Please join us in welcoming the 2024-2025 Jerome Early Career Printmakers Nancy Ariza, Conor McGrann, and Emma Ulen-Klees!

These three artists began their residency year on September 1. Since then, they each have been working beyond diligently to generate new work that will debut in their culminating exhibition. Said exhbition will open June 13, 2025 in Highpoint’s galleries.

The first of the artists in-progress critiques happened In December when invited guest artist Alex Beaumont came over to view their work. Then in February, Bo Young An did the same. Luis Fitch will visit with the residents before they install their exhibition and then in June, Jim Clark will come for a final critique/walkthrough of the show.

Read on for an update on the artists’ progress:

It’s difficult to overstate the exactitude Emma Ulen-Klees applies to her hyper-detailed cut stencil debossing and lithographic images she is developing. She says, “The time and space the Jerome Printmakers Fellowship provides have been invaluable to my practice this fall. It has allowed for the acceleration of an ongoing project archiving extinct plants through blind debossing, including more thorough materials tests. It has enabled experiments in both new and familiar mediums. I’ve returned to the singular, meditative experience of working on a lithographic stone using Maniere Noire (a reductive lithographic technique), and I look forward to further exploring the particular capabilities of watercolor monotype.”

Conor McGrann’s relocation to the Twin Cities and his new-ish role as a father are both providing fuel to his creative pursuit, albeit in a more analytical manner. Conor’s practice is generative, utilizing numerous digital and analog processes, including machine-cut vinyl stencils, plotter drawings, and etched copper plates.

Connor says, “I have really been enjoying making large Intaglio plates in the printshop. As a way of getting to know Minnesota better, I have been working with geospatial data sets, archived maps, and governmental documents. I collect all this information without much idea what it will turn into. In the filtering, cleaning, sorting, and recontextualization of my family's place and movement, the intent starts to sharpen. In this process, bodies of water have become the major focus of my work, and I am very excited to see where it takes me.”

Employing some less conventional methods and materials like dry pigment screenprinting and homemade materials, Nancy Ariza had been developing a large series of colorful geometric pattern studies. They are gorgeous! She’s recently shifted gears and is now working on reimagining/re-illustrating the Snakes and Ladders classic Mexican Board game Lotería.

Nancy says, “During these first few months of the residency, I've been expanding my knowledge of ink-making processes using natural pigments and exploring their potential through stencils and screenprinting. I combined cochineal ink, made from an insect that lives on prickly pear cacti, with woodcut and other experimental printmaking techniques to deepen the themes of heritage, lineage, and migration that are present in my work. These latest prints have resulted in a new and exciting aesthetic direction that I hope to highlight in the culminating exhibition.”

About the artists:

Emma Ulen-Klees is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose work centers the fragmentation and transformation of landscape. Her individual but interconnected projects come ogether to mourn extinction and absence, magnify the accumulation of plastics, and interrogate the distortionary nature of western cartography, while still allowing for the beauty and awe vital to emotional relationships to place. Ulen-Klees earned a Printmaking BFA from California College of the Arts (2014), and MFA from Cornell University (2020). Past awards include the Ralls Scholarship in Painting, Yozo Hamaguchi Scholarship in Printmaking, as well as the Kala Art Institute Emerging Artist Residency. She has exhibited at the Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, MT), Zolla/ Lieberman Gallery (Chicago, IL), Jack Hanley Gallery New York, NY), Safe Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Anglim Gilbert Gallery (San Francisco, CA) as well as in Oakland, Berkeley, CA, and Ithaca, NY. Internationally she has exhibited in Osaka, Japan and Hjalteyri, Iceland.

Nancy Ariza is a Mexican American printmaker, educator, and arts administrator. In her studio practice, Ariza explores intergenerational relationships, storytelling, and memory as a way to understand and honor her Mexican heritage. Often working in woodcut and screenprinting, her artwork combines traditional and experimental printmaking techniques. Ariza has exhibited across the United States in group shows at Blanc Gallery in Chicago, IL; Janet Turner Print Museum at California State University in Chico, CA; Klemm Gallery at Siena Heights University in Adrian, MI; among others. She is also the founder of Amilado Press, a collaborative print studio in Minnesota.

Conor McGrann is an artist that makes things usually on paper, living and producing work in St. Paul, MN. He is the Digital Studio Arts Technician at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where he maintains the printshop and photolab and facilitates the use of digital and analog interactions for faculty, staff, and students in the Art & Art History Department.

In his own work Conor has a particular interest in the translation errors and systemic breakdowns that occur when filtering work between digital and analog production methods. His work is focused on the relationship between political systems, geography, the built environment, sense of place, and culture. He received his MFA in May 2021 from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and his BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University in 2009.

