A shot from the Open Portfolio sessions in San Francisco last year.
From March 18 – 21, many students, faculty, and staff will be off to Knoxville, Tennessee, to participate in the SGC International Conference, which is the primary book & paper arts conference based in the US. Artists will be attending from around the world include individual artists, collaborative and artist run print shops, as well as academic arts institutions. Each year, the conference, which moves to a new city each year, has a comprehensive selection of panels how printmaking fits into the rest of the art world, and includes demos of new and/or complicated techniques, as well as new products.
This year, headed by interim program director Miriam Schaer, CBPA denizens will be operating in high gear. Schaer and second-year student Chris Flynn will be working a table at the Product-Publisher-Program Fair to inform the public about the merging of Interdisciplinary Arts Department with the Art & Art History Department at Columbia College Chicago, and they will be sharing all the department has to offer in the realm of print/paper and book. The population of undergraduate students at SGC International has been increasing every year, and we will be recruiting and promoting all of our programs by displaying from deep well of student work, professional projects, and work of Artists in Residence.
Detail of Kelly Schmidt’s work she will be showing at the Open Portfolio sessions.
Thesis-year student Heather Buechler and second-year student Kelly Schmidt will be participating in the Open Portfolio sessions, where students, professors, artists, and master printers show their work for everyone to view, and they both are also going to be meeting with a professor/practicing artist during a mentoring session. Schmidt will be attending two INKubator sessions- break out groups for 15-30 people that are focused on one topic – Women in Printing (Ladies of Letterpress) and the Printmaking Legacy Project.
Columbia College Chicago and Interarts have a long history with SCG International. Last year in San Francisco faculty member Mel Potter presented on a panel on social practice, and spoke regarding Social Paper from last years exhibition. Also last year faculty member Paul Catanese was speaker on a panel called: Border Crossings or Elective Affinities? Intermedial Fusions Between Photography and Print in an Expanded Art. In 2009, the SCG conference was in Chicago and hosted by CCC and Interdisciplinary Arts. Titled “Global Implications,” the Chicago conference attracted 1700 book & paper aficionados from all over the country. The department had demonstrations in the studios at CBPA, Anchor Graphics, the A+D shops and SAIC. Both Chris Flynn and David Jones, who is currently president of SGC International and the director of Anchor Graphics, have performed technical demonstrations at past conferences.
