Highpoint welcomes new Executive Director

Highpoint Center for Printmaking Hires New Executive Director

Jehra Patrick to continue tradition of artist support, community education through printmaking

Highpoint Center for Printmaking announced Jehra Patrick as their new Executive Director, officially starting Aug 1, 2022. Patrick comes to Highpoint from her positions as the Gallery Director and Curator at Macalester College and as Founder and Director at Emerging Curators Institute. 

“Highpoint has come to a very important moment in its history. As we began the search for our next Executive Director, one of our top priorities was to find the person who would be most successful at honoring Highpoint’s mission of promoting the art of printmaking,” said Jerry Vallery, Board Chair of Highpoint. “That remains core to who we are as a unique arts organization. Jehra is most capable to lead Highpoint by enabling its core mission and effectively navigating the context of a changing environment.”

Patrick has shaped her career through the arts organizations she has served. Her leadership includes experience in strategic transitions, fundraising, developing teams, educational programming for all ages and building advocacy for arts through boards and committees. Her roles with Macalester College and Emerging Curators Institute allowed her to incorporate support and enhanced multicultural perspectives both in galleries and a curator fellowship. Previously, Patrick provided strategic direction for Mn Artists, a long-standing state-wide program of the Walker Art Center. Patrick also founded and directed Waiting Room, an exhibition and public programming space. 

“I am invested in the arts and the people who power them—artists, arts workers, and the audiences and communities they serve—and I am excited to build on Highpoint’s mission and outstanding legacy.” said Patrick. “Together, we will collectively share the story of Printmaking, its global history, production processes, and artistic labor.”

Highpoint Center for Printmaking is known as the only printmaking center of its caliber in Minnesota. Established over 20 years ago, Highpoint nurtures the art of printmaking through artist support and accessible community education. In succeeding the founder and interim director, Patrick will continue that vision for Highpoint to further the art of printmaking in exceptional ways.

About Highpoint Center for Printmaking: 

Highpoint is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the art of printmaking. Its goals are to provide educational programs, community access, and collaborative publishing opportunities to engage the community and increase the appreciation and understanding of the printmaking arts. Highpoint Center for Printmaking offers a variety of programming including educational classes for kids, adults, and community members, a print shop co-op space that provides access to local artists to create work in a supportive workshop environment, a visiting artist program with national and international artists who can produce work with a master printer, creative residency, fellowship, and scholarship programs to support early career and professional artists, and a gallery space that is fully accessible to the public. Highpointprintmaking.org 

Press Contact: Carol Schuler, carol@cschuler.com

Welcome, Full Color Print Fellows!

Introducing Victoria Eidelsztein and Jasper Duberry

as Printmaking Fellows and HP Co-op Members

We are sending a warm welcome and congratulations to Jasper Duberry and Victoria Eidelsztein as the new Full Color Print Fellows at Highpoint Center for Printmaking. With the guidance of a steering committee, this program has been in development since 2019 for the purpose of creating a more diverse and equitable space for artists of color to participate, create work, and engage in the printmaking community! We are thankful to the steering committee and all of the individual donors and family foundations that helped make this program possible now and into the future!

Jasper Duberry is a printmaker that resides in St. Michael, Minnesota.  Jasper learned printmaking at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Jasper often explores themes that are various stages of the Black experience – pain, joy, healing, and resistance to name a few.  

As Michelle Alexander, author of The new Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness writes, “Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.” 

Victoria Eidelsztein is an Argentinian artist and screenprinter based in Minneapolis. Victoria’s artwork reflects on simple yet complex themes like loneliness, self-care, and homesickness. “My immigration process started in 2019 and coincided with the pandemic which delayed my documentation. This created a very delicate situation for me; I found myself very lonely, not being able to work or go back home, and I was feeling very homesick without a sense of belonging. My artwork was shaped by these events and overwhelming feelings, and printmaking became a powerful tool to express them.” In one image, Victoria’s blue women are alone in the middle of the paper, without any background or elements that ground them; they seem to be floating but they always have themselves. Victoria prints her drawings on paper and apparel and is currently exploring large-scale fabric printing techniques, creating tapestries with intricate patterns.

Victoria offered this about her practice and how the fellowship will be a benefit: “My practice now is mainly focused on screenprinting; I also do ceramics and paint murals. Recently, I learned how to sew which expands the limits of my creativity and gives me access to new formats. Being selected for the Full Color Print Fellowship is a dream! Having access to a fully equipped studio, mentorship, and guidance for a year will help me expand artistically but also be able to create on a higher level and even larger scale.”

