Printers Guild spotlights printmaking

The 10th anniversary exhibit is showing at the NEIU Fine Arts Gallery.

Katie Versteegh

NEIU’s art gallery is featuring prints from The Chicago Printers Guild 10th Anniversary Exhibition. The Printers Guild outlines its mission as “bridging the gap between commercial printing and fine art printmaking,” focusing on “print culture.” This exhibition features individual and collaborative work from printmakers around Chicago.

The prints featured at the gallery are colorful and statement-making. Pieces illustrate wildlife, surrealism and abstract expression. “Insatiable Amount of Greed” by Wesley Kramer (2018) is a woodcut depiction of a large blue mass of a creature atop bags of money and jewels smoking a cigar. “Polar Vortex” by Susannah Hera (2018) depicts a screaming bear figure surrounded by a bright pink sky. Robert Scheffler’s 2019 screen print “The Descent of Man” is a wildly vivid and eye-catching illustration of a burning house and its surrounding burning sky that instantly strikes the viewer. Alexandra Blom’s 2018 screen print “Reach” features brightly colored green stem-like plants reaching towards the unassuming sun above, all against a peachy backdrop. Justin Santora’s brilliantly colored 2017 screen print titled “Strident Particular” shows a house inside a giant light bulb half submerged in a body of water, resting on the rocks and seaweed against a bright blue sky. Ethan D’ercole’s 2018 screen print “Metro” is a blue, gray and white illustration of a metro station complete with passengers staged throughout the scene, waiting for trains and walking across passageways overhead, all under a grand arched ceiling with a tile-like appearance serving as the focal point.

Sculptures can also be viewed, such as Eszter Sziksz’s 2018 display of a man’s face sketched onto the side of a flipbook-like paper structure titled “Self Control.”  Millicent Kennedy Nora’s piece “Delineated” (2019) features a paper book with red stitching running throughout that leads off the page, ending in a small ball of yarn resting inside an adjacent wooden box.  Gallery goers can even interact with the piece, as long as they put the accompanying red and orange stitched white cloth gloves on to follow the stitching from its journey through the book. 

The gallery will hold its annual Student Holiday Art Sale Dec. 2-13, featuring “unique holiday gifts created by NEIU art students with all proceeds going directly to the students.” More information on upcoming art gallery events can be found on the NEIU school website under fine arts submissions. 

“Delineated” by Millicent Kennedy Nora (2019)
“Insatiable Amount of Greed” by Wesley Kramer (2018)
“Polar Vortex” by Susannah Hera (2018)
“Strident Particular” by Justin Santora (2017)
“The Descent of Man” byRobert Scheffler (2019)
‘Self Control” by Eszter Sziksz (2018)