
01/02/2023
Thanks for all the love in 2022 - looking forward to seeing you in the gallery in 2023!
The University Art Galleries, at the University of Akron's Myers School of Art Emily Davis Gallery, Folk Hall: The Emily Davis Gallery is located in Folk Hall.
The University Art Galleries present challenging contemporary exhibitions and events that showcase the most current expressions and critical thinking evolving in the visual arts today. The objective of the University Art Galleries is to serve students, faculty and the community by creating the most saturated environment possible for encouragement and inspiration. Exhibitions include yearly faculty
The University Art Galleries present challenging contemporary exhibitions and events that showcase the most current expressions and critical thinking evolving in the visual arts today. The objective of the University Art Galleries is to serve students, faculty and the community by creating the most saturated environment possible for encouragement and inspiration. Exhibitions include yearly faculty
Operating as usual
Thanks for all the love in 2022 - looking forward to seeing you in the gallery in 2023!
Holiday Shop - last day today 10-5!
Buy gifts from local artists!
Mexican-born American printmaker and educator whose work examines borders and changing cultures. He often examines the clash of symbols from religion, history and, pop culture as a way of addressing complex issues of colonialism and oppression.
In Escape from Fantasylandia: An Illegal Alien's Survival Guide, Chagoya continues his examination of cultural realities with satire and humor. Using an historical lexicon of Mexican images, beliefs, and myths about death, Chagoya lightens his message with a beautiful Quet-zalcoat, or plumed serpent, traversing the top of the codex, weaving in birds, dolphins and butterflies.
Escape from Fantasylandia: An Illegal Alien's Survival Guide was printed at Shark's Ink in ten colors with gold metallic powder from nine aluminum plates on 9½ × 80 inch handmade Amate pa-per.
He is currently lives in San Francisco and is Professor at Stanford University's department of Art and Art History, and his work can be found in many museum collections.
Slide 1: Escape From Fantasylandia: An Illegal
Alien's Survival Guide, 2011
Color lithograph with gold metallic powder
Slide 2 & 4: © Enrique Chagoya (2022), courtesy of Shark's Ink., Lyons, Colorado. Photo credit: Bud Shark.
Slide 3: Utopiancannibal.org, 2000
Color lithograph, woodcut, chine-collé, collage
Born in the desert of west Texas, Kill Joy’s family is originally from and partly based in the Philippines, partly in Texas. Her work sits at the intersection where jungle meets desert, grounded in honoring the earth and seeking environmental and social justice. Her work is an interpretation of world mythology and a study of ancient symbols. She mixes this research with calls to global, mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual awareness. Her practice, Joyland, includes printmaking, mural making, bookmaking, puppet making in Houston, TX.
.joy.land
Barbara Justice is a visual artist pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree at University of Wisconsin-Madison, which will be completed in 2022. She came to the UW-Madison Art Department through the Interdisciplinary Artist Research Cohort Fellowship. Her research and studio practice revolve around photographic arts while also examining areas of archival preservation and historical techniques, book arts, digital fabrication, printmaking, creative writing, and community-based artistic projects.
About the work: “Part wallet, part photo album, and part record of memorabilia, I Carry You (I Always Wil) is a collection of personal obiects I have carried with me throughout the years, objects representing my younger self, other people I love and have loved, photos of memorable experiences, and items that I hold close. These relics represent growth, loss, life, change, history, age, remembrance, materiality, and faded memories.
In resilience, I choose to make these items a part of my personal narrative to remember experiences and people that I hold close and keep their presence and essence alive through the act of carrying these things with me daily.”
Featured artwork:
I Carry You (I Always Will), 2022
Handmade book, bleached, toned and distressed cyanotype prints
.barbara_
Ernesto Yerena Montejano was born in El Centro, CA, a mid- sized farming town bordering Mexicali, BC, MX. Fueled by his cross-national upbringing, his art practice reflects his observations of the views and interactions between the Mexican communities living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The artist shares narratives of his conflicts of identity that he feels are kindred to what many Chicanos of these communities experience. Although Yerena identifies as Chicano he also strongly identifies as Native/Indigenous to this continent which is often seen in his work. His work depicts his frustrations with the oppression in his community as well as creating work in solidarity with the community in the defense of dignity and rights. Through his brazen imagery, the artist brings political concerns to light with subject matter that depicts cultural icons, rebels and everyday people voicing their stance against oppression. In 2008 Yerena created the Hecho Con Ganas publishing project in which he produces politically and socially conscience images that are produced in limited edition silkscreen prints. Highly recognized for his activism, Yerena is the founder and curator of the Alto Arizona Art campaign (2010) as well as a founding member of the We Are Human campaign (2009). Yerena has collaborated on many thought provoking projects which include artists Zack de la Rocha, Shepard Fairey, Manu Chao, Ana Tijoux, Philip Lumbang, Jaque Fragua, Diane Ovalle, Chuck D, and Mochilla.
