The Boston Printmakers will return to Boston University to celebrate its 75 th anniversary with the 2023 North American Print Biennial, after a 4-year hiatus. The BU Art Gallery will host the exhibition in the newly renovated 808 Gallery. The juror for the exhibition is Elizabeth Rudy, the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums. Dr. Rudy has selected 121 prints from 1800 entries for this exhibit. She writes, “The extraordinary talent typifying the Boston Printmakers’ history and legacy was palpable in the wide range of submissions to this year’s Biennial. The prints made by artists attracted to this international call are unanimously compelling and beautiful, expanding the perceived boundaries of the medium. Several themes emerged from the submissions; the strong focus on environmentalism, social justice, and portraiture illuminated the nuanced, critical contributions printmakers make to broader society’s conversations about current struggles and aspirations. It was a distinct honor to be the Juror for the 75 th anniversary of the organization, which has been such an important and vibrant hub of fine art printing in Boston for generations.”

The exhibit features a broad array of contemporary prints, spanning traditional to contemporary/integrated media approaches, with both emerging and established artists from across the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. Emerging from the pandemic, themes and imagery reflect the many personal and social concerns of artists across North America, as well as a vibrant vision of the future.

In an extraordinary 75 years, the primary mission of The Boston Printmakers has been to create dynamic exhibitions and promote interest in the graphic arts. Founded in 1947, The Boston Printmakers reaches a large and diverse audience through the North American Print Biennial, national and international members' shows, and traveling exhibitions across North America.

The North American Print Biennial awards $12,000 in purchase prizes and material awards. Founders’ Prizes are purchased for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Art Complex Museum collections, and purchase prizes will go to The Boston Printmakers Collection at the Boston Public Library. For this anniversary year, two additional prints will be purchased for the Harvard Art Museums and the Boston Athenaeum, totaling 5 purchase awards.

Along with the North American Print Biennial, The Boston Printmakers is celebrating the 75 th anniversary of their first exhibition with two additional shows at the 808 Gallery venue. The exhibition Disciplines of the Spirit: Prints of Human Existence will be at the Boston University Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, and A Legacy of Leadership: The Boston Printmakers Celebrating 75 Years will be shown in the 808 Hall Gallery. There is a Biennial Symposium on November 4, gallery talks by Edward Saywell (Boston Museum of Fine Arts), Deborah Cornell (Boston University), Christina Michelon (Boston Athenaeum), Peter Scott (SMFA), and Richard Baiano (Childs Gallery) and many other events. To acknowledge the many contributions of this organization, Mayor Wu is issuing a Proclamation, making October 14th “Boston Printmakers Day” in the City of Boston.

EVENTS: Juror’s Lecture: Elizabeth Rudy: Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Harvard Art Museums CFA Concert Hall, 855 Commonwealth Ave., Saturday, October 14, 1 PM (free and open to the public).

Biennial Symposium: At the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground Auditorium Boston University 808 Commonwealth Ave., Room 104 (free and open to the public) Saturday November 4

10:00 AM – Panel: “Figuring It Out: Portraiture and Printing Today”, Biennial Juror Elizabeth Rudy, in discussion with Biennial artists Chloe Alexander, Miguel Aragon, and Juan Correa

12:00 PM – Panel: “Common Ground: Shared Environments and Community Print Studios”, Six of New England’s open-access print workshops will present and discuss their mission and ethos.

​2:30 PM – Artist-led tours of the Biennial, A Legacy Of Leadership, and Disciplines of the Spirit

The word ‘Chicano(a)’ was first used as a derogatory term used towards lower income Mexicans living in the United States. Though originally used as a classist and racist slur, by the 1940’s, Chicano was being reclaimed as a term of pride by Mexican Americans who have a non-Anglo self-image. The title of this exhibit, Borderline: Chicano Voices Speak, was intentionally chosen to engage those very discussions – racism, division, identity and cultural pride.

Borderline: Chicano Voices Speak will feature the voices of Mexican, Mexican-American, and Latino(a) artists whose work also expresses the immigrant experience. The word “borderline” also relates to multiple aspects of this exhibit – a physical division of countries, a social separation of cultural groups, and a psychic division of identities producing the ‘othering’ of people.

