The Mid America Print Council is an educational and community-based organization that focuses on all print related arts. Embracing both time-honored and innovative approaches, we promote aware­ness and appreciation of traditional and contemporary forms of printmaking. We are an inclusive association for individuals and institutions, admin­istering the sharing of technical and critical information regarding print. Honoring our predecessors, we aim to bring new and sustained interest to this unique medium. Active on multiple platforms, MAPC is an organization that provides members with access to a network of printmakers, resources, opportunities, newsletters, and a biennial conference that features speakers, work­shops, panels, shows, and exchanges. Through calls for parti­cipation, we organize members’ exhibitions and publish The Mid America Print Council Journal. Our goal is to recognize, advocate, and continue research in historical, current, and future print technologies.


The Members’ Juried Exhibition occurs every fall and is intended to promote the organization and to give our membership regular opportunities to exhibit their work throughout the country.

Jurors Statement

Print plays many contradictory roles in contemporary art and culture. Print, so ubiquitous in our everyday, we hardly recognize the process in every piece of merchandise, book, or street sign. Print and its nature as multiple, finds common ground in the digital memes and re-shares of our viral internet age. Print is also a rarified and privileged art medium, often requiring access to specialized equipment and years of study to master the chemistry and techniques of civilization’s oldest reproductive technology.

The 2020 MAPC Members Exhibition includes 46 works juried out of 173 submissions that explores the richness of Print’s shape-shifting nature as well as the mastery of Print’s diverse messaging and marks. Works such as Kate Horvat’s The Sun is Shining, But I Don’t’ Trust It and Carlos Barbarena’s FYW that are in direct and urgent conversation with contemporary issues, paying respect to the important social history or Print. Publishing as an artistic practice is explored here, with a range of artist books from the cheap, easily distributed zine to the intricate, handwoven artist book such as Ulnigid by skye tafoya. We have artworks that play with materials common in the print studio such as M Robyn Wall’s This is only Temporary, work that utilizes printmaking techniques in ephemera-looking artworks such as Contingency Plan (Proposal) by Colin Lyons, or works that are printed facsimiles of common things such as Haley Lauw’s A Couple of Worn-Out, Old Socks Kept Together by Moth Eggs and Silverfish.

As a laborious process, artists working in print are in love with its many steps. But not without some material-referential humor as in the work of Breanne Tremmel’ F. T. F. S. (Fuck This Fucking Shit) and Morgan Price’s how much is too much ? Or without pushing upon the subtlety, beauty, and nuance of these techniques as in the work of Ruben Castillo’s Untitled (from the series Pillow Talk) , and Prop by Nicolas Ruth. This year’s members exhibition also has no shortage of masterful works in all the tools of the printmaking cannon. In our contemporary condition of digital and virtual everything, where images and stories are reproduced within seconds, I hope the 2020 MAPC Members Exhibition is a vital celebration and commitment to slow, purposeful, crafted image-making to be seen in person, nose so close to the paper you can smell the ink.




Imin Yeh, Juror

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