Stephanie Hunder and Jade Hoyer were selected as the 2025 McKnight Printmaking Fellows following a scrupulous review process that included in-person studio visits with panelists Chitra Ganesh and Katrina Andry. This Fellowship runs from February 2025 through Janaury 2026 and is made possible by the generous support of the McKnight Foundation. On February 6, 2026, an exhibition of work created by Jade and Stephanie during their fellowship will open in Highpoint’s galleries - save the date!

Recently the artists provided an update on their fellowship year, Stepahnie said “I've been working on a series of prints about Minnesota flora, some keystone species and the values of diverse genera. It's not really what I meant to be working on, just kind of what happened! They started as a series of cyanotypes that I made early last spring, when it was still snowy out, from the dried winter skeletons of prairie plants, then layered with screenprinted ponderings, showing different planes of information and openings between those spaces.”

Stephanie will be a visiting professor at University of Minnesota Twin Cities this fall and fecently had an exhibition at the ArtHaus in Decorah, Iowa. Finally, she halso had a piece aquired by the new Mayo Clinic offices in Mankato.

Jade offered this “Being at the Highpoint so far has been such a treat! I’m an assistant professor, and so with the flexibility of the summer, I have been fully enjoying the opportunity to dig more into my ideas and creative practice. I’m excited to take a photolithography class with Highpoint Editions Lead Printer-in-Residence Judith Baumann in September. I’ve equally enjoyed the opportunity to connect with other artists, and I’ve been grateful to get to engage and chat with my co-fellow, Stephanie Hunder.

Stephanie and I share an interest, I find, in the representation of the world through various forms of analog and mechanical translation. In my case I’m interested in the tension of the “semi handmade” that printmaking offers. I’m curious about what that can say about the archive and its representation of both personal institutional narratives as I inspect US archives about the early 20th century Philippines. As far as my ideas are developing, it’s been a luxury to be able to unpack a little more what draws me to the idea of archive, representation, and my own orientation with that.

Some unexpected directions that my work has taken: excel spreadsheets!? (I have been playing with randomized color generation to nod to the history of colorizing photographs and postcards). I’ve also played some with banig, a form weaving in the Philippines that uses plant materials like palm fronds. In my case I’ve been paper weaving with old prints! Moving forward I’m getting into portraiture, translating institutional imagery into individual portraits by working on portraits of nurses from the archives.

My current research interests explore the history of health programs, especially nursing training programs, that were set up in the Philippines by the United States at the start of the 20th century. This programming has lead to the establishment of labor pathways that exist today between the two countries. As a Filipina-American whose mother is a nurse, I am interested in unpacking this aspect of my family story in its greater context, and potentially expressing what I learn through my creative engagement at the Highpoint and as a McKnight Fellow.”

About the artists:

Stephanie Hunder is a Minnesota artist and arts educator who creates with ink, paper, and light. Her current work studies human relationships to the natural world through botanical and scientific iconography, combining photographic and digital techniques with traditional printmaking processes. Creating content through process and the importance of hands-on research is a focus in her teaching. Stephanie received her BFA and MA from the UW–Madison, and MFA from Arizona State. She currently teaches at Minneapolis College of Art & Design and the University of Minnesota. Recent activities include solo exhibitions at Metro State University, Bloomington Art Center, and Silverwood Gallery.

Jade Hoyer is an artist who plays in printmaking, papermaking, and installation, using the institutionalized language of the print to inspect societal questions, particularly those connected to privilege and multiracial identity. Hoyer’s work has been recognized by organizations including the Windgate Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Her artwork is part of collections including the Museum at Texas Tech University’s Artist Printmaker Research Collection, the Association of Pinoy Printmakers, Philippines, and the Museu da Gravura de Curitiba, Brazil. Jade is based in Northfield, Minnesota where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Carleton College. She’s a big fan of the color teal.

Thank you to this year’s outstanding panelists Katrina Andry and Chitra Ganesh for their effort and attention to the selection process.

About the panelists: Katrina Andry is an artist and printmaker based in New Orleans, LA. In her work she challenges the ideology of individualism by examining inequalities and resulting degradation as the result of our color-based prejudices. She argues the belief in individualism allows Americans to turn a blind eye to inequality, suggesting barriers to well-being lie with the individual and not also within our social structures, in spite of documentation of the collective experiences of these groups and data on outcomes of disfavored groups.

Across a twenty-year practice, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Ganesh ‘constantly attempts to challenge patriarchal norms and empower her female and queer subjects by constructing alternate visual narratives’, while drawing on South Asian visual traditions as well as canonical and contemporary feminist and queer scholarship.

The McKnight Printmaking Fellowships are open Minnesota artist/printmakers who are at a career stage that is “beyond emerging” — defined here as artists who demonstrate a sustained level of accomplishment, commitment, and artistic excellence. Fellows are selected on the basis of the artistic merit of their work, and their dedication, interest, and contributions to Minnesota’s arts ecosystem.