Featured artwork:
Constelacion de Sonidos, 2016
Screenprint
Ganas Virgen, 2014
Off set lithograph
Jennifer Mack Watkins was born in Charleston, South Carolina and currently
lives and works in New York and New Jersey.
Jennifer Mack's work investigates societal conformities that isolates individuals to be confined to fit into a space. This space includes the complexities of being a woman, beauty images, relationships, body image, power, and gender roles.
Featured artwork:
Target, Aim, Shoot, 2022
Mixed media
CHema Skandal! is a Mexico City raised, Chicago based graphic artist. His works are often a sociopolitical commentary on the state of the world, but with a style that is playful, colorful and full of movement, deeply influenced by a love for music and la cultura.
He received his Bachelor’s degree in Art from the National Autonomous University of México. He is an enthusiast of popular graphics and traditional printing techniques. His work reflects parallel universes and polysemy and is often inspired by cartoons and music as well as social issues. His work is 99% handmade and has been featured in a wide range of mediums from fanzines, newspapers, magazines, and gig posters to illustration catalogues and fine art exhibitions in different countries across many continents. His artwork ranges from illustration and mini-print to painting and murals.
He is the Founder of ZINEmercado, La Pulga Negra Press, Celulosa Poster Fest, CeluCine, Tritón Soundsystem, and other cultural enterprises. He also works with other artists and is part of the collectives Instituto Gráfico de Chicago and BandoleroPulgoso /// PulgaBandolera as well as other groups based on mutual aid. He works in personal projects and for different clients all around the globe.
Featured artwork:
La Lucha Continua/ The Struggle is on
"After KoyokuikatI”, 2022
Woodcut
Ash Armenta is a non-binary artist from the Bay Area of California working in printmaking. They are a recent 2022 graduate of the MFA Printmaking program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ash enjoys printing collaboratively with artists as well as printing personal work, doing graphic design, illustration, lettering and typography, woodworking, painting outdoor murals, and anything involving handmade fine details.
"Working in screen print and stone lithography has allowed me matrixes on which I feel a responsiveness and satisfying saturation of printed color. As I build the prints from two to three dimensions, I am considering the objects transformation and union. I invite the viewer to experience the piece as a spatially unexpected object and hope to suggest the idea of a multifaceted possibility within oneself. I practice imagining internal power, as well as aspects of the self that reveal vulnerability in themselves as acts of q***r resistance."
-Ash Armenta
Featured artwork:
ARC, 2022
Mixed media, lithographs
Dakota Mace (Diné) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on translating the language of Diné history and beliefs. As a Diné (Navajo) artist, her work draws from the history of her Diné heritage, exploring the themes of family lineage, community, and identity. In addition, her work pushes the viewer's understanding of Diné culture through alternative photography techniques, weaving, beadwork, and papermaking.
She has also worked with numerous institutions and programs to develop dialogue on the issues of cultural appropriation and the importance of Indigenous design work.
About the piece:
“Helen Nez is an elder from Blue Gap, Arizona, situated in the center of the Navajo Nation. She was born in 1938 and is related to me by my maternal clan, Redhouse.
The photo lithographs featured show a portrait of Helen with the first page of the Navajo Treaty of 1868. The Diné named the 1868 treaty Naal Tsoos Saní, or the Old Paper, which marked a significant shift in Diné history when it was signed at Fort Sumner, formerly Bosque Redondo. Here, the Diné people lost their freedom and autonomy and came under the US government's rule. Since the treaty, Diné history has been one of continuous efforts to preserve and reclaim their cultural identity and sovereignty.
With each print, Helen fades away, a reminder of how many of our elder’s stories disappear once they are gone and the history within their words. For Helen, the treaty affected her past and the history of the land she comes from. When Helen was just a child, the uranium mining companies used the Diné people to detect the location of uranium. As a result, she grew up half a mile from the mines, drastically changing her perception of the US Government. Yet, Helen continues to persevere, despite losing eight of her eleven children due to the contamination of the mines. Today, she continues to be an advocate against mining, and it is through her strength- a true matriarch preserving her culture and homeland and protecting her family."
