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.

This print is to raise awareness about the humanitarian catastrophe that the Yanomami indigenous people are suffering, largely due to the disastrous effect of illegal gold mining that has displaced them, brought diseases, child malnutrition, destroyed the land and contaminated the rivers with mercury and poisoning the Yanomami people. Mercury is used for gold mining to extract gold, over 90% of the Yanomami people have higher levels of mercury than the World Health Organization recommends.

Carlos Barberena at La Onda Gráfica in Houston, Texas
Video by Christian Riquelme kabta.co

PRINT DETAILS:
FORA GARIMPO! 24" x 18". Relief Print, Letterpress & Screen Print on French paper. Signed by Carlos Barberena. Numbered Edition of 100. Published by La Onda Gráfica, Houston. TX. 2023

(Posted on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022)
The Department of Art + Design, with support from The Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, is pleased to welcome celebrated printmaker Carlos Barberena to kick off the 2022-23 CECA Visiting Artist Speaker Series season.

“This marks the sixth year that I have been at the helm of the Visiting Artist Speaker SeriesCommittee,” said Michael Dickins. “And this year is just as exciting as the others. It is an honor to be able to bring world-class artists to Clarksville on a regular basis. We’re kicking off this season with Carlos Barberena, a contemporary Nicaraguan printmaker known for his relief prints and his use of images from pop culture, as well as from political and cultural tragedies.”

Barberena’s lecture will be at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 18, in Heydel Hall (Room 120 of the Art + Design building). The lecture is free and open to the public.
He’ll also work with Austin Peay students during his visit to create new pieces.
“During Barberena’s visit, he will be working with our printmaking professor, Patrick Vincent, and some of our students to create a new print edition of his work,” Dickins said. “One of the pieces in the edition will be donated to APSU’s Art Collection. This will increase our collection of contemporary prints that we’ve been building over the past few years. Two of the pieces will be donated to CECA to go toward fundraising initiatives, so it’s possible that a community member will not only support CECA and its programming but also own an original work by Carlos Barberena.”

Counteracting silence in the face of repression
Barberena’s work consistently reflects on the cycles of repression and resistance and its relationship to the diaspora in which he has lived, throughout dictatorship, revolution, erasure, renewal, hope and repression. In his prints, he centers such life experiences occurring far beyond his country. At times he evokes them with satirical images, at others, through the mundane, unseen things people carry, such as memories, attachments, relationships and traumas.
He creates to counteract the great silence in the face of repression occurring globally, believing we are all intimately connected to it. He looks 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. Barberena creates to bring awareness to the interconnectedness among them, focusing on the struggle for social, political, economic and environmental justice.

He has received various awards, most notably The Elizabeth Catlett Memorial Award, 2021 MAPC Juried Exhibition, University of Iowa; DNSPE Purchase Award 2022, Bradbury Art Museum, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas; Second Prize, Ninth Annual Art Competition at the Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago; SPARK Grant Award, Chicago Artist Coalition and the Joyce Foundation; Cross Currents: Intercambio Cultural, Chicago-Havana, 2017-2019, MacArthur Foundation International Connections; National Printmaking Award 2012 given by the Nicaraguan Institute of Culture in Managua, Nicaragua; Parchemin d’Honneur, 8 Triennale Mondial de l’Estampe et de la Gravure Originale, AMAC, Chamalieres, Auvergne, France; Revueltas Award for Visual Arts 2019, Pilsen Fest, Chicago; and the award-poster for the Ecology and Human Rights in Banana Plantations in Costa Rica, given by GEBANA in Berlin, Germany.

Barberena, who lives in Chicago, has artwork in many public and private collections. For more on Barberena and his work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram @barberena.
For more on this lecture, contact Dickins at [email protected]. For future CECA Visiting Artist Speaker Series events, visit www.apsu.edu/art-design/exhibitions-speakers/visiting-artists.
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All events are free and open to the public. All ages are welcome.