an edition of 10 prints of their design that incorporates two or more colors. Students are encouraged to bring a preliminary drawing of their desired image, designed to fit within a 7-by-10-inch matrix (9-by-12-inch paper size).

SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code ​​PRINT 674 001.

Mary Brodbeck (she/her) is an artist, educator, and nature enthusiast who has specialized in mokuhanga (traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking) for over 25 years. Her ethereal, nature-inspired woodblock prints mainly depict scenes from the Great Lakes region. Initially trained in industrial design (BFA, Michigan State University), she began her career in the West Michigan furniture industry. She took her first woodcut class at Ox-Bow in 1990, marking the start of a new direction. She subsequently studied woodblock printmaking in Tokyo on a Japanese government Bunka-Cho Fellowship and earned her MFA in Printmaking from Western Michigan University. Her works are now part of numerous public, corporate, and private collections, including the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ; the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; and the Muskegon Museum of Art, MI. Brodbeck has taught mokuhanga workshops across the US, in Canada, and in Japan.

Drawn to Print at Ox-Bow 

with Ayanah Moor & Oli Watt
$175 lab fee | July 26–August 8 | Exploratory

This course will examine the relationship between drawing and print through various techniques for monotypes and monoprints while encouraging a playful approach to both disciplines. Students will develop sketches, drawings, and paintings into workable and reworkable print matrices. Emphasis will be placed on monoprint processes that facilitate iteration, variation, sequencing, and seriality. Techniques taught will include trace monotypes, additive and subtractive monotypes, screen monotypes, and relief monotypes and monoprints. Students will look at, read, and discuss the following as points of reference: Ray and Charles Eames’s film Powers of Ten (thinking about zooming in and out while making work); works by Christina Ramberg and David Weiss (working in sequences, iteration); Tracey Emin’s Monoprint Diary (monoprinting as a mediation between drawing, printing, and painting); Ellsworth Kelly’s 1954 Drawings on a Bus: Sketchbook 23; Nicole Eisenman’s monotypes; Carla Esposito Hayter’s The Monotype: The History of a Pictorial Art; Lynda Barry’s Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor (exploring “failure” and “good vs. bad drawings”); and Zarina Hashmi’s relief prints. While students will be encouraged to use all techniques taught to enhance their individual practice, they will also be given daily prompts to develop sketches and drawings. Assignments will include the creation of a monotype based on another student’s sketch using one or all of the following techniques: trace, additive, or subtractive methods. This will yield a cognate, or “ghost print,” which will be passed on to yet another student for further development.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PRINT 672 001.

Ayanah Moor (any/all) centers the poetics of Blackness and queerness in her approach to painting, print, drawing, and performance. Her work has featured in exhibitions at venues including the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, DePaul Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; ONE Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries, Los Angeles; Te Tuhi, Auckland, New Zealand; Proyecto ’ace, Buenos Aires; and daadgalerie, Berlin. Moor’s publications include INCITE Journal of Experimental Media: Sports (2017), edited by Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere; Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (2011) by Nicole Fleetwood; and What Is Contemporary Art? (2009) by Terry Smith. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art.

Oli Watt (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist who creates prints and multiples to connect fictional props and events (often suggested in cartoons, movies, and music) to the contemporary social landscape. He currently serves as Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches in the Printmedia Department. Watt has shown his work nationally and internationally, including in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum; Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York; the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Laband Art Gallery, Los Angeles; and Rocket Gallery, London. His work has been discussed in numerous publications, including Art on Paper, Art US, the New Art Examiner, and the Village Voice. He runs Free Range, a gallery and project space in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood.