Aaron Hughes

Students learn traditional and experimental approaches to relief printmaking. Techniques covered are woodcut, linocut, wood engraving, relief etching, monoprints, and other press and hand-printing relief processes.

This course will introduce students to the visual languages, graphic trends, and methods used in contemporary social movements 1960s to present. In collaboration with archivists around Chicago, we will view and discuss archived ephemera and create works in response to this research. The thematic structure of this course is situated around ideas of the radical archive. In its simplest form this refers to the aggregation of materials, practices, languages, information. We will also examine how radical archiving (democratic or disruptive) conceptually relates to more performative, gestural, or ephemeral forms; the ways an entire studio practice, a human life, or a single object can be considered an archive.
The 'Disobedient Objects' exhibition at the Victoria + Albert Museum provides the jumping-off point for this class. Readings + artists discussed include: Sharon Hayes, Julie Ault, Emory Douglas, Lucy Lippard, Gregory Sholette, Group Material. Archives visited + discussed include: Interference Archive; Gerber/Hart Library of LGBTQ history, SNCC Archives, ACT UP Chicago records.

Students will choose from a list of Chicagoland archives to search through for collections of interest. Thereafter, they will be creating additional works, ephemera, artifacts that speak to their understandings of the collection. Some considerations for delving into these collections include: Where do you fit in? What aesthetic cohesion is there between materials? What language is used in the messages? Materials? Processes? Distribution? Is the archive considered a closed set or are there things missing? What are the implications of 'updating' a collection / closed set?' We will also visit collections around the city as a class, meet with artists working at the intersections of art and activism and publishing.