"The Fierce Urgency of Now": A Juried Exhibition of Socially Engaged Printmaking

February 14 - April 9, 2022

Generously sponsored by David Hopper and Shari Maxson Hopper

Gallery open Monday-Saturday from Noon–4 p.m. (masks required for all indoor spaces on campus). The gallery will be closed from March 14-18.

• Events

  Juror Talk: "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Socially Engaged Printmaking"

  Thursdsay, February 17, 5:30 p.m. | Recital Hall, Arts and Humanities Building, followed by a visit to the Turner Museum to view the exhibition

  Face masks required

  Juror Printmaking Demo: Hybrid Techniques in Etching

  Thursday, February 17, 11:30 a.m. 

  Juror Artist Talk

  Friday, February 18, 3:00 p.m. | Arts and Humanities Building 111

  Face masks required

  Jacob Meders, “Too Many Capitalists Not Enough Indians: Indigenous Adjustments in the Western Narrative"

  Co-sponsored by the Book in Common and the Janet Turner Print Museum 

  Thursdsay, February 24, 5:00 p.m. | Zoom

  Meders (Mechoopda/Maidu) is an Assistant Professor in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts & Science at Arizona State University. He received a BFA in painting with a minor in printmaking from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in printmaking from Arizona State University. In 2011 Meders established WarBird Press, a fine art printmaking studio that he operates as the Master Printmaker in Phoenix, AZ.

  Meders has exhibited his work in Divided Lines at The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, NM, Agents of Change: An Exhibition of Artist’ Books with a Social Conscience in Gallery 31 at the Corcoran, Washington DC, Something Old, Something New: Nothing Borrowed Recent Acquisitions from the Heard Museum Collection at The Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ, Transcending Traditions at Mesa Contemporary Arts in Mesa, AZ,  ‘Akkum Belle:Afterwards at Jackie Headley Art Gallery, Chico State, Chico CA, First Americans: Honoring Indigenous Resilience and Creativity at Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden, Netherlands, and Mini WiconiGoldsmith, University of London. 

  Meders' work focuses on altered perceptions of place, culture, and identity built on the assimilation and homogenization of indigenous people. This work often ties into current issues faced in Indigenous communities. His work touches many interdisciplinary approaches and repeatedly plays with the boundaries of social engagement practices. His work continues to reexamine varied documentations of Native Americans through printing processes that hold onto stereotypical ideas and how they have affected the culture of the native people. Often using book forms and prints as a symbol of western knowledge and the linear mind, he deploys them as a vehicle to challenge new perceptions of Native Americans.
• About the Juror

  Aaron S. Coleman

  Aaron S. Coleman is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Arizona. He received his MFA from Northern Illinois University in 2013 and BFA from Herron School of Art and Design in 2009. As a teenager and young adult Aaron was active in the local Hip-Hop and Graffiti scene in Indianapolis and both remain as major influences in his fine art studio practice and philosophy. As the son of mixed-race parents, Aaron’s life experiences have instilled in him an interest in sociopolitical engagement and social justice work. These experiences are the guiding forces behind the work he creates.
  
  Aaron has exhibited internationally and received numerous awards, scholarships and fellowships for his work in lithography and mezzotint. His work can be found in the collections of The Janet Turner Print Museum, The University of Colorado, Wichita State University, the Ino-cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan, The Yekaterinburg Museum of Art in Yekaterinburg, Russia, the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Ewing Gallery Collection, and The Artist Printmaker and Photographer Research Archive among many other public and private collections.