This exhibition marks the 10-year anniversary of the Screenprint Biennial. Like many ideas, it took awhile to come to life:

In late August of 2013, I boarded a series of planes and trains that eventually brought me to the post-industrial Scottish city of Dundee. Previously famous for being the global processing center for jute, a rough fiber grown to make ropes, rugs, and all sorts of sacks, Dundee was hosting the IMPACT 8 Printmaking Conference. The conference brought together printmakers, curators, and print enthusiasts from around the world. I was traveling to present on a panel on the intersection of printmaking and animation, see some great print shows, commune with old print friends, and hopefully make new ones.

On the first night of the conference, I found myself sharing a pint with my grad school mentor, artist John Hitchcock, who introduced me to Richard Noyce, a renowned English writer, scholar, and critic in art and printmaking. In a rapid-fire exchange, Noyce gathered my opinions on American Imperialism and Marx, and I seemed to pass his test on what qualified as a decent, war-resisting American. I immediately liked the man. The next day, I attended a talk Noyce was presenting at the conference on his involvement in the International Print Triennial in Krakow, Poland, as well as his recent printmaking publications. It was during this talk that Noyce off-handedly mentioned some experimental etching biennial in eastern Europe, and alarm bells went off in my head.

For years, I had been a screenprint junkie. I was combining experience in summer-camp t-shirt shops with the aesthetics of the late 90’s screenprinted poster website gigposters.com. I had early support from print mentors like the Little Friends of Printmaking and Aesthetic Apparatus. Merging these experiences with my education from the University of Wisconsin, I came to find my artistic voice primarily expressed through this glorified stencil art form. And in the midst of listening to Richard Noyce, I asked myself: “Is there a Screenprint Biennial in the USA?”

I soon discovered the answer was “no,” and my work began. Over the next decade I built the shows I wanted to see: exhibitions that highlighted the screenprint medium. I reached out to friends for help, and made lots of new ones on the way. The endeavor would not have happened without a lot of informal advice and back-end work from trusted art friends and collaborators, including, but not limited to Travis Janssen, Tonja Torgerson, and Miranda Metcalf.

The very first Screenprint Biennial in 2014 was by invitation, followed by a series of open calls juried by myself and a rotating cast of screenprint artists and professionals. 2024 marks a return to the invitational, as I decided to invite artists who had shown at least once before in a Screenprint Biennial exhibition. Choosing among the scores of artists who have previously exhibited is sort of like choosing your favorite among your children, and I had to exclude many amazing artists. At the end of the day, I returned to my mission of assembling an exhibit showing off the amazing range of expression and meaning possible from screenprinted art. 

The works presented in this exhibition range from colorful to political. Some pieces are loud and in your face, where others are quiet and contemplative. While all the art works rely on the essential technology that is screenprint, some utilize a more digital approach, while others a more analog aesthetic. Together, these very different works act in tandem to tell the diverse, important, and even contradictory story of screenprinting in art.

The Screenprint Biennial has been a wild 10-year ride, and I’m not sure where it is going next. I hope you enjoy this stop along the way.

Nathan Meltz

Founder, Screenprint Biennial