December 2022 Newsletter
/Goodbye 2022, you were somehow our wildest year yet, full of challenges but also full of hope.
This year started with a wedding, an intense search for a new home, and a herculean effort to pack our entire studio and move it to a new city. When we found out in late 2021 that FATVillage was set to be redeveloped, it set into motion a seemingly endless and daunting list of possibilities: do we stay in Fort Lauderdale, do we move further south, do we move anywhere else, do we take some time off, how can we keep things running while the presses are on pallets, on and on. The support and guidance that we received from friends and colleagues allowed us to find the path that made the impossible task seem slightly more possible and we will forever be indebted to everyone who stuck with us and helped us out throughout 2022.
We made the decision to move to Miami based on pragmatic business matters (where could we find an affordable space that would have the visibility within an arts ecosystem to support us) and also on aspirational ideals (what physical location for the studio could help us bring printmaking to folks looking to engage with the medium). We are so grateful at the receptiveness and excitement that has come along with the move and are astounded by the quantity and quality of fine art printmaking projects and institutional collaborations that have come our way in just a few short months of being just a few short miles closer. Basically all of this to say, we’re very happy in our new home and incredibly grateful to everyone who has come through the doors or sent positive energy our way (sometimes even braving 95 to make the journey).
So thank you, sincerely, for making this year possible. We hope your year was if not less turbulent, then at least as interesting. Here’s to another year of printmaking in the Tropics. 2023 bring it on!
- Ingrid Schindall
We kicked off Miami Art Week with an intimate reception for the work on our project wall. Works made here in the studio by Johanna Boccardo, Charlisa Montrope, and Carol Todaro were warmly received by the folks in attendance.
HOLIDAY HOURS + LAST-MINUTE GIFT IDEAS
We love what we do here and we couldn’t be more excited to keep it up in 2023. That said, we are looking forward to a little bit of rest this holiday season. IS Projects will be closed on Friday, December 23rd and Friday, December 30th. We will otherwise be maintaining our usual studio hours until the new year.
The holidays are now in full swing, but if you’re as busy as we generally are, you may still have one or two more folks for whom you have not found the perfect gift just yet. We may be able to help! We have a small selection of prints and journals available for purchase in person, of course, but may we also suggest the gift of an IS Projects Studio Membership so that your loved one can spend the year working on all their dream projects? Or perhaps a seat in one of our workshops learning some fun new skills is more their speed? You could buy yourself a seat, too, and take it together if you want to guarantee it’s a good time! Of course, if you can also send these links to the folks who are shopping for you, give them a wink and a nudge, and remind them that it gets them out of having to wrap your gift. Sounds great, right?
First quarter 2023 workshops are out now!
This quarter, we have a very exciting selection of workshops to share. We are particularly excited to introduce Charlisa Montrope as an instructor. She will be leading our Introduction to Printmaking course, which starts in late January, as well as an as of yet unreleased one-day workshop on Watercolor Monotypes (a technique very essential to her own practice — keep an eye out for that special release!) We are also really pumped about offering Sammi McLean’s one day collagraph workshop, as Sammi’s own collagraphs are constantly blowing our minds. Also of particular note, Ingrid will be offering an Advanced Printmaking course starting in March. That course allows participants to work on their own independent projects using our facilities, and with the help of Ingrid and their peers to solve all of the unexpected print problems that will inevitable come up!
NAT SASSINE, DISPLACE IV, (DETAIL PHOTOGRAPH), 2017, SIX-COLOR SCREENPRINT, EMBOSSMENT, AND WAX ON RIVES HEAVYWEIGHT PAPER, 175 GSM, 17 IN X 11”
KEYS TO OUR HEART
There have been a ton of incredible artists coming and going since we moved to Miami, but we would like to take a moment to talk about our incredible Key Holder residents. Our Key Holder Residency started when we were in Fort Lauderdale, but has really been picking up steam here in our Miami location. To kick it off, we invited applications for a Special Session in 2022 which was not tethered to our typical quarterly application cycle, and we are so glad we did. Our Special Session residents, Nat Sassine and Charlisa Montrope, have been an absolute joy to have around. They have both been hard at work here at the studio on their respective projects, and have been at the helm of our budding weekend Open Studio Sessions. Nat and Charlisa will be with us through the end of January, and you can learn more about their work and the places you can see it by following along with them! Charlisa will also be teaching here in the upcoming months, so if you like her work, think about taking Introduction to Printmaking with her, or her soon-to-be-released Watercolor Monotype one day class!