This exhibit will feature Juan Fuentes, Carlos Barberena, Celeste de Luna, J. Leigh Garcia, Frank Estrada, Diego Marical Rios, Eugene Rodriguez, Fernando Marti, and Raoul Deal.
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Hours: Tuesday-Friday 9am-5pm; Saturday 10am-5 pm
Admission: $5 for adults, $3 for students, Free for TVAA members

This centennial exhibition celebrates the legacy of Carlos Cortéz Koyokuikatl (1923-2005), one of Chicago’s most important social justice artists working in the 20th century. Often a poet, often a printmaker, but always an activist, Cortéz’s life’s work uplifted the working class, marginalized communities, and social struggles by depicting scenes of labor disputes, protests, and ignored historical events and individuals.  
Carlos Cortéz, an artist, poet, labor journalist, citizen activist, conscientious objector and Elder in his community, would have been 100-years-old in August 2023. He continues to hold an exceptionally dear place in the hearts of many artists and organizers, and in the history of the National Museum of Mexican Art. Cortéz used his printing press, Gato Negro, as a means to communicate messages of justice, activism, and solidarity, while his poetry repeatedly aimed to raise awareness, provoke thought, and inspire action regarding issues of inequality and oppression.

The National Museum of Mexican Art is honored to be the steward of the Carlos Cortéz Archives.
Curated by Cesáreo Moreno

Participating Artists
Jesús Acuña, Saúl Aguirre, Atlan Arceo-Witzl, Rene H. Arceo, Carlos Barberena, Arturo Barrera, Margaret T. Burroughs (1915-2010), Carlos Cortéz (1923-2005), Nicolás De Jesús, Héctor Duarte, Mark Ernst, Eric J. García, Eric Gasca, José Luis Gutiérrez, Salvador Jiménez -Flores, Sam Kirk, Edgar López, Faheem Majeed, Cynthia Marris, Nicole Marroquin, Alfredo Martínez Galván, Oscar Moya, Mark Nelson, Antonio Pazarán, Zeke Peña, John Pitman Weber, Eufemio Pulido, Elvia Rodríguez, Favianna Rodríguez, Anna Marie Sánchez Varela, Janet Schill, CHema Skandal!, Diana Solís, Maria Cristina Tavera, Benjamín P. Varela, Salvador Vega, Roman Villarreal, Mirtez Zwierzynski
Photographers
José “Fugi” Almanza, Sandra Cisneros, Alex “Sunheart” Galindo, J. Gómez, Allan Lee Koss, Mimi Rivera, Jeffry D. Scott, Gordon Wagner.

La Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivières (BIECTR) tient à féliciter tous les récipiendaires des prix décernés aux artistes pour la qualité de leurs œuvres et leur démarche lors de la cérémonie d’ouverture de sa 13e édition le 17 juin 2023.
Les récipiendaires :

• Grand prix de la 13e BIECTR : Cassandre Boucher – Canada (Québec)
• 2e prix de la 13e BIECTR : Carlos Barberena – Nicaragua / États-Unis
• Prix Télé-Québec : Hélène Latulippe – Canada (Québec)
• Prix Loto-Québec artiste émergent du Québec : Cathy Bélanger – Canada (Québec)
• Prix UQTR artiste de la relève du Québec : Michelle LaSalle – Canada (Québec)
• Prix Invitation Presse Papier : Ariane Fruit – France

Mentions honorables :

• Olesya Dzhurayeva – Ukraine
• Cynthia Back – Portugal
• Carmen Isasi – Espagne

Source : BIECTR

Barberena Statement
"I create to counteract great silences, demystifying “foreign” experience, bridging the distances and bringing awareness to the ways our lives are intimately connected through the lens of justice. Closest to me are ways migrants’ humanity—our memories, attachments, relationships and traumas— is swept aside leaving visible only our work value. In these prints, I honor the farmworkers, most undocumented, whom the US population & Federal government labeled “Essential” in the context of COVID, a so-called honor for their centrality to the food system, while doing little to alleviate their lack of basic rights and vulnerability to exploitation and imminent deportation".

In these times of unprecedented information consumption, it’s easy to lose sight of our humanity.

