6-8 PM
20 March
Culture Club - An Art Making Happy Hour
Pressing for Change
January 5 – March 23, 2024
Knowledge is power. Since the early days of printing, the press helped disseminate knowledge broadly. Printmakers often utilize the power of the multiple to critically confront contemporary social issues. Pressing For Change will celebrate the ways printmakers provide an accessible voice for change. Through a variety of approaches, these printmakers inspire action while exploring relationships of community, land, and the environment.
CVA opens Pressing for Change in conjunction with 2024’s Mo’Print. Artists in the exhibition examine the state of our vulnerable environment, either directly or through its effects on culture and identity, and the changing world. These multi-disciplinary artists have printmaking at the core of their artmaking practice. Pressing for Change was curated by Melanie Finlayson. The exhibition will be on view January 5 – March 23, 2024 at Center for Visual Art, MSU Denver.
Exhibiting Artists:
Emily Arthur
Adriana Barrios
Juana Estrada Hernandez
Diane Fine & Mario Laplante
Susan Goethel Campbell
John Hitchcock
Karen Kunc
Raymundo Muñoz
Favianna Rodriguez
Artists Diane Fine & Mario Laplante, Adriana Barrios, and Favianna Rodriguez address issues of climate change head on. In her work Global Wake Up Call Goes to Voicemail, Barrios confronts the lack of response to prevent worsening climate change. Deeply rooted in activism, Favianna Rodriguez challenges viewers with a powerful voice expressed in bold colors and patterns.
Environmental effects on community appear in the work of Emily Arthur and John Hitchcock who observe the natural world though their ancestral ties to the land. In a new series of work titled Landlines, Hitchcock paints and screenprints onto large pieces of Naugahyde that resemble the stretched skins of deer.
Juana Estrada Hernandez offers a look at her cultural history as a “DACA-mented” artist. Using various printmaking techniques, Hernandez illustrates the experience and landscape of immigrating from Mexico to the U.S., using the stories of her own family’s journey across borders.
Environmental change appears throughout the work of Raymundo Muñoz, Susan Goethel Campbell, and Karen Kunc. Goethel Campbell creates art in collaboration with the environment, cataloging both subtle and extreme changes in landscapes and plants. With brightly colored and intricately detailed woodcuts, Kunc presents viewers with abstracted landscapes and elements of the natural world that suggest surreal records of natural events such as ice storms, volcanic explosions, and blooming gardens.
Check out these books!
We partnered with librarians from Denver Public Library who created a list of recommended books to read if you’re interested in learning more about the themes presented in the artwork on view in Pressing for Change. Want to check one out from the library, click on the title and it will take you to the book’s page in the library’s catalog.
- Sea change: an atlas of islands in a rising ocean by Christina Gerhardt
- California against the sea: visions for our changing coastline by Rosanna Xia
- Indigenous food sovereignty in the United States: restoring cultural knowledge, protecting environments, and regaining health edited by Devon A. Mihesuah and Elizabeth Hoover
- drum in one hand, a sockeye in the other : stories of indigenous food sovereignty from the Northwest Coast by Charlotte Coté
- Nomad century: how climate migration will reshape our world by Gaia Vince
- Latitudes of longing by Shubhangi Swarup
- This Indian kid: a Native American memoir by Eddie Chuculate
- JH: Blown to hell: America’s deadly betrayal of the Marshall Islanders by Walter Pincus
- A year with nature: an almanac by Marty Crump
- Solito by Javier Zamora
- Drawn across borders: true stories of human migration by George Butler
- Human nature: planet Earth in our time : twelve photographers address the future of the environment edited by Nikki Addison
- Weather: an illustrated history: from cloud atlases to climate change by Andrew Revkin with Lisa Mechaley
- Bad island by Stanley Donwood
- Posada’s broadsheets: Mexican popular imagery, 1890-1910 by Patrick Frank
- A down home meal for these difficult times: stories by Meron Hadero
- Promises of gold = Promesas de oro by José Olivarez
Artist Talk Recordings
Susan Goethel Campbell Artist Talk
John Hitchcock, Karen Kunc, & Raymundo Muñoz Artist Talk
Diane Fine & Mario Laplante Artist Talk
Artist Talk and Fresh Off the Press Live Demo with Rick Griffith
Featured in CVA's 965 Project Gallery
Two Ways
January 5 – March 23, 2024
On view in conjunction with Pressing for Change, Two Ways is a site-specific installation featuring the work of Denver-based designer and master printmaker Rick Griffith. It serves as a call to action for viewers to question their socio-political and spiritual constructs. Composed of abstracted, large-scale typography originally set on-site at local design studio MATTER, these dictums are rooted in Afrofuturism and aim to inspire a personal framework for self-liberation. The installation will be accompanied by a forthcoming zine, printed and designed at MATTER’s bookshop and studio.
The 965 Project Gallery is a student-led space within CVA that provides premiere professional development opportunities to students interested in fine art curation and arts administration.