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Full Color Print Panelists

Highpoint would like to sincerely thank the panelists Witt Siasoco and Anika Schneider for their careful review and discussion of the submitted applications and for their generous offer to provide feedback directly to the applicants. More about panelists can be found below.

Witt Siasoco (he/him) is a community-based, visual artist living and working in Minneapolis, MN. His work actively engages the intersection of the arts and civic process through a variety of roles—as an artist, graphic designer, and arts educator.

In recent years, Siasoco was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Arts Access grant, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Fund, and Jerome Hill Foundation Fellowship. He has had residencies at the Kulture Club Collaborative, Pillsbury House and Theater, and Minnesota Museum of American Art. Siasoco was selected as a CreativeCitymaking artist, a collaboration between artists and urban planners to develop innovative approaches for addressing the long-term transportation, land use, economic, environmental, and social issues facing Minneapolis. Witt's studio practice is rooted in creating art in public space that catalyzes civic dialogue and collective action. 

"Throughout my experiences as an artist in the Twin Cities, I have noticed a need for more resources and access to equipment, so I am thrilled that Highpoint is launching a program that focuses on BIPOC printmakers. I hope that their initial offering grows exponentially."

Anika Hsiung Schneider is a narrative artist who draws on lived experiences, memory, and family history. With an Asian mixed female identity, she resides in a highly racialized body that also exists in a liminal state. This connection to a liminal state closely connects her work to themes of loss, transitional spaces, and visualizing the intangible. 

Anika received her MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). She currently serves as the Director of Exhibitions and Artist Programs at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and adjunct faculty at MCAD. Anika’s work has been exhibited nationally at galleries such as Soo Visual Art Center, Rosalux Gallery, Gallery B St Paul, Circle Gallery, Visarts, Dumbarton Concert Gallery, and Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture. Anika has also participated in residencies in Wolfsville, Nova Scotia, and Solomons Island, Maryland. She has also been awarded a Windgate University Fellowship, Gettysburg College Provost Grant, and in the InCahoots Residency Boost Prize full grant. 

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The Full Color Print Fellowship is an application-based initiative for artists with some level of prior printmaking experience. These artists receive a year’s membership to HP’s cooperative printshop, free access to classes and workshops, an unrestricted stipend, mentorship, and the opportunity to participate in semi-annual co-op exhibitions. The long-term goal of this program is to create a welcoming and safe environment, providing opportunities and access to artists who have been historically underrepresented in the co-op space and adult classes. Highpoint should reflect and be more representative of the community we inhabit and serve.

The Full Color Scholarship program provides access for BIPOC artists to Highpoint’s adult printmaking classes free of charge thereby helping to overcome a potential barrier to co-op membership; technical knowledge of printmaking.

Corner of Lake and Minnehaha, new print by Julie Mehretu

Highpoint Editions is proud to release the newest print by artist Julie Mehretu, Corner of Lake and Minnehaha, a co-publication which has been made through support of the artistic programs of Walker Art Center and Highpoint Editions.

This year marks the 18th anniversary of the release of one of Mehretu’s earliest prints [Entropia (review)], co-published by Highpoint Editions and the Walker in 2004.

View fullsize

Corner of Lake and Minnehaha, 2022
Julie Mehretu
17-run Screenprint on white Coventry Rag paper
47" x 37" image size
54 ¾" x 43 ½" paper size
Edition of 45

Current events and unfolding histories have long informed Mehretu’s practice. Her most recent works are propelled by her reaction to urgent crises in our present moment, and how the media’s framing of these conditions impacts society. From the incessant stream of daily imagery we consume of violence, injustice, warfare, and environmental disasters, Mehretu seeks out resonant photographs—of fires raging simultaneously in California and Myanmar in 2017, for example; or in the case of this print, an image from the civil unrest in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. These photographic sources, which Mehretu alters by digitally blurring, rotating, and cropping them, become the ground of her recent works. The artist then builds upon these in layers by marking over them with her own gestures to create visually and conceptually complex abstractions.

Working with Master Printer Cole Rogers and the team of printers at Highpoint Editions, Mehretu developed this work into a 17-run screenprint. This ambitious print combines a halftone dot pattern in Cyan, Magenta and Yellow along with drawings by the artist that are layered one by one in various tones of black and colored inks.

— Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director of Visual Arts

Pricing and availability can be found here, or you may contact jehra@highpointprintmaking.org or info@highpointprintmaking.org

For further reading, click here for writer, art critic and historian Susan Tallman’s essay on Corner of Lake and Minnehaha.

Leslie Barlow Commissioned to Create 2022 MN State Fair Commemorative Artwork

Leslie Barlow is this year’s Commemorative Artist for the Minnesota State Fair! The 2022 Minnesota State Fair Official Commemorative Art was the 18th in a series of artwork created by Minnesota artists for the Great Minnesota Get-Together.

