During the April 20 event, participants of CeLOUbrate Print engaged in printmaking by creating large, hand-carved wooden stamps, or “woodcuts” and driving over them with a steamroller. With a quick training, a driver’s license and a rental steamroller, Singel was prepared to operate this unique printing press.

“The whole premise is building community,” Singel said. “One of the many reasons I fell in love with printmaking is it’s the democratic multiple. Where would we be without printmaking in terms of it is the way that we disseminate information?”

This art process involves creating an image via a woodcut, etching or engraving and using ink to create copies on paper or canvas like a stamp. Lithography and screen-printing are also forms of printmaking. An original work can be replicated endlessly with basic supplies and processes which eliminate boundaries to sharing work or marketing art.

Printmaking is inherently collective by nature and is a simple form of mass production of artistic work. The creation, production and sharing of a print can all be completed by one operator, removing many obstacles to sharing artwork or messages to build community connections. Additionally, many prints will have small variances from shifting equipment or blotting ink so despite being a mostly mechanical process, each print will have its own unique characteristics and value from the artist’s production.

“When people pull their very first print, it’s this really magical moment because their mind is blown, but they also understand exactly how and why it’s happening,” Lewis said. “You get to watch the light bulb go off.”

In addition to UofL, several sponsors and local businesses supported Singel and Lewis in their effort to bring more people together through CeLOUbrate Print and its workshops including Fund for the Arts, Printed Zine and Portland Museum. UofL alumni William Smith served as Lewis’s collaborator from Portland Museum and assisted with grant writing, advertising and planning the event over eight months.

Ahead of CeLOUbrate Print, Lewis organized over a dozen woodblock carving workshops to help prepare participants to make prints with the steamroller press. The workshops were an addition from Singel’s steamroller press events in previous years. Lewis’s passion for the project comes out of the desire to make printmaking more accessible and this is the driving goal of their studies in printmaking and public humanities.

“Printmakers assume things have to be in a very specific way, your borders have to be clean, no smudges so it’s usually done in a shop – it’s done with a press,” Lewis said. “It’s done this way, so I really wanted to have an event that not only made people know what printmaking is, but it also made that knowledge accessible and doable in your kitchen.”

Alongside the CeLOUbrate Print event, the Portland Museum unveiled a new printmaking exhibit titled The museum invited Louisville printmakers to display their work but encouraged the featured artists to invite other printmakers from outside the region to also participate. The exhibit is a practice of building connections between Louisville’s artists and other pockets of printmakers across the nation. “Shop Talk” will be on display at the Portland Museum until the end of August.

To keep up with UofL’s art students and programming, visit .

The exhibit, presents more than 30 of Douglas’s paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures. It is on display until Oct. 1 in the museum’s second-floor Chellgren Gallery. Read this review by Forbes magazine .

UofL students, faculty and staff enjoy free general admission to the Speed Museum. Through a generous donation from Eleanor Bingham Miller, general admission for all members of the public will be free through Oct. 1, during the run of this exhibition.

Douglas  was a prolific visual artist and longtime resident of Louisville’s West End, a former community organizer, and a teacher and mentor to generations of artists and thinkers. He earned a fine arts degree at UofL in 1963 and, after obtaining his master’s and Ph.D., returned to UofL as a PAS and art professor.

To discuss the relevance of his work in examining and reflecting the Black community in Louisville, two UofL professors will hold a at the Speed Museum at 6 p.m., Sept. 7. will feature , UofL associate professor of English, and , chair of PAS and director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research.

You might meander over to Schneider Hall Galleries, for example, to peruse Hite’s current exhibition: “.”

The show, which runs through Aug. 30, investigates mental health and the healing process known as post-trauma growth, the sense of well-being after a traumatic event.

It features 10 local artists, many of them UofL alumni, and was curated by two Hite students, Sara Cissell and Diana Dillman. Cissell is graduating with her BA in Art History and Humanities this fall, while Dillman graduated last year and now works at the Kentucky Derby Museum.

