Drew Peterson and Mike Marks
Highpoint is thrilled to announce our 2020 McKnight Printmaking Fellows Drew Peterson and Mike Marks!
This year-long fellowship (February 2020-January 2021) grants the fellows extensive access to Highpoint’s cooperative printshop, technical advice and support, studio visits with nationally-renown arts professionals, career development support, a $25,000 unrestricted award, and many other benefits.
Funded with a generous grant from the McKnight Foundation, this fellowship is open to mid-career Minnesota artists who work in printmaking — defined here as artists who demonstrate a sustained level of accomplishment, commitment, and artistic excellence. The artists were selected on the basis of the artistic merit of their work, and their dedication, interest, and continued growth in printmaking.
Highpoint would like to thank our esteemed panelists Delita Martin (artist, Black Box Press Studio) and Michelle Grabner (Crown Family Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), who reviewed application materials, conducted in-person studio visits with the finalists, and selected the 2020 fellows.
The panelists offered the following remarks about the selection process:
This was a rewarding, but also challenging task. The work presented by each artist was exceptional, we had some difficult decisions to make.
There are several elements and factors that I took into consideration. I began this process by first looking at the quality of each artists’ work; Did the work show craftsmanship, technical skill, presentation, and creativity? Did the artist push boundaries, take risks, or try something unique? I considered the professional accomplishments of each artist, reviewing the artists’ resume. I concluded my evaluation, posing the question, “What is the artists’ promise for continued growth and how will the fellowship impact this growth”? Following hours of deliberation, I selected artists whose work I believed would challenge the viewer and make them interact with the work. I selected artists who pushed printmaking beyond its boundaries of traditional process into new and innovative directions.
I would like to thank all the artists who submitted work for consideration. The jury process is a difficult one, but I hope that each will constructively use the feedback as a way to propel themselves further in their careers as artists. It is my hope that they will be encouraged to continue to submit works in pursuit of opportunities such as the McKnight Printmaking Fellowship.
-Delita Martin
This year’s recipients not only exemplified a rigorous engagement to artmaking but also demonstrated an ethical commitment to local communities and the natural environment. An imaginative range of varied print processes combined with experimental visual vocabularies, these two artists convey compelling interpretations of the complex social realities that we encounter in contemporary life. A love for the process of print media and its unique ability to foreground time and attention was also a vital and urgent component to both of the fellowship recipients.
-Michelle Grabner
More about each artist can be found below:
Mike Marks lives and works in Minneapolis. He holds a BFA in Drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Delaware. His prints are included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Museo do Douro (Douro, Portugal), Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art (Aomori, Japan), Zuckerman Museum of Art (Kennesaw, GA), and the California College of Arts (Oakland, CA). Marks has been an artist-in-residence at South Dakota State University, the University of Evansville, the Tides Institute and Museum of Art, Crooked Tree Arts Center/Good Hart Residency, Stone Trigger Press, and Acadia National Park, to name several. His work has exhibited both nationally and internationally. He recently received an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, producing his latest solo exhibition, No Trace (2020).
In the coming year as a McKnight Fellow, Mike will be focused on using intaglio and relief processes to reflect the potential for environmental loss. This work will focus on critical habitat and landscapes under duress of change, using printmaking as an analogy for the mechanisms that reshape the environments around us. The prints will incorporate an act of deletion in their image-making process, part of an ongoing interest in unmaking one object in order to create another.
Drew Peterson received his BFA from the University of Minnesota and attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School for Art before earning an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. He is a lecturer in printmaking and drawing at the University of Minnesota and Lead Instructor in Contemporary Art at Juxtaposition Arts in North Minneapolis.
Peterson received Artist Initiative grants in 2011, 2018, and 2020 and an Arts Learning grant in 2017 from the Minnesota State Arts Board. He is currently completing a Next Step Grant through the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and VAF grant from Midway Contemporary Art through the Andy Warhol Foundation.
His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at The Burnet Gallery, Public Functionary, Kiehle Gallery at St. Cloud State, Sabina Lee Gallery (Los Angeles), and Twist Gallery (Nashville). Recent group shows include Future Future at Hair and Nails (Minneapolis), Outstanding Affiliates at CC Gallery (University of Wyoming), and Octillo at Stella Elkins Gallery, Tyler School of Art.
In 2018, Peterson developed Entity Editions + EDU--a fine art printmaking resource committed to the publication, production, and education of print media through collaboration with emerging artists, educational workshops, and consultation. Peterson’s south Minneapolis studio functions to serve his own practice, Entity Editions collaborative projects, and print exhibitions under the name Manager Gallery.
With the McKnight fellowship through Highpoint, Peterson looks to expand the technical and material aspects of his work by combining traditional and contemporary approaches to printmaking.