Barlow’s commemorative oil painting depicts a group of her friends frozen in time, like a candy-colored nighttime snapshot of youthful exuberance at the fair. At the center, a stuffed animal sits on one of her friend’s shoulders.

Barlow is the first Black woman and woman of color to be commissioned in the Commemorative Art program, which launched in 2004.

Read more in Sahan Journal’s article and interview here!

In the Fold: A Critical Dialogue on Blackness + Printmaking, a conversation with Delita Martin, Chloe Alexander and Tanekeya Word

She Sent Him Back to His Mother, Stephanie Santana, 2020

“As artists, collectively and individually, we are continuously asking ourselves questions and creating artwork that are iterations of those inquiries. What unfolds is an expansion of the intersections of our lives on varied planes. Each artist will take you into the fold and invite a critical dialogue on their art praxis and discuss a homeplace they all share, Black Women of Print.”

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Join us for what will be a thoughtful and powerful conversation with three printmakers, Delita Martin, Tanekeya Word and Chloe Alexander. Tanekeya Word is the founder of Black Women of Print, an organization which aims to promote the visibility of mid-career and established Black women printmakers, through accessible educational outreach, to create an equitable future within the discipline of printmaking.

Thursday, June 23, 6:30pm
$10; free for Highpoint Contributing Members
Register for the event here.
Please note that this event has limited capacity. Highpoint is not requiring masks in the gallery space as of this writing, but that is subject to change. Masks are encouraged for all attendees.

“I wanted to create a place where intergenerational Black women printmakers could form bonds like Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs and Elizabeth Catlett. From Mid-Career to Established printmakers, it is my hope that we all can learn something from one another, support one another and also have a home so that the world can get to know the intersectional narratives of Black womanhood and our creative processes.”

— Tanekeya Word

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Delita Martin is an artist currently based in Huffman, Texas. She received a BFA in drawing from Texas Southern University and a MFA in printmaking from Purdue University. Formally a member of the fine arts faculty at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Martin is currently working as a full-time artist in her studio, Black Box Press.

Primarily working from oral traditions, along with vintage and family photographs as a source of inspiration; Martin’s work explores the power of the narrative impulse.

www.blackboxstudio.com

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Chloe Alexander is a printmaker and educator who works in various techniques to create one-of-a-kind prints, drawings, and varied editions. Chloe obtained both her BFA and M. Ed. from Georgia State University in Atlanta and has since exhibited work
widely, including at Kai Lin Art Gallery in Atlanta, the International Print Center New York, and the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair in London

thehaplessprintmaker.com

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Tanekeya Word was born in the Mississippi Delta and those memories are rooted within her praxis.

In her work, she explores subaltern spaces: Black interiority in the United States of America and the cultural connection to identity, history, memory and re-memory.

Tanekeya earned a BA in English and Afro-American Studies, from Howard University and has a MA in Arts Management. She completed her doctoral
program in May 2019 and is currently an Urban Education PhD dissertator with a specialization in Critical Race Theory in Art Education.

Tanekeya Word is based in Milwaukee, WI and is the owner and sole operator of Womanist Press Studio

www.tanekeyaword.com

Highpoint Editions at EXPO Chicago

Highpoint Editions visits the EXPO Chicago

Early April, Highpoint Editions exhibited at EXPO Chicago, a fine art fair that featured over 140 exhibitors from around the country, with some international representation, as well. We exhibited new works by Julie Mehretu, Delita Martin, Rico Gatson, Julie Buffalohead and Jim Hodges, along with favorite prints by Willie Cole, Jim Hodges, Andrea Carlson, Do Ho Suh, and Lisa Nankivil.

Over 30,000 visitors attended the fair this year, and it was so clear that people were hungry for events like this one -- energy was high, and the overwhelming feeling throughout the fair were of excitement and reinvigoration from being able to view art in person. We hope to participate in this fair again!

Keepsakes, a new suite by Delita Martin

Joyce, 2021, Edition of 20

Lithography with collagraph and hand stitching

29" x 41 ½"

Named after a sister.

We are honored to be able to announce the completion of a suite of seven prints by artist Delita Martin. Martin's use of color, pattern and portraiture is powerful, and these incredibly (perhaps deceptively) tender pieces capture the same persistent and confrontational energy characteristic of her larger body of work.

Over the pandemic, Highpoint Editions worked with Martin to ship pieces back and forth, making progress remotely. Because of the size of this suite and the edition — making 140 prints in total — each one stitched by hand with embroidery thread, Martin recruited women from her area in Huffman, TX to assist with the stitching. She describes what became a kind of quilting bee, wherein she felt honored to be surrounded by these women’s conversation, let in on a time honored tradition and bestowed with community wisdom. Contributing sewists include: Sandra Sayles, Wilma J. Evans, Georgia Harper and Sandy Patterson.