The idea was born in their Art History Capstone class. The two began talking about mental health and how to facilitate healthy, open dialogue about the topic.

“When people think about mental health, most people think of the term as negative. Sara and I wanted to shine a more positive light on these issues. We want to spark positive conversations around mental health. By including artists in our show who share their own experiences with trauma/mental health, it encourages others to spark recovery in themselves,” Dillman said.

Cissel said the topic is particularly close to her as she has depression and anxiety.

“Mental health is one of those topics that no one knows how to talk about. Even though this is a topic I know very well from my own experiences, I don’t know how other people feel. How do you go about breaking down those barriers in a constructive way?” she said.

After conceiving of the show, they reached out to local artists they know and admire and asked for submissions.

Many of the featured artists have experienced their own trauma and used art to document healing or progression. For example, Megan Bickel, a Hite MFA candidate, created a piece that suggests illusions surrounding truth through mimicking patterns and textiles that cause discomfort and confusion.

Other artists focused on the soothing effects of healing. Andrew and Simon Cozzens’ visual and sound installation piece “Mind Full Change” shows the visual effects of the brain, as if the viewer were looking at a CT scan. By manipulating color pigments to move along the platforms with a binaural beat, the red color eventually becomes blue, which symbolizes calm.

Then there are artists who embrace both the chaos and reflective qualities of mental health. Brianna Harlan and Tammy Richardson’s installation piece “Living Room” creates a cozy, safe space with a couch, lamps and photographs of both public and intimate spaces void of human life.

“I’d had Sara Cissel and Diana Dillman in classes before this one, so I already knew that they were smart, hard-working, knowledgeable and perceptive. Having said that, the show that they co-curated stunned me with its excellence on multiple levels,” said Benjamin Hufbauer, assistant professor of art history. “Sara and Diana created a show that is so rich and rewarding visually, but also connects emotionally and conceptually in different ways with different people… I recommend everyone interested in the topic go see this show by these amazing and generous talents, who did all the work involved as a public service.”

Hite Art Institute presents “,” an exhibition of mixed media drawings and assemblage sculptures by California artist Joan Tanner, on view Sept. 14 through Oct. 27 in the .

The traveling exhibition is organized by Julien Robson, independent curator and director of in Kentucky, and a friend of Tanner’s.

“Joan is compelled by a curiosity to engage contradiction and an impulse to disrupt assumptions about spatial relations,” said Robson, who served as curator of contemporary art at the from 2000 to 2008.

Over a career spanning six decades, Tanner’s art has developed across disciplines to encompass many media, including painting, photography, video, sculpture and assemblage. With an instinctive resistance to conventional ideas of order, she has created provocative works that defy simple categorization and sometimes logic.

She has exhibited across the U.S. since 1968, beginning shortly after she moved to Southern California from the Midwest. Her work is held in a number of collections, including The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Harvard University, Houghton Library, Department of Printing and Graphics, Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York Public Library, Spencer Collection; Speed Art Museum and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California. 

Tanner has also served as a visiting lecturer at the University of California Santa Barbara; Ohio University in Athens; Illinois State University at Normal and, most recently, as an artist-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Tanner’s current exhibition has traveled to numerous other galleries this year, including the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia. 

that Tanner’s art hasn’t been given the exposure it deserves,  which is part of why he created this show.

“In recent years, there has been a growth of interest in older woman artists who have been overlooked,” he said.

There will be a lecture associated with the show 7-8 p.m., Sept. 13 in room 100 of Bingham Humanities building. 

The is 6-8 p.m.,Sept. 14 at the Cressman Center, 100 E. Main St.

The prestigious $5,000 award is an opportunity for local artists to enhance their careers through a targeted enrichment experience of their own design.

“My most recent body work has been on Jewish memory, identity and legacy,” said Szwedzinski. “As an artist, I am continually mindful of who I intend as my audience. I question why it is important for me to make work about Judaism and how my work connects to contemporary issues.”

