A graphic collaboration of Barbara Banish and Enrique Leal with Michael J. Shapiro and Sam Okoth Opondo for their new book passages

Exhibition dates: March 15-April 15, 2024.

Closing reception: April 15th. 5 p.m.

at The UCSC Contemporary Print Media Research Center- UCSC Art Department G111

Exhibition dates: November 30 – December 8, 2023 at The UCSC Contemporary Print Media Research CenterBaskin Art Studio G111

Our sixth visiting artist Dav Bell is working on his woodblock print project entitled And it Makes a Fiery Ring.

And it makes a fiery ring is a pursuit of love and healing through the observation of time, not the spiraling incessant tick of the clock, but through the slow, determined physicality of trees. 

Dav Bell is an artist and independent arts organizer who loves collaborating with kind people to cultivate tangible and creative connections. Through encounter, relationship building, and skill sharing, he sees art as a possibility for truth and reconciliation. Much of his artistic practice and thinking is inspired by his upbringing on an ecological preserve in Southern California, where he was raised in a family of wildlife and environmental conservationists. He explores materials reuse and living sustainably through woodworking, writing, and gift-giving and is interested in how storytelling and craft can flourish in gift economies. Prior to making a life in the arts, he worked as a firefighter for the US Forest Service and as a park ranger at the Upper Tampa Bay State Park in Florida. He studied visual art at Metáfora School of Contemporary Art in Barcelona and holds a BFA from the University of California Los Angeles. In 2015 he founded the Los Angeles-based artist project Visitor Welcome Center which he directed through 2021. He is currently an MFA candidate in the Environmental Art and Social Practice program at UCSC, collaborating with L Gilbert on The Greenhouse Project: an intergenerational educational space that explores the relationship between art, food, and climate justice.

Merge, 2022, eucalyptus ash on kitakata paper, 24” x 16”

Our fifth visiting artist Sarah Smelser will be working on her print project October 24 to December 2, 2022.

Sarah plans to develop a suite of monotypes entitled Campus Tour, where she uses walking as an entry point into image making. She writes, “While walking, I measure my mileage by the ground I’ve covered, my loose sense of direction, and the rhythm of my breath and footsteps. I consider how land looks from above and how plots fit together; I imagine a map and wander inside one, looking for what is native, imported, edible, or toxic. I note transitions such as land-to-water, cultivated-to-wild, and private-to-public. These shifts can be felt or heard; they can dictate one’s mood and gait.”

Artist bio:

Sarah Smelser received her BA from UC Santa Cruz, studying with Kay Metz and Zarina Hashmi, and her MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. She has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center; Franz Masereel Center, Artica Bilbao, Kala Art Institute, Jentel Artist Residency, Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Anchor Graphics, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and Tamarind Institute. Her work is in such collections as Readers’ Digest Association, New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Hallmark Corporate Collection, Microsoft Corporate Collection, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.

Smelser exhibits her work extensively in solo, group, and juried exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. It has been reviewed in Art on Paper: The Journal of Prints, Drawings and Photography, Abstract Art Online, Monotype, Monoprint, & Strappo Ezine and reproduced in New American Paintings. She was recently interviewed by Laura Berman for her blog, Reflections on Color and Printmaking.

Sarah is the Harold Boyd Endowed Professor and Associate Director of the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University. From 2006 to 2008 Smelser was President of the Mid America Print Council, a national non-profit organization of artist printmakers and educators. She later served as co-editor for its quarterly journal.  https://www.sarahsmelser.com/

Shelby Dinh
Is it a Choice?
Exhibition dates: October 17-22
Reception with the artist: Tuesday Oct. 18 at 4:30 pm
at The UCSC Contemporary Print Media Research Center, Baskin Art Studio G111

Is it a Choice? showcases a series of screen and relief prints that reveal the harsh reality following the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. As our government begins to turn the clock back to 1950, it’s important to stand up for those who have lost the rights to their own body. Inspired by popular magazine covers from the 1950s, these prints hope to make a statement as bold enough as the supreme court’s decision.

Shelby Dinh is a recent alumni of UCSC and graduated with a BA in Art and a BA in Economics. Printmaking became an instant passion for Shelby after discovering it in 2019 through the intro printmaking class on campus. After trying a hand at each printmaking medium, she found that relief  and screen printing were the mediums she was most drawn too. Personal life experiences are what inspires her the most to create. She now lives in San Francisco where she hopes to grow and continue her art practice. 

Sage Alucero Juarez – Serenades the Night
Exhibition dates: October 10-15
Reception with the artist: Wednesday Oct. 12 at 2:00 pm
at The UCSC Contemporary Print Media Research Center, Baskin Art Studio G111

Artist and educator Barbara Benish’s collaboration with political philosophers Michael J. Shapiro and Sam Okoth Opondo, a reciprocal visual and textual dialogue titled Aesthetics of Precarity (publication 2022), includes a series of woodcuts produced at the Contemporary Print Media Research Center reflecting the writer’s “responses to a renewed sense of the fragility of life in the wake of nuclear, racial, and pandemic sublimes”. Associate professor Enrique Leal has been overseeing the printing production. Artists proofs from the series were included in the group exhibition Collaborations, presented at Bubec Studios in Prague, Czech Republic, May 2021.

UCSC alumni and art patron Jock Reynolds has donated various print media related publications to the Contemporary Print Media Research Center that included numerous editions of the international art journal Parkett, and ESOPUS, an annual artist-project driven magazine (both discontinued publications).

Associate professor Enrique Leal is collaborating with Little Giant Collective in a UC Place Based Art + Design mini-grant to build a mobile silkscreen printing tricycle (sericycle) to provide migrant and marginalized communities the possibility to graphically empower their social concerns.  

The Institute for the Arts and Sciences 2020 artist’-in-residence Futurefarmers artist collective have been producing a series of lithographs as part of their public art projects Fog Inquiry, an interdisciplinary and collaborative proposal carried throughout the UCSC campus. The graphic work-in-progress involves transferring crayon rubbings of hand size rocks to traditional lithography stones before printing. Associate professor Enrique Leal is providing Futurefarmers members Amy Franceschini and Lode Vranken technical advice and assistance in the process. Alumni printmaker Jocelyn Lee has been closely collaborating with Futurefarmers throughout their residency. The project will resume following the opening of the Elena Baskins Visual Arts print studios in 2021/22.