The suite is available for purchase now. Please click HERE for pricing. Email alex@highpointprintmaking.org with questions!

Ann, 2021, Edition of 20

Lithography with collagraph and hand stitching

29" x 41 ½"

Named after a longtime friend of the artist.

From the artist:

Keepsakes is a series of prints that look beyond the surface of objects at the memories they hold. Their purpose is to preserve the childhood of young Black girls and act as mementos of innocence. In this way, Keepsakes is a direct act against “adultification”, a perspective where adults view Black girls as less than innocent and more adult-like, ripping away their innocence and replacing it with labels such as “disruptive”, “loud” or “manipulative”. These labels often result in their mistreatment. 

This varied series shows portraits of little Black girls peering from the folds of vintage christening gowns. Such gowns, typically a shade of white symbolize innocence and purity in the Christian doctrine that teaches all men were created blameless and free of sin. However the dresses in these works are slightly yellowed signifying the passage of time and suggesting that perhaps such notions are not equally applied. 

Personal objects have long been a reflection of memory, personal and cultural identity. The dresses in this series act as repositories for both memory and identity. 

Trina, 2021, Edition of 20

Lithography with collagraph and hand stitching

29" x 41 ½"

Named after a sister.

Karen, 2021, Edition of 20

Lithography with collagraph and hand stitching

29" x 41 ½"

Named after a sister.

Delita Martin is an artist currently based in Huffman, Texas. She received a BFA in drawing from Texas Southern University and a MFA in printmaking from Purdue University. Formerly a member of the fine arts faculty at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Martin is currently working as a full-time artist in her studio, Black Box Press. 

Primarily working from oral traditions, along with vintage and family photographs as a source of inspiration, Martin’s work explores the power of the narrative impulse.

Her finished works combine collaging, drawing, painting, printmaking and sewing techniques, placing her figures amid patterns to visually represent what it looks like when we become the spiritual other: when we pray or meditate … we enter the “veilscape.” Martin's layering of technique and material, as well as her use of pattern and color, signifies a liminal space – the space between the waking life and the spirit life. By fusing this visual language with oral storytelling in this different space she offers other identities and other narratives for women of color.

Real Positions: Self-Portraits by Seitu Ken Jones at Homewood Studios

From January 4th through the 29th Homewood Studios is presenting new work by Seitu Ken Jones. Jones writes of the new work: “They are actually images of me in some of the conditions and struggles African American men have been placed in America. There is an image of me as an enslaved man painted in warm colors, another is me in blue as a part of the Great Migration and the painting in red is me in the current reckoning.”

Learn more about the exhibition and read the full curatorial statement here!

Tales from the Co-op: Jon Mahnke

Rebuild, polymergravure

I’ve been making prints since I was a junior in high school , where I fell in love with etching. I completed my bachelors degree at the University of Iowa, and my masters in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota. I enjoy printmaking as an artistic endeavor as well as a nice day job that pays the bills. My wife and I started an illustration and screen printing business that sells greeting cards and printed kitchen towels called Crankosaurus press. Despite printing thousands of products a year, I still have a deep passion for printing as my primary artistic medium.

I am working primarily in photopolymer gravure, a process I learned from Keith Taylor in a course taught at Highpoint. It allows me to take images drawn on the computer and transform them into intaglio prints. These works have been inspired by the overwhelming amount of construction in Minneapolis recently.

Primarily working at home for yourself can be a lonely endeavor, Highpoint offers me a wonderful social lifeline as well as a reliable well equipped print facility. It's wonderful to have somewhere to go with welcoming staff and co-op members. Working around other amazing artists has given me new ideas and definitely helped me improve as an artist.

Leslie Barlow MAEP Exhibition at Mia

Creator: Charles Walbridge | Credit: Photo: Minneapolis Institute of Art | Copyright: © Minneapolis Institute of Art

Leslie Barlow’s MAEP exhibition “Within, Between, and Beyond” explores representation, race, family, and belonging. Comprised of both paintings and video interviews, the work shares stories of 16 Minnesotans who use the terms mixed race, multiracial, and/or transnational/transracial adoptee to identify themselves and their lived experiences. “Within, Between, and Beyond” invites us to hold space for, recognize, and reconsider our presumptions about race in Minnesota.

Within, Between, and Beyond is on view in the U.S. Bank Gallery from July 26, 2021 through October 31, 2021

Read more about the exhibition and related programming here!