Special thanks to the panelists for the 2024-2025 Jerome Early career Printmakers Residency Luis Fitch and Bo Young An! Luis and Bo took on the exceedingly difficult task of selecting three artists from an outstanding pool of applicants. Thanks are also due to Alex Beaumont, Jim clark and once again, Luis and Bo, for conducting critiques with the residents at various times during the residency year.

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Jerome Foundation. The Jerome Foundation supports early-career artists and culture bearers who take creative risks, pursue innovative artistic approaches, and demonstrate a clear creative purpose and vision. By prioritizing artists at this pivotal stage, we seek to nurture their creative growth and recognize the dynamic, multi-dimensional impact they have in fostering thriving, evolving communities.

Threshold Gallery

On view: January 3 - March 30, 2025

OPening Reception Friday: January 17; 6:30-9pm

Featured in the Threshold gallery is a body of recent prints by Gabi Estrada collectively titled portales. About this work, Gabi offered this:

As my work and I evolve, I am beginning to confront what a portrait can be without the depiction of faces. How can I represent my family in less literal ways that still hold their memory? In response to this, I am thinking about hands as extensions of my people’s identities. Beyond literally holding objects, hands are vessels to hold memories, love, and pain. They are a significant tool in everyone’s life, more intensely used by some than others. The wrinkles, scars, and calluses that comprise a hand make up the portrait of a person, more than the face may ever be able to tell. In a way, portraits of hands can feel more intimate than a person’s face; they are not often paid much attention to by passersby, only those lucky enough to be cared for, prayed for, and given affection by the hands.

I am thinking of these prints as portals. For a variety of reasons, we cannot always physically be with our loved ones and hold their hands. Recording anecdotes allows me to channel their memory and metaphorically hold their hand, along with their memories and histories. 

As you view these prints, I invite you to call back on your own recollections. How do you like to use your hands? What relationship do you have with them? What anecdotes do you have connected to the hands of others?

About the artist: Gabi Estrada is a Mexican-American printmaker, muralist, and arts educator based in Minneapolis, MN. Gabi’s personal artistic practice is rooted in identity and storytelling, celebrating the memory and honoring the existence of their ancestors and elders. They believe in the power that art has to facilitate healing and community building, which they prioritize in their artistic work and pedagogy. Beyond work, they enjoy cooking food for people they love, biking among the trees, and cuddling their cat, Tajín. You can find Gabi on Instagram to see what they’re working on or teaching: @grabadogabi

Exhibition on view: March 7 - April 19, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, March 7; 6:30 - 9pm

public conversation moderated by teréz iacovino: saturday, march 15; 5 - 6pm

Please join us to celebrate the 2024 McKnight Fellows Grace Sippy and Fidencio Fifield-Perez at their Fellowship exhibition reception on Friday, March 7, beginning at 6:30 pm. The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, April 19. Also, On Saturday, March 15 at 5 pm, Fidencio and Grace will be joined by Teréz Iacovino for an artist conversation in the gallery (info here). This event is free and open to the public, we have limited seating though so we recommend arriving early.

The work featured in the McKnight Printmaking Fellowship Exhibition is all new! Created within the fellowship year, it serves as a literal chart of the artists’ progress. Their care, effort, and obsessive attention to detail will be easy to ascertain in the large multimedia works, subtle debossments, and technically diverse explorations on view.

Read on to learn more about their fellowship experience and process:

Over the last year, Fidencio Fifield-Perez has begun to reintroduce the figure into his work. This began with a beautifully rendered stone lithograph depicting his chosen family. Fidencio said that previous works “relied on protection through abstraction. Important documents were shrouded and obscured by the depictions of indoor plants. But in new works, the bodies are present, while often furtive, cut, and embossed.”

Another stunning and ambitious work included in the exhibition is a mixed-media collage and painting that illustrates his parents' garden. The garden, he says, is “a physical space created with the anticipation of growth and a future in this country.” 

He refers to the works as multi-media paradoxes, “They fill anxious hours and expand on the merging of printmaking and painting techniques. The biggest challenge this year has been adapting to the work’s need for increasingly meticulous processes while wrestling with the need to physically slow down and be in the garden. These depictions remind me to take the phone call from my mother, to reach out to the men in our family who are hurting, to tell friends I love them–– to exchange texts of our gardens.”

Although Fidencio relocated from Minnesota this fall, he was able to participate in studio visits remotely with recent guest artist and educator Emma Nishimura. Fidencio will also be present for the exhibition reception on March 7th and the artist conversation on March 15th.

