At the upcoming Mid-America Print Council conference, taking place next week in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, I will be one of three moderators for the conference's Student Panel. We proposed our concept by observing the growing number of students that are pursing alternative routes to both education and careers in printmaking. With a bleak economic outlook affecting job opportunities, graduating art students face the question of how to continue their print work when academic facilities are no longer available. Compounding the issue is the big initial investment in traditional presses, with printmaking options few and far between in small communities. Matthew Presutti, Michelle St. Vrain, and I will facilitate a discussion with several panelists who have found success in diverse ways.

The Little Friends of Printmaking (JW Buchanan and Melissa Buchanan) from Milwaukee, Wisconsin will discuss their art school trials and tribulations, and what it has meant to truly build a recognizable design aesthetic. Rachel Lackey of Green Pea Press has recently founded an arts cooperative in Huntsville, Alabama that offers printmaking classes and open studios. She will talk about various concerns related to community-based organizations. We will also speak with Johanna Mueller, a versatile artist who has spent much of her career engaging with people through workshops and art festivals across the country.

Whether the answer is to build a home studio, join or found an arts organization, or begin taking prints on the road, our panel will explore the problems faced by printmaking artists and some of the entrepreneurial solutions to our need for pressure to print.

I was an assistant at Frogman's this year. It was overwhelming, really hard work, and totally worth the effort. I learned so much and had a great time in the process. Old friends and new came back through Vermillion and temporarily turned this town into a printmaking paradise.

Above is the class photo of Lenore Thomas and Jason Ruhl's Digital Stimulation class that I assisted in this summer. I learned a lot of methods that I'd like to try utilizing with the way I already layer plates and prints. Lots of my classmates explored printing on cool substrates and various methods with the media. I think it's a handy tool to have at hand, plus I feel more comfortable with Photoshop now thanks to Jason's experience and guidance.

Being an assistant is probably one of the most tiring yet rewarding things I've ever done. I really value knowing what I'm capable of now that I look back and see what we accomplished as a group. I wouldn't trade that experience or the bonds I formed with the other assistants for anything.

"[Aldo Leopold] emphasizes less the directly visible, scenic aspects of nature and more the conceptual – diversity, complexity, species rarity, species interactions, nativity, phylogenetic antiquity – the aspects of nature revealed by evolutionary and ecological natural history."
-Karl Benediktsson, “’Scenophobia,’ Geography, and the Aesthetic Politics of Landscape.”

I recently found out that I will be chairing the Student Panel at this year's Mid-America Print Council conference, taking place this November in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Our panel is titled "Making a Living in Art: A Discussion with Entrepreneurial Printmakers" and will feature a round-table discussion with artist/printmakers that have found ways to create work without the support of an institution.

In addition, the 2012: Unknown Endings portfolio will be one of the exhibits at MAPC, on display at a local Cape Girardeau gallery. My major professor, Johntimothy Pizzuto, will also be coordinating a panel and giving a demo at the conference! More information about these events is forthcoming.

Secondary Sediments : vii

Above is a piece from a recent series of layered drypoints called "Secondary Sediments." This and another piece have been accepted into the MAPC juried show Contributory, on display at Spudnik Press through May 11.

This series of works responds to layering of landscape, memory, and the connection of humans to our surroundings. Forming an elaborate underpinning of our consciousness, the landscape that we choose to envelop ourselves within contributes to a greater sense of our own history and understanding.