Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award

2023/24 Art Practice and University Library Printmaking Award Winner: Christine Santos

Posted on by Scott Peterson

GALC Website

Christine Santos, recipient of the 2023/24 Art Practice and University Library Printmaking Award, is a 2024 graduate of the Art Practice Department at the University of California Berkeley. Two of Christine’s prints, Rainbow State Fantasies and Urgent Lexicon Pinay, have been added to the Graphic Arts Loan Collection and can be borrowed by students at UC Berkeley starting this fall.

Image of Rainbow State Fantasies by Christine Santos                               Image of Urgent Lexicon: Pinay by Christine Santos

Below is an Artist Statement from Christine about her work:

I work in digital painting and recently photocopy art, printmaking, and installation. Pulling from state digital archives and my digital snapshots, I digitally manipulate and assemble them to address colonial omission, aesthetic failure, and non-imperial formations. Connections to speculative fiction, DIY culture, cyberfeminism, and Pop Art movement can be made from my work. For example, Archival Densities is an installation series using altered state records from the Digital Archive of Hawai’i to stage fictional events of resistance. I received the AY 2023 – 2024 Center of Race and Gender Student Research Grant to conduct photographic research at Hawai’i’s Bishop Museum to advance my screen print work in Archival Densities. This includes Rainbow State Fantasies, which is now a part of the Graphics Arts Loan Collection.

Rainbow State Fantasies is a screen print monoprint that complicates the popular romanized colonial idea of the “South Seas Island Paradise”. The failed aesthetic of the American curio postcard image of Diamond Head, Hawai’i and suggestive tropical plant silhouettes articulate a visual resistance to this colonial imagination that lingers in Hawai’i’s socioeconomic material culture related to tourism media. Resistance pedagogy and history informs this work as well as Urgent Lexicon: Pinay, the accompanying screen print to this award. Urgent Lexicon: Pinay is inspired by the process of reading Pinay Power by Melinda de Jesus. In this print, I made a handwritten account of the times “pinay” is mentioned and layered it to the point of abstraction.

You can find more about my work here: csantos.xyz

The Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award is given to the undergraduate student in the Department of Art Practice who has demonstrated an astute understanding of printmaking techniques, as well as an advanced ability to express themselves through the medium of printmaking. This award was established in 2018 by the Department of Art Practice and the University Library, and is given to one or two students each academic year. 

GALC Website

2022/23 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award Winner: Sharon Carlos Vázquez

Posted on by Scott Peterson

GALC Website

Sharon Carlos Vázquez, recipient of the 2022/23 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award, is a 2023 graduate of the Art Practice Department at the University of California Berkeley. Two of Sharon’s prints, Cuarto 3/4 and Cuarto 4/4, have been added to the Graphic Arts Loan Collection and can be borrowed by students at UC Berkeley starting this fall.

Sharon Carlos Vázquez Cuarto 3/4                              Sharon Carlos Vázquez Cuarto 4/4

Below is an Artist Statement from Sharon about her work:

My recent body of work explores familial relationships, domestic space, location, the senses, and the abstract nature of memory as it dilutes through time. I view the physicality of my process in printmaking as a method of conversation. This layering allows me to translate, redact, and deconstruct dialogue into gestural imagery and color, which I often literally separate into smaller pieces. Through these techniques, I re-envision memories, blurring the line between concrete, mundane and intangible. My home, often featured abstractly in this work, is a literal container for these images, both public and private

My process revolves around the notion of developing a sense of ‘public privacy’. I accomplish this through the physical printing process, which involves overlayering and obscuring the underlying information. My approach allows for the information to be given a physical space while also challenging its comprehension. My concept takes inspiration from the architectural structure of my home, as well as the topography and land. These fundamentals serve as a foundation for building and layering imagery and textures. Through an additive method akin to redaction, the original and literal imagery is transformed into a distorted representation.

The Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award is given to the undergraduate student in the Department of Art Practice who has demonstrated an astute understanding of printmaking techniques, as well as an advanced ability to express themselves through the medium of printmaking. This award was established in 2018 by the Department of Art Practice and the University Library, and is given to one or two students each academic year. 

GALC Website

2021/22 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award Winner: Vera McBride

Posted on by Scott Peterson

GALC Website

Vera McBride is a 2022 graduate of the Art Practice Department at the University of California Berkeley, and as the winner of the 2021/22 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award, two of Vera’s prints, Sinking and Trick of the Eye, have been added to the Graphic Arts Loan Collection that students at UC Berkeley can now borrow.

                                       

Below are some thoughts on the prints and printmaking from Vera:

My work largely reflects a preference for process and materiality. Even if I’m not patient, the process of printmaking forces me to be, and in turn I spend more time considering the making and fine tuning for the next step and the next piece.

Topically, my body of work has been focused on a blending of daydreams, memories, and experiences. These have been the core generative concepts behind the works, and while some end up as whimsical musings, others are more literal and technique driven with a specific moment referenced. The pieces often have repetition and pattern in some capacity, either within the work itself or reworking a concept across many pieces.

The Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award is given to the undergraduate student in the Department of Art Practice who has demonstrated an astute understanding of printmaking techniques, as well as an advanced ability to express themselves through the medium of printmaking. This award was established in 2018 by the Department of Art Practice and the University Library, and is given to one or two students each academic year. 

GALC Website