Throughout the fellowship year, Grace Sippy has been in the studio so much that she’s an honorary staff member! This fall, she dove into deep exploration through a series of collagraph prints. She has transformed garments once worn by her two young children into collagraph plates and has explored different ways of making prints from these plates. Some exist as subtle, delicate embossments. Others incorporate color tissue papers such as chine collé (collage during printing), while some are more “traditionally” inked, wiped, and printed. Grace has also begun to incorporate hand embroidery into her works.

Grace says, “With all of these variables, I think I have close to 40 prints and proofs. The transformation of the garment to a printing matrix is a paradox, destroying the garment in the process but creating something new, a remnant of what was there. My fellowship work presents a reflection of loss and grief: of hopes of having a child, of a child since grown, and the loss of a child.” 

You can read a recent interview with Grace Sippy here.

Highpoint would like to thank panelists Mike Cloud and Rachel Skokowski for their thoughtful review and consideration of all the applicants during the selection process. We’d also like to thank Miguel A. Aragon, Emma Nishimura, and Xuxa Rodriguez for conducting studio visits with the Fellows. Finally, thank you to Teréz Iacovino for all their work in preparing for and moderating the conversation with the Fellows on March 15.

The McKnight Printmaking Fellowships are open Minnesota artist/printmakers who are at a career stage that is “beyond emerging” — defined here as artists who demonstrate a sustained level of accomplishment, commitment, and artistic excellence. Fellows are selected on the basis of the artistic merit of their work, and their dedication, interest, and contributions to Minnesota’s arts ecosystem.

Please join Highpoint in welcoming the 2024 McKnight Printmaking Fellows Grace Sippy and Fidencio Fifield-Perez! Panelists Mike Cloud and Rachel Skokowski were tasked with reviewing a record number of applications (nearly double our previous high). Their initial evaluation was followed by in-person studio visits with the finalists after which they ultimate determined to award the fellowship to Fidencio and Grace.

When asked what excites them about the fellowship and what they think they might accomplish, Grace offered this: “I am excited and grateful to have the resources and mentality to be able to pursue my practice to an extent I have not had before. It feels validatin I am excited and grateful to have the resources and mentality to be able to pursue my practice to an extent I have not had before. It feels vaildatiing.”

“I have had a completely new and separate vein of work spark up in the last year or so, and I still need to decide if I will pursue its creation for the fellowship, or if I will continue to push and evolve what I have been working on for many years.”

And Fidencio said this: “I'm excited about printing in a studio that draws community members and printers from all over the area. Based on my experiences teaching and exhibiting with Highpoint, I knew I wanted to be a part of this community. It's unlike any other print shop I've been in. I'm most excited about printing and taking classes taught by other printmakers in the upcoming year. 

Undoubtedly, this fellowship will enable me to print new work as well as components that will be incorporated into other collaged works. The prize, facilities, and working alongside others during workshops will spur new directions, techniques, and processes. My studio practice is one driven by material curiosity and learning new processes.”

For updates on the progress of the artists and other fellowship happenings, stay tuned to Highpoint’s website and social media.

Highpoint would like to thank the panelists Mike Cloud and Rachel Skkowski for the thoughtful review and consideration of all the applicants.

About the panelists:

Mike Cloud is a painter, writer, and educator.  His work and research in the field of painting is anchored in the contemporary life of reproduction, symbolism and description. Cloud’s paintings “aestheticize their subjects and function on social and political terms that go beyond the stakes of authentic expression.”

Cloud earned his M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art and his B.F.A. from the University of Illinois-Chicago with a concentration in art education. Cloud has lectured extensively on his work and contemporary theoretical art issues at the Jewish Museum, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Yale University, the Cooper Union, Bard College, New York Studio School, Kansas City Art Institute and the University of New Orleans.

Mike is associate Professor of Art, Theory, Practice at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Dr. Rachel Skokowski is the Curator of the Janet Turner Print Museum at California State University, Chico. She has worked with museum print collections in the US and abroad, including at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the University of Sydney, and the Ashmolean Museum. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and holds a Masters from Oxford and a BA from Princeton University. Her research interests include 19th century French print culture, text and image studies, and women printmakers.

The McKnight Printmaking Fellowships are open Minnesota artist/printmakers who are at a career stage that is “beyond emerging” — defined here as artists who demonstrate a sustained level of accomplishment, commitment, and artistic excellence. Fellows are selected on the basis of the artistic merit of their work, and their dedication, interest, and contributions to Minnesota’s arts ecosystem.