Too often, critical discourse in our communities about how we treat each other gets swept up in whatever “hot button” topic is overwhelming our daily lives. We then lose the ability to see, think and listen clearly. It’s as if all the “informational noise” in the world takes away our ability to empathize with one another.

Art, in all its forms, can offer mental and emotional space so people can digest and think about what the artist is working to relate — perhaps simply because of the physical presence of the artwork in a space.  A person who has chosen to engage with an exhibition has the opportunity to contemplate beyond what we all get to see on our myriad screens.

The “Mark of Empowerment”exhibition has been presented as part of the 2022 Mid America Print Council Biennial Conference “Power of Print” hosted in mid-October by the Kent State University School of Art in partnership with the University of Akron, Cleveland Institute of Art, Zygote Press and The Morgan Conservatory.

Curated by Roberto Torres Mata, this exhibition “reflects on how printmaking takes action to speak out with activism. The work challenges racism, sexism, environmental injustice, social inequalities, infringement upon civil rights, and colonialism.”
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The strength of the exhibition is in the beauty and skill of the artwork, along with the subjects of the artists. The Emily Davis Gallery at the University of Akron is full of expressive, colorful, deeply important and thoughtful works that can quite simply take your breath away as you walk through the galleries.

“Burnt Water, A Prophetic History of California” by Los Angeles-based artist Israel Campos is certainly one of the standout works in the exhibit.

Presented like a Mayan codex, the work is full of brightly colored illustrations that also pay homage to the Maya in the illustrative style of the artist and in how the work folds out like an accordion.

While it’s not necessarily easy to understand all that is being told in the piece, the fact that we are looking at a detailed work made to look like a Mayan codex is an active commentary in itself, because very little of the Mayan language survived as the Spanish burned the majority of their writing. 
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In “Burnt Water,” Campos utilizes earth tone colors in the background of all the images, contrasting with bright colors for most of the subjects depicted in the overall story to help make the imagery stand out.
The artist's style helps to pull your eye through the length of the piece and keeps you engaged and wanting to look at it more.

“Survivance Series 11 and 12” are two haunting works by artist Monty Little. Little is Diné (Navajo) and from Tuba City, Arizona. He is also a former U.S. Marine.

In these prints, a central image has been obscured by overlaid images of water and black crosses or plus signs that are repeated throughout both works. There are cultural references here, as the cross pattern is a traditional Navajo pattern and water plays a significant role in Navajo culture.
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Little’s work relates what feels like deeply personal experiences. The obstructed view of each subject gives a sense of a cloudy history or even an erased history. It’s as if the artist is trying to help us see but can’t bring things into complete focus because it is no longer possible.

A series of four dynamic chine-collé etchings by Dakota Mace titled “The Way Things Are” helps bring voice to the artist's subject. Each etching features the same image of an elderly person sitting in front of a wall with text written on it. The work on the far left is as detailed as a photograph. As you move from left to right, each portrait becomes less detailed though the writing remains legible. 
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These works are offset by a wall that is painted orange. This may seem like a trivial addition, however, it helps pull your attention to the work and around the part of the gallery the work is exhibited in.

Some of the most powerful pieces in this exhibit are a series of prints on handmade bags by artist Carlos Barberena. 

“No Human is Illegal,” features an image of a migrant worker carrying potatoes in a 5-gallon bucket. The image has a patterned background and is surrounded in a rococo-style frame with the title of the work written on a scroll going across the bottom. The entire composition is on what looks like a shopping bag.

This is a fairly obvious commentary about capitalism, wealth and the ways in which we maintain our economy, and our politics. An illustrated image like this challenges our notion of who these workers are and helps humanize the subject. 

​“Mark of Empowerment” does more than give visitors a “moment” to ponder reality through what might be an unfamiliar lens. It also gives a voice to people who are too often drowned out through our more conventional means of obtaining information.
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The importance of visual arts' ability to communicate and as at the curator states “challenge the status quo, preventing inequities in systems and rejecting establishments,” in exhibitions like this one cannot be overstated.

Exhibit: Mark of Empowerment
Where: Emily Davis Gallery, University of Akron
When: Through Dec. 20
Hours: Monday–Friday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
More information: 330-972-6030 or uakron.edu/art/galleries