-Dakota Mace
Featured artwork:
The Way Things Are, 2021
Solarplate, chine-collé etching
Derick Wycherly is an artist who specializes in printmaking and papermaking. He received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in printmaking and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design with a concentration in Film/Animation/Video. Between degrees he worked at Harlan & Weaver, a renowned intaglio studio in New York City. His work considers gift-giving an Indigenous technology that connects people with one another and the land base they occupy. Wycherly is currently teaching art in Minnesota. His prints on handmade paper can be seen in Hand Papermaking’s Paper Portfolio #14, “The Language of Color”.
Papermaking and printmaking are the backbone and legs of Wycherly’s art practice. Through papermaking he produces sheets of the exact color and texture that the landscape imagery calls for, even incorporating botanicals and physical elements from the landscape. He prints variable editions on rich substrates of rugged horizons, bodies of water, and rolling land installed together in a repeat pattern that echoes cyclical time. Wycherly has developed uncommon skill in creating papers that not only carry his prints, but exquisitely interact with the lines he is printing; papers that support his ideas with subtle color manipulations, absorbency, and weight. Sometimes these papers stand alone as completed works, but in the most poetic and (quietly) powerful pieces the substrate and the printed mark-making gracefully merge.
The Guerrilla Girls are anonymous artist activists who use disruptive headlines, outrageous visuals, and killer statistics to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in art, film, politics, and pop culture. They believe in an intersectional feminism that fights for human rights for all people. They undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair.
Featured artwork:
If You Keep Women Out They Get Resentful, 2018
Digital output print
Kathryn Polk’s work is a collection of personal narratives referencing the past and the present, often critical of politics and gender roles. Growing up in the 50s and 60s, expectations for women to achieve a position other than domestic caregiver were highly unusual and often frowned upon. Her work is a visualization of the memories and thoughts through the eyes of the women in her family. Polk’s artworks included in Mark of Empowerment feature the following accompanying statements:
Mother May I?, 2019
I was witness to a time in the 1960s when women did not have the power to make decisions regarding their own bodies. The red thread represents the bloodline of women who fought for years for women’s rights. Are we doomed to repeat the past? VOTE
If you see Kay..., 2019
Say the title out loud (If you see Kay) it will spell a word that expresses how I feel about the severe abuse of our planet. Our children’s legacy has become global-warming, CO2 emissions, landfills, wasteful consumerism, deregulation of manufacturing, polluted water, deforestation because of our insatiable appetite for greed and power. The time for change is urgent, VOTE
Equality, No More, No Less, 2021
After the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, there’s been a threat to many existing laws regarding human rights. The overturn of Roe v. Wade by the new Supreme Court is only the beginning. Human rights are on the ballot. VOTE
The R**e of Equality, 2022
The hard-won advances that have been made for equal rights across lines of gender, race, ethnicity and many more are being obliterated. Politicians craving power are creating fear using violence, propaganda and deception. Take a stand for all human rights. VOTE.
Faisal Abdu’Allah is a British-born, Wisconsin-based artist and barber. He studied in London at the Royal College of Art. He is Professor of Printmaking and Associate Dean for the Arts in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2021, Abdu’Allah was named the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art at UW-Madison.
“The art of Abdu’Allah and his contemporaries in the early 1980s can be evaluated in a manner that fills an important void within available scholarship on the subject of contemporary art in relation to Afro-British culture. What began as an artistic gesture in the 1980s more fully materialised in the early twenty-first century as a complete conceptual approach that questioned issues of race and identity in relation to issues of cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Abdu’Allah’s work broke away from the British artistic establishment and the rules of institutional representation, particularly insofar as he began selecting his subjects from émigré utopia, Afro-British social consciousness, Muslim identity, and working-class life. He also integrated other views of London, portraying it as a city of dislocated communities that were powerless in the existing world of art.”
-Excerpt from ‘The Art of Dislocation’ by Professor Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz,
Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.
