The Association of Print Scholars is pleased to award the Second Annual Collaboration Grant to Virginia Humanities, the state’s humanities council. The grant of $1,000 will support programming with visiting artist, Detroit-based printmaker Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., as part of the organization’s first Frank Riccio Artist Residency at the Virginia Center for the Book.
Founded in 1975, Virginia Humanities was established by the National Endowment for the Humanities to integrate the humanities into public life. One of its programs, the Virginia Center for the Book, promotes literature, storytelling, and the book arts as a means for public dialogue and intercultural understanding. The Center houses the largest publicly-accessible collection of letterpress type in Virginia, serves a diverse community of book artists and printmakers, and is located in the heart of downtown Charlottesville.
The Center formed the Riccio Residency to encourage collaboration through printmaking and book arts. Each resident participates in a public event and a community art project. This year, Amos Paul Kennedy, whose work focuses on African American identity, will install thousands of letterpress prints featuring text from the Charlottesville community in public places throughout the city. To view additional images of Kennedy’s letterpress demonstrations, click here.
Detroit-based printmaker Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. visited Charlottesville High School art classes as part of his Frank Riccio artist residency.
APS’ Collaboration Grant was created to encourage projects that bring together the print community through events like lectures, conferences, workshops, and other public programs. Our jurors were impressed with Kennedy’s artistic mission which seeks to explore issues of social justice, particularly in communities that have faced racial tension, by utilizing printmaking as a form of social engagement in an effort to raise awareness and encourage tolerance. Our jurors felt that his residency at the Virginia Center for the Book presented a compelling opportunity to invite the public and scholars alike to interact with the letterpress medium in a profound and innovative manner.
This year, jurors also awarded two Honorable Mention prizes, each in the amount of $500, to the following:
- The Milwaukee Art Museum in support of a public program related to the exhibition, Landfall Press: Five Decades of Printmaking (on view from October 4, 2019 – February 9, 2020). Nikki Otten, the Museum’s Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, is coordinating the exhibition, which celebrates Landfall Press as a uniquely collaborative and experimental space for artists.
- Rai Peterson (Ball State University), Celene Aubry (Hatch Show Print), and Kim Miller (Tribune Showprint Posters, Inc.), in their capacity as co-organizers of the Alphablox Family Printing Party in Muncie, Indiana.
APS would like to thank the jurors at the conclusion of their two-year terms reviewing grant submissions: Lisa Conte, Head of Conservation, The National September 11 Memorial & Museum; Elizabeth Savage, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of English Studies; and Marilyn Symmes, Independent Curator, New York.
APS is a non-profit organization that seeks to encourage the innovative and interdisciplinary study of printmaking by facilitating dialogue among its members, which is a diverse community of curators, collectors, academics, graduate students, artists, conservators, critics, independent scholars, and art dealers. Since its founding in 2014, nearly 500 people from all over the world have become members of APS.
For more information about the Collaboration Grant and other grants offered by APS, please visit our website. APS is currently accepting submissions for the 2020 Collaboration Prize (due December 1, 2019), for more details about submitting a proposal, click here.
Please contact Christina Weyl and Britany Salsbury of the APS Grants Committee at grants@printscholars.org with any questions regarding this announcement.
Lesley Dill (American, b. 1950)
Clothe My Naked Body, Print Tapestries…Poem Wedding Dress, 1995
Photo screenprint on Hindi newspaper
Landfall Press Archive, gift of Jack Lemon
LP1996.2
Photo by John R. Glembin
© Lesley Dill and Landfall Press, Inc.
Photo credit: Alex Arriaga. Book Arts Collaborative is a community letterpress and hand-sewn book bindery located in downtown Muncie, Indiana. Started as a Virginia Ball Center for Creative Inquiry project, we offer courses in entrepreneurial learning, printing, and book binding for Ball State University students; community workshops in printing and binding; and we are a destination for school and group field trips and community-building projects. Along with our community partner, Tribune Showprint Posters, Inc., the oldest continually-operated letterpress business in the USA, Book Arts Collaborative is located in Madjax Makerspace.