Szwedzinski will use the award to visit the Jewish Contemporary Museum and the Holocaust Center in San Francisco, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Archives in Washington, D.C., and the Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as well as to take a course at the Rare Book School in Philadelphia.

“I believe that the act of remembering is a powerful tool in fostering empathy and breaking barriers of bias,” Szwedzinski said. “It’s important, now more than ever, to remind people that when true diversity is present in a community is when we all thrive.”

honored Szwedzinski with a June 21.

The Hadley Prize is awarded from the George and Mary Alice Hadley Fund at the . Focused on the arts and humanities, particularly visual arts, crafts, theater and the Louisville Free Public Library, the endowment has supported the community for more than 25 years.

The winner is selected through a blind process by a diverse panel of arts professionals from Louisville and the surrounding area. The 2018 prize drew 40 applicants from the greater Louisville area, including Southern Indiana, whose work demonstrated mastery in ceramics, graphic design, drawing, crafts, painting, photography, sculpture, video, film and printmaking.

“Art soothes and calms our collective souls. Art causes us to question and to think. Through the years, art has been used to tell the story of those who came before. The work of KCJ Szwedzinski is powerful and will cause those who see her work to pause and reflect on this horrific period in our history,” said LVA’s Executive Director, Lindy Casebier. “Louisville Visual Art is pleased to partner with the Community Foundation of Louisville in support of KCJ’s growth as an artist and in turn share that personal growth with others in our community.”

Szwedzinski’s itinerary has been designed to fuse personal history and artistic inspiration, “to synthesize seemingly disparate bodies of knowledge – archival practices for historical information and my personal inherited legacies.”

“This experience will broaden my ability to make work that is rooted in my own Judaic heritage,” said Szwedzinski, “while facilitating engagement of a more universal audience.”

The Hadley Prize is just one of the ways that the Community Foundation of Louisville supports local artists. Hadley Creatives is the Foundation’s six-month comprehensive professional development program for working artists that recently celebrated its inaugural class with an exhibition running through July 1 at . Five Hite graduates participated in the program and exhibition: Miranda Becht (MFA 2017), Sandra Charles (BFA 2015), Rebecca Norton (BFA 2004), Cynthia Norton (MAT 2004) and Autumn Lindsey (BFA 2017).

Surrounded by their art, he congratulated Miranda Becht, Tom LeGoff and Marie-Elena Ottman for becoming the first class to graduate from Hite’s Master of Fine Art program. The first courses for the 60 credit hour degree began in 2014. It’s the only MFA program in Louisville.

“I want to thank you for all your work these past three years,” Massey said to resounding applause.

The MFA Thesis Exhibition runs through May 27 in the Cressman. The diversity of art forms in the show reflects the diversity of offerings in the MFA program. Students may choose to practice in a variety of mediums or narrow in on one. Courses include ceramics, drawing, fibers, glass, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, design, mixed media, book arts and new media.

“I loved that the program let me explore,” Ottman said. “It was the perfect opportunity to grow as an artist.”

Her work at the Cressman, titled “Transplant: Fruits of their Labor,” features winding vines of ceramic, glass and metal. Ottman, who is from Panama, used the vines to metaphorically consider topics such as immigration, migrant labor and translation.            

Classmate and photographer Tom LeGoff displayed photographic cabinet cards to develop a visual story and mythology of a destroyed town.

He said he perused the MFA to better his craft and to “submerge myself more deeply in photography.”

He hopes to teach and Indiana University Southeast and the University of Kentucky have shown interest.

The program started small with just a few students a year as there wasn’t enough studio space to accommodate more. But, are coming to fruition. Construction begins this month and the space should be ready for students in spring 2018, Massey said.

The Portland space will allow the program to expand and broaden its reach in the city, which can only be a good thing, said Chris Reitz, Hite’s director of galleries.

“Artists trained in the global principles and practice of contemporary art-making are a real benefit to the city,” he said. “You really need an MFA program to become a nationally and internationally recognized arts center.”