Featured artwork:
Patent, 2022
Screenprint
Thank you to Anderson Turner for the review of “Mark of Empowerment” for the Akron Beacon Journal ✨
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/entertainment/arts/2022/10/30/art-exhibit-challenges-racism-environmental-injustice-social-inequalities-sexism-activists-speak-out/69591144007/
Juana Estrada Hernández was born in Luis Moya, Zacatecas, Mexico and immigrated to the United States when she was seven years old. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas and her Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As an artist, Estrada Hernández utilizes her experiences growing up in the United States as a young immigrant to create work that addresses social and political problems surrounding latinx migrant communities. Her creative practice stems from her love of drawing, Mexican folklore, pop-culture, Mexican culture, and her family’s migration stories.
"Through a series of prints, Estrada Hernández explores this process of migration with images that act as remnants of memories of this experience. The works interrogate the false promises, limitations, and contradictions of an “American Dream” and provide a personal look at the complexities surrounding the notion of “home.” “Home,” transcends geographical barriers in the ways immigrants carry the notion (and hope) of home on their backs—leaving all that they once knew behind and beginning a new journey into the unknown."
—Paloma Barraza
Featured artwork:
La Cosecha, 2022
Comida de Mi Madre, 2020
Lithographs
Marco Sánchez is a Mexican-born artist based out in El Paso, Texas. His work ranges from his relationship with his mentors and peers to his cultural background and Mexican folklore. Most recently, he has been exploring the notion that immigrant identity plays in society as a result of the current political climate in the United States.
Featured artwork:
Cantame Con Cariño, 2022
No Justice, No Peace!, 2022
Linocut on paper
Christie Tirado is an artist, printmaker, and art teacher featured in our current exhibition, Mark of Empowerment.
As a Mexican-American artist, her concepts often revolve around the many diasporas that constitute her identity-her Loteria pieces are representative of such exploration. This existential crossroad has expanded recently to include the social dimension of the region she currently resides in, Yakima, WA.
“Mujer Mariposa” is a 2022 self-portrait of the artist. Illustrating monarch butterfly wings and blue maíz radiating around the central image. Below is a short poem that goes with the piece:
Soy
¿De dónde soy? Me preguntas—
Soy de sangre color maíz
azul, amarillo, morado y rojo pitaya.
Soy de ojos que cantan historias
solo con una mirada.
Soy de manos que bailan
con sombras y líneas talladas.
Soy de labios que pintan
paredes con colores verdades.
Soy de vuelos efímeros
cortos, largos, amarillos y negros.
Soy de allí de allá y de muchas realidades.
¿De dónde soy? Me preguntas—
Bueno,
De allí soy yo
Y
Yo soy de allí.
-Christie Tirado
Featured Artwork:
Mujer Mariposa, 2022
Linoleum print with watercolor
Hugo Juarez, our visiting assistant professor of printmaking, was born in Dallas, TX but was raised in two cultures that are divided by a made-up border. His most formative years are defined by his experiences in entrepreneurship, sustainable farming, and teaching. He identifies as a creative human being who is exploring the realms of conceptual art, performance art, and printmaking as activism.
His current exhibition, Print For Life, is on view in the projects gallery through Wednesday, 11/2.
The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10-5 pm.
Emily Arthur (Eastern Cherokee descent) is an artist and Associate Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Arthur's art practice is informed by a concern for the environment, displacement, exile, and the return home from dislocation and separation. By working with zoologists, botanists, and poets, she integrates the disciplines of art and science and seeks to use tradition and story to make sense of our changing experience of home.
"I see nature as an interdependent living force rather than as the backdrop for human events. Land is living matter that holds specific meaning to a place. This is the nature-based perspective through which I conduct my research. My fine art practice is informed by a concern for the environment, displacement, exile and the return home from dislocation and separation. I seek the unbroken relationship between modern culture and ancient lands which uses tradition and story to make sense of the enduring quest to understand our changing experience of home." – Emily Arthur
Featured artwork:
No Where left To Go (WATER BIRDS), 2021
Hand-tinted lithograph with chine-collé
Carlos Barberena is a contemporary Nicaraguan printmaker who is currently featured in Mark of Empowerment.
In his art, Barberena has consistently reflected on the cycles of repression and resistance and its relationship to the Diaspora in which he has lived, throughout dictatorship, revolution, erasure, renewal, hope, dictatorship and repression. His prints center these types of life experiences occurring far beyond his country. He creates to counteract the great silence around repression occurring globally believing we are all intimately connected to it. He seeks to demystify the “foreign” experience, to bridge the distances that life across any border or wall produces, but also, the difference in the content of these experiences. He creates to bring awareness to the interconnectedness among them, focusing on injustices of social, political, economic and environmental injustice. At time he evokes with satirical images, at others, through the mundane, unseen things people carry: memories, attachments, relationships and traumas. In each he highlight the myriad cycles of oppression and struggle.
