Printmaking Graduate Exhibition on Display at Partners and Son
When it comes to distributing a work of art far and wide, there are few avenues better than printmaking to share the wealth.
In the spring 2023 semester, MFA students in Associate Professor Amze Emmon’s Graduate Printmaking Projects class put this truth to the test with a collaborative publication of works by more than 30 artists across the United States and in Belgium, Brazil, Indonesia, and Iran.
Entitled “HELP YOURSELF,” the publication is on exhibit at Partners and Son in Philadelphia from June 23rd to August 6th. The creators have described it as “a poly-vocal collection of creative work responding to the theme of self-help from artists from around the world.”
The impetus for the project came from research and discussion that the students were having in class about collaborative projects, said Emmons, the Program Head for Printmaking at Tyler. He added that “the actual concept combined a distributed curatorial model I’ve worked with in the past and the basic form of a print exchange, where each participant gets a set of the work produced.”
The project invited artists to create an image interpreting the theme of self-help. The images in the publication were all reproduced as duotone risographs printed at Tyler Riso, and the covers were screen-printed in Tyler’s Printmaking studio.
Emmons said the project, which emulates the collaborative ethos celebrated within the printmaking community, “allows artists to participate in aesthetic conversations far wider than a single exhibition ever could reach.”
“Inviting artists whose work we are curious about from around the world is a natural extension of thinking about ways art can form communities. We are interested in participating in a global conversation. A collaborative publication that is part ‘exhibition in a box’ and part gift economy among the participants models these ideas,” he said.
Participating artists include:
Zohre Abasian
Golnar Adili
Tabitha Arnold
Sacha Carlos-Raps
Sharon Chin
Katy G. Collier
Muriel Condon
Amze Emmons*
Olivia Fredricks (MFA ’23)*
Stephen Grebinski
Nilou Kazemzadeh (MFA ’24)*
Ally Kotarsky (MFA ’23)
Jake Lahah (MFA ’24)*
Brett Lysne
Marco Velasco Martínez
Maddie May
Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez (BFA '10)
Natasha Neira
Marine Penhouët
Carlos Pileggi
Amira F. Pualwan (MFA ’23)*
Ziba Rajabi
Mojdeh Rezaeipour and Liliana Padilla
Arnaud Rochard
Henry Rosenberg (MFA ’24)*
Sepideh Salehi
Mizin Shin
Lila Shull
Madison Svendgard
Anda Tanaka
Bill Thelen
Chinn Wang
Kyung Eun You
*Indicates project producer