Our Special Session may be coming to a close, but we are excited to announce that there will not be a gap in our residency schedule! Our Winter Session has already begun, and we are proud to announce that we have welcomed Oskar Msellati to the studio. Oskar is off to a great start here, and we can’t wait to see what he’ll make before he completes his residency at the end of February.
Oskar, Charlisa, and Nat will be facilitating more weekend Open Studio Sessions come 2023. The sessions are four hours long, cost $40, and are only available to our Studio Members. During the sessions, members are invited to come in and work on anything they know how to do safely in our studio space. All of the sessions will be available for purchase through the “Classes” page on our website once they are posted (the “Classes” page is accessible through our new “Learn+Make” tab). Keep an eye on our Instagram for that announcement in the new year!
If you’re a South Florida-based book and/or printmaker reading this and thinking that the Key Holder Residency sounds like a good time to you, be sure to check out the full program description on our website! The deadline to apply for the Spring Session is January 15th, so you have plenty of time to put that application together and get it over to us.
See that shaved head and peaceful face back there? That’s our beloved Fall Intern Nicholas Waguespack. They came to our Grand Opening with their friend, and it was love at first sight. Nick loved the presses, we loved nick and Nick’s application. It’s great when things like that work out.
THE BEST INTERNS AROUND
We would also like to take a moment to appreciate our wonderful interns in this newsletter. Our Fall 2022 interns are almost completely done with their hours, and we would say that we’re sad to see them go, except we’re sure they won’t be gone forever. Aliya Gordon, Nicholas Waguespack, and Lorraine Cruz have each shared 120 splendid hours with us. It’s been so rewarding to watch them grow and learn here, each figuring out what their studio super powers are, getting comfortable with their goals and dreams, and playing essential roles in some of our biggest recent projects. Thanks, Fall Interns, for letting us be a part of your journey!
Our Fall Interns have also been incredibly kind and helpful as they have passed the torch to our brand new crop of Winter Interns. We are very excited to welcome to the team three new and wonderful folks: Fola Akinde, Adana Garrote, and Kaila Gumbs. Our Winter Interns are off to a fantastic start. They have each already proven to be positive, curious, and enthusiastic about learning new skills and putting them into practice while working on our wide assortment of projects.
Our interns get to be a part of everything we do. Because we are such a small and nimble organization and because we do so many different things and wear so many hats ourselves, our interns get real-world hands-on experience with everything from producing large editions of screen prints with tons of layers, to doing research for essential arts administrative tasks. It’s a great opportunity to learn about lots of the different kinds of work involved in a career in the arts, and we pay our interns to learn it! The deadline to apply for our Spring Internship is January 15th, and the application is simple. Spread the word!
This is what we’re looking forward to next year
With next year right around the corner, we wanted to put this on your radar. Tropic Bound is an international artists’ book fair debuting here in Miami in February 2023. Ingrid is one of three people collaborating to bring this fair to life — she is working closely with Sarah Michelle Rupert, who is the Gallery Director at Girls’ Club Collection and Ingrid’s co-founder on SPF, and Cristina Favretto, who is the Head of Special Collections at the University of Miami. The fair runs from February 16th to 19th, kicks off with a symposium day, and revolves around upwards of 50 exhibitors from all over the world. Exhibitors are bringing the books they’re most excited to share, and we can’t wait to see them. This is a great opportunity to meet print and book folks from all over the place, to start or expand your own collection of artists’ books, and to get swept away in the generally immaculate vibes.