Featured artwork:
Undocumented, 2021
No Human is Illegal, 2021
Strawberry Fields, 2021
Linoleum cut on handmade shopping bags
John Hitchcock is an artist, Professor of Art, Department Chair of Theatre and Drama and Associate Dean of Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work is currently on display in the gallery as part of the Mark of Empowerment exhibition curated by Roberto Torres Mata.
Hitchcock uses the print medium with its long history of commenting on social and political issues to explore his relationships to community, land, and culture. Hitchcock’s artwork consists of abstract representations, mythological hybrid creatures (buffalo, Owl, horse, deer) and military weaponry (tanks, bombs and helicopters). His artworks are based on his childhood memories and stories of growing up in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma on Comanche Tribal lands next to the US field artillery military base Ft Sill. Many of the images are interpretations of stories told by his Kiowa/Comanche grandparents and abstract representations influenced by beadwork, land, and culture.
Adriana Barrios is one of the twenty two incredible printmakers featured in “Mark of Empowerment” with her piece “February” on view now through December 16th.
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Barrios's artwork presents a visual response to climate change alongside scientific field work that gives meaning to the social consequences of her lived experience. Barrios uses printmaking, paper making, video, and installation as a way to record and respond to the environmental changes currently happening along the California Coastline due to climate change.
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Featured artwork:
February, 2022
Screenprint, handmade abaca paper, gathered
beach sand
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Headshot taken from Barrios’ website, adrianabarriosart.com
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Thank you to everyone who came out last week to help us kick off the opening week of “Mark of Empowerment” for the 2022 Mid America Print Conference. It was wonderful to partner with neighboring institutions, and . The exhibition is on view through December 16th!
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.joy.land .barbara_
In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, here is a piece by one of the artists featured in our upcoming exhibition, Mark of Empowerment.
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Monty Little is Diné from Tuba City, Arizona, located on the Navajo Nation. He is Ashiihi (Salt) clan, born for Tl’iziłani (Manygoats) clan. Monty is a poet, printmaker, and painter, who graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was a Tulsa Artist Fellowship recipient and has been an artist in residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Little served in the United States Marine Corps and deployed to Okinawa in 2005, and to Ar Ramadi, Iraq, in 2007.
Little wants to build a printmaking residency on his reservation that will host Indigenous printers. He currently lives and works in Madison WI.
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Pictured: Survivance by Monty Little, 2022
Synapse 15 - Last look today - we will be open until 7:30pm tonight
SpringBoards by is on view in the Projects Gallery through October 6th.
Join us this Friday evening as we celebrate PJ during our extended hours for a last look at Synapse 15.
It's the final week to view Synapse 15!
Check out this introductory video created by Myers School of Art students!
https://youtu.be/ECSI_qJfNfM
Synapse Artist Spotlight: Stacy Levy
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Visiting the University in 2021, Stacy Levy was an artist in residence in Cuyahoga Falls working with the community to consider the river and natural resources of Northeast Ohio. Her piece in this exhibition incorporates water from the Cuyahoga River to reveal materiality of this life-giving element. This fall she will be creating site specific piece in Cuyahoga Falls.
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“When I was little, I grew up near a city park. And I used to play in a creek that smelled really different after a rainstorm. And it was years later that I realized that the creek I used to play in was a sewage outfall drainage channel and not really a “natural" creek at all. And I think that got me interested in the different kinds of water that cross the land. So, I wanted to investigate these different types of urban waters and bring them into view...I try to show change in many of my projects, and I work to have my projects collaborate directly with nature as nature changes over time. Nature is quite slow. Depending on the natural process, these projects can take a long time to show natural changes. I am not sure I've ever changed scientific practice. However, I have visualized scientific understanding in a new way.”
- Stacy Levy
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First slide:
Cuyahoga Falls Project, 2022
400 glass vials and caps, river water, steel wire
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Single Petal from Tide Flowers
Tide Flowers, Hudson River Piers 26 and 25, New York, New York, 2006 and Domino Park on the East River, Brooklyn, New York, 2022
marine vinyl, steel, polycarbonate plastic, foam
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A single strand from the Bushkill Curtain
Buskin Curtain, Bushkill Creek, Easton, Pennsylvania, 2011
seven hundred and fifty painted buoys, steel cable, hardware
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