ON VIEW JUNE 24, 2022 – AUGUST 21, 2022
This exhibition showcases how artists and designers are exploring risography in innovative and exciting ways. A workhorse printing method specializing in low- to mid- run commercial printing, the RISO printer replaces the typical, predictable output of four-color printing with unique combinations of ink. The resulting prints and publications share an aesthetic that is characteristically RISO. While not a new technology—it has been around since the 1980’s—a recent swell of interest in this printing process has proven to be an important means of production currently thriving at the intersection of community engagement, education, printmaking, graphic design, book arts, and zine culture.
Included in this exhibition is work made during a recent RISO-focused symposium held in Lawrence. Artists and designers from around the country created new work as they shared ideas around pedagogy, research, and professional practices.
Participating artists include:
Will Arnold
Will received his MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he now manages the student labs and studios at the School of Art + Design. He is the co-founder of Work Press & Publication, a Risograph-based zine and artist book self-publishing venture. In recent years, Will’s practice has primarily focused on zines, comics, and artist books. Through collage and delving into and remixing historical comics, he explores themes such as landscape, perception, and memory.
Artist website: rwarnold.com
Instagram: @t.will.arnold
Kate Bingaman-Burt
Kate Bingaman-Burt mostly draws, letters, documents, and collects, but she also does a lot of other things that involve energy, conversation, and exchange. Kate is a full-time educator and makes illustrations for all sorts of clients all around the world. Since 2008, she has worked at Portland State University and now holds the rank of Professor of Graphic Design. She opened Outlet in 2017, which hosts workshops, pop-up events and a fully operational risograph print studio. She also sits on the board of Design Portland and has been scheming with them since 2012.
Artist website: katebingamanburt.com
Instagram: @katebingburt
Mikey Burton
Not quite a designer, not completely an illustrator, Mikey Burton has spent a decently long time toeing the rope between both disciplines. Mikey's works are both graphic and textural; they harken back to simpler printing methods and naive doodling in grade school. The thing that sets him apart is the thought and wit that goes into every piece he makes for himself and his clients. Basically, he thinks long and hard about stuff, then creates compelling visuals about those things.
He has won awards from organizations such as the Art Directors Club, Communication Arts, and Print Magazine to name a few, and enjoys bragging about it in the third person. He spent his formative years and earned a master's degree from the great Kent State University in Ohio. He also has worked for the likes of The New York Times, Apple, and the Emmy Award-Winning Last Week Tonight with John Oliver just to name a few.
Artist website: mikeyburton.com
Instagram: @mikeyburton
Ryan Clifford
Ryan Clifford is an Assistant Professor of Design at the University of Kansas, where he is the founder and faculty coordinator of ColorBar, a unique analog RISO service center and design lab, and is also responsible directing the team of student Design Fellows. In 2021, he founded Ampersand Studio at KU, a multi-disciplinary project-based studio focused on collaborative community engagement, social impact, and connects student designers and artists with outside partners in socially conscious projects with the goal of making a positive impact on society.
Previously, Ryan was the Co-Director and Chief Instigator of the Think Wrong Institute at the University of Kansas, which is focused on disrupting design education and empowering designers to become creative change agents for the greater good. His work has been recognized by Core77, How International Design Annual and Print Regional Design Annual, National Paperbox Association and the Rochester Advertising Foundation. Ryan’s work has been featured in the books Just Design: Socially Conscious Design for Critical Causes, Designing for Social Change, Fingerprint 2, and Indie Publishing.
Instagram: @vernacularpreservationsociety
Josh Dannin
Josh Dannin is an artist and printmaker originally from Philadelphia, now based in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. Dannin runs Directangle Press, a letterpress and risograph printshop and artist residency in the White Mountains. Previously a regular contributor to Printeresting.org, he coedits Power Washer Zine, a semiannual publication about screenprinting featuring artist interviews and essays, high-end humor, and lo-fi graphics. In addition to leading workshops at Directangle Press, Dannin has taught printmaking and graphic design at institutions including Dartmouth College, New Hampshire Institute of Art, and Saint Anselm College.
Artist website: directanglepress.com
Instagram: @directanglepress
Tate Foley
From birth announcement to obituary, my life started and will end in print media.
I explore conflicting themes of spirituality and physicality, life and death, temporality and permanence. Like the never-ending struggle of Sisyphus, my work strives to give physical presence to the immaterial.
Tate's work has been recently exhibited in Vienna, Austria, New York City, Washington D.C., Portland, Saint Louis, Cleveland, and purchased by Toledo Museum of Art, and the UCLA Fine Arts, Yale University, and Reed College libraries.
Artist website: tatefoley.com
Instagram: @tate_foley
Joe Galbreath
Joe Galbreath received his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and his BFA from the University of Akron. His interests in graphic design include exploring and documenting vernacular design traditions, manual design making processes, and independent publishing. Currently, his letterpress work focuses on the American poster print shop. He is director of the GramLee Collection at West Virginia University. Galbreath began his design career as an Art Director at a public relations firm creating annual reports, branding campaigns, strategic graphics and identity work and he maintains a design studio with his wife Kelley. His work has been featured in Print Magazine’s Regional Annual, Indie Publishing, Fingerprint No. 2: The Evolution of Handmade Elements in Graphic Design and Fox News-Minneapolis.
Sage Perrott
Sage Perrott, aka Haypeep, is a printmaker and educator originally from West Virginia. Her artwork features grumpy, lumpy, ghost-like creatures situated in cramped, often humorous circumstances. Perrott’s preferred process is screenprinting. She has degrees in printmaking from West Virginia University (BFA) and from Ohio University (MFA). Her prints, drawings, and zines have found their way into the hands of folks all over the United States and the world.
Artist website: haypeep.com
Instagram: @haypeep
Travis Shaffer
Travis Shaffer is a visual artist whose work spans the mediums of photography, digital imaging, and the artist's book. Schffer founded theretherenow in 2016. theretherenow. is a risograph atelier and lab oriented towards collaboration and research and is currently housed in the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri.
At theretherenow. the RISO printer is our campfire. It is the warmth around which we huddle. The RISO is peripheral by nature: institutional by design but co-oped by artists for creative possibilities. The RISO is hybrid by nature: an absurdly analog method of digital reproduction. The RISO is experimental by nature: it resists the service to the content inherent to the ‘publishing’ concept. The RISO is experimental by nature: it is a method of production that lacks a disciplinary frame.
Artist website: theretherenow.com
Instagram: @tr_v_ssh_ff_r
Anna Tararova
Anna Tararova was born in Russia and currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Anna is a printmaker and papermaker. She received an MFA in Printmaking from Ohio University and completed artist residencies at Paper Circle, Women’s Studio Workshop, The Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago, The Morgan Conservatory, and Dundee Contemporary Arts.
Anna runs Empress Editions and is the Shop Manager at Zygote Press, a community print studio in Cleveland.
Artist website: annatararova.com
Instagram: @empresseditions
Perfecting Imperfections is presented with support from The University of Kansas, West Virginia University, and Eastern Tennessee State University.
