Please join Highpoint in warmly welcoming the 2025 McKnight Printmaking Fellows Stephanie Hunder and Jade Hoyer!

Stephanie and Jade were selected as the 2025 McKnight Printmaking Fellows following a scrupulous review process that included in-person studio visits with panelists Chitra Ganesh and Katrina Andry. The fellowship is made possible by the generous support of the McKnight Foundation. It begins in February and runs a full year through January of 2026. On February 6, 2026, an exhbition of work created by Jade and Stephanie will open in Highpoint’s galleries - save the date!

Stephanie said this about the Fellowship opportunity: “I’m looking forward to accessing Highpoint’s great facilities, feedback from studio visits, and working alongside other accomplished artists in the co-op.

I’m working on some new pieces that explore how our relationship to the natural world is defined by our perceptions of it. Inspired by collaborative discussions with scientists at the St. Croix Watershed Research Station, this work combines abstract data visualizations of contemporary science with the experiential touch and atmosphere of woodlands and streams. Currently, I’m experimenting with large, layered collagraphs of natural materials screenprinted with theoretical diagrams.”

Jade offered this “I am recently relocated to Minnesota from Denver, CO. (I attended college in southern Minnesota, and lived for some time in Minneapolis, and my partner has family in Minnesota: we were really excited to come back to this state.) This transition has given me a lot to think about creatively: what it means to call a place home, what it means to be a transplant to a location, the charged language we employ connected to human migration, and what it means to find community as an artist. I’m in a privileged position to have some space and time to be able to consider these ideas, and I’m grateful and excited to be able to engage in this at the Highpoint. The McKnight feels like a dream fellowship, to have access to such facilities, expertise, and community for a prolonged period. I am most looking forward to connecting with other printmakers through the Fellowship, to develop my work in the company of an artistic community devoted to printmaking.

My current research interests explore the history of health programs, especially nursing training programs, that were set up in the Philippines by the United States at the start of the 20th century. This programming has lead to the establishment of labor pathways that exist today between the two countries. As a Filipina-American whose mother is a nurse, I am interested in unpacking this aspect of my family story in its greater context, and potentially expressing what I learn through my creative engagement at the Highpoint and as a McKnight Fellow.”

About the artists:

Stephanie Hunder is a Minnesota artist and arts educator who creates with ink, paper, and light. Her current work studies human relationships to the natural world through botanical and scientific iconography, combining photographic and digital techniques with traditional printmaking processes. Creating content through process and the importance of hands-on research is a focus in her teaching. Stephanie received her BFA and MA from the UW–Madison, and MFA from Arizona State. She currently teaches at Minneapolis College of Art & Design and the University of Minnesota. Recent activities include solo exhibitions at Metro State University, Bloomington Art Center, and Silverwood Gallery.

Jade Hoyer is an artist who plays in printmaking, papermaking, and installation, using the institutionalized language of the print to inspect societal questions, particularly those connected to privilege and multiracial identity. Hoyer’s work has been recognized by organizations including the Windgate Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Her artwork is part of collections including the Museum at Texas Tech University’s Artist Printmaker Research Collection, the Association of Pinoy Printmakers, Philippines, and the Museu da Gravura de Curitiba, Brazil. Jade is based in Northfield, Minnesota where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Carleton College. She’s a big fan of the color teal.

Thank you to this year’s outstanding panelists Katrina Andry and Chitra Ganesh for their effort and attention to the selection process.

About the panelists: Katrina Andry is an artist and printmaker based in New Orleans, LA. In her work she challenges the ideology of individualism by examining inequalities and resulting degradation as the result of our color-based prejudices. She argues the belief in individualism allows Americans to turn a blind eye to inequality, suggesting barriers to well-being lie with the individual and not also within our social structures, in spite of documentation of the collective experiences of these groups and data on outcomes of disfavored groups.

Across a twenty-year practice, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Ganesh ‘constantly attempts to challenge patriarchal norms and empower her female and queer subjects by constructing alternate visual narratives’ [1], while drawing on South Asian visual traditions as well as canonical and contemporary feminist and queer scholarship.

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.