Here are Westword’s picks to help guide you through the final throes of Mo'Print. Until 2024!
Betsy Margolius, Winter Series
William Havu Gallery, 1040 Cherokee Street
Friday, March 11, through April 30
Opening Reception: Opening Reception: Friday, March 11, 5 to 8 p.m.
Painter, printmaker and educator Betsy Margolius represents Mo’Print through April at the William Havu Gallery, where her Winter Series show opens alongside exhibitions by the art couple Sushe Felix and Tracy Felix. Margolius put in years of printmaking training at the University of New Mexico (under the tutelage of Garo Antresian, a co-founder of the Tamarind Institute of Lithography), the University of Denver and working with master printer Bud Shark. Her work here combines mixed media with simple monotypes and linocuts, some layered with chine collé to create patchworks of dense patterns, often inspired by nature. Along with the popular stylistic landscapes by the Felixes, Havu Gallery will be a must-see venue this month and next.
Convergence - Anew: Mark Lunning
Space Gallery, 400 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, March 11, through April 30
Opening Reception: Friday, March 11, 6 to 9 p.m.
Mo’Print wouldn’t be complete without the work of Mark Lunning, a master printer and major player in the Denver printmaking community, where his Open Press Ltd. Studio served as a center for all things print in the city for thirty years. Lunning moved the studio to Sterling in 2018, but is getting some love from Space Gallery for the 2022 Month of Printmaking, a biennial Denver tradition he helped found and promote. Lunning’s recent prints demonstrate his versatility and mastery of techniques. Pure perfection.
Mixed Grit
Firehouse Art Center, 667 Fourth Avenue, Longmont
Friday, March 11, through April 24
Opening Reception: Friday, March 11, 6 to 9 p.m.
Master printer Gregory Santos’s collaborational printmaking project Mixed Grit invites four artists from across the country every four months to create artworks on small lithographic stones sent in the mail. They then return the stones to Santos at Denver’s Art Gym, where he prints five-edition runs of each work. Firehouse offers a chance to see the whole collection, a perfect introduction to this year’s Month of Printmaking 2022.
Mo’Print Biennial Community Print Show
Edge Members PRINT
Edge Gallery, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, March 11, through March 27
Opening Reception: Friday, March 11, 6 to 9 p.m.
The Edge co-op is embedding itself in printmaking showcases for most of March, with two exhibitions — one a community-wide open-entry show, and the other a member show. Variety is what you get, and possibly some good buys from folks you perhaps know — or don’t know. This, by the way, is Edge’s last show at the Art Hub, as the co-op and its neighbors get ready to put down roots at the nearby 40 West Arts District Arts Center, rising up in a newly renovated building a block away.
Open Portfolio
Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York Street
Saturday, March 12, 1 to 4 p.m.
Register online in advance for timed-entry slot to the free event and DBG admission fee
Open Portfolio is Mo’Print’s gift to its public: a full face-to-face afternoon of browsing printmaker portfolios without a middleman. Learn about techniques practiced by individual artists, from students to old hands, and don’t be afraid to buy that one print you keep going back to look at. Prints are a great gateway to collecting, if you’re unsure about where to start. You’ll need to register for a timed-entry slot for the free event, as well as the Denver Botanic Gardens general admission, also sold by timed entry, and event spots are going fast.
Denver Small Press Fest
Center for Visual Art MSUD, 965 Santa Fe Drive
Saturday, March 12, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Among so many other niches, printmaking comprises the gamut of print media, from a simple zine to a one-of-a-kind handmade letterpress publication or poster. How convenient that the Denver Small Press Fest is back this month after a long two-year hiatus forced by pandemic conditions, settling in for a day in the cushy digs of the CVA galleries. More than fifty vendors will be pushing their print wares — including zines, journals, periodicals, small press publications, art and printmaking — while screen-printing demos by Indy Ink will entice guests to join in and try printmaking themselves. Put together by Leon Gallery, Peter Miles Bergman and Heather Link Bergman of is PRESS, zinester Kels Choo, editor Kaela Martin and comic artist Lonnie MF Allen, the event will make you appreciate what happens behind the scenes of a print-based business, or at a magazine or book publishing house.
Amy Cordova, “How Many Broken Hearts.”
Amy Cordova
Dayton Memorial Library, Regis University, 3333 Regis Boulevard, Unit D-20
Through March 29
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 17, 4 to 6 p.m.
Artist Talk With Sylvia Montero and Melanie Yazzie: Thursday, March 17, 5 p.m.
Half of the sixteen women participating in this portfolio exchange are of Indigenous heritage, invited by acclaimed artist Melanie Yazzie, a print educator at CU Boulder, while the other eight are of mixed background, invited by Catherine Prose of Midwestern State University. All together, the group is bent on opening up a conversation about missing and murdered indigenous women. The resulting group print series kickstarts that discussion. Yazzie and fellow participating artist Sylvia Montero will give an artist talk on March 12 following a formal opening reception for the show, which runs through the end of March.
Print Jam
Denver Art Museum, Martin Building, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Saturday, March 19, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Free with museum admission
The Denver Art Museum’s Print Jam invites the public to get messy with an army of experts in the museum’s Creative Hub, leading folks through process demonstrations of letterpress printing, lithography, intaglio techniques, monoprints, relief printing and more. Get the drift of printmaking from some of Colorado’s top practitioners, including master printer Mark Lunning, and then you might be brave enough to try some of Mo’Print’s remaining workshops, if they’re not sold out!
Impressed: Transcendent Glitch
Art Gym Denver, 1460 Leyden Street
Thursday, March 24, through April 17
Opening Reception: 5 to 8 p.m.
Art Gym’s second Mo’Print show of the season is usually a national showcase. That remains true in 2022 with Impressed, an invitational exhibition that will get you up-to-the-minute with the latest experimental and alternative trends sweeping the American printmaking scene.
Mo’Print 2022 Studio and Print Tour
Saturday and Sunday, March 26 and 27, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily
Mo’Print has several events that allow the public to get up close and personal with printmakers working in all styles, but the Studio and Print Tour, a regional safari that lands art lovers rights inside the studios where the artists make their magic, is probably the most comprehensive. It’s also a lot of fun — an opportunity to shmooze, learn about techniques, see works-in-process and finished ones, too. Keep in mind that Saturday is the most packed itinerary of the weekend, and some artist only participate on one day or the other, so it’s best to choose your course in advance, using the maps provided online.
Privilege. Printmaking. Purpose.
S!GNS of the T!ME
Ink Lounge, 29 South Fox Street
Saturday, March 26, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Stuart Alden’s Ink Lounge is one of Denver’s little treasures, a place where one can participate in printmaking — and in politics. The working screen-printing shop is hosting two print exhibitions sourced from both of those specialties: The yard-sign show S!GNS of the T!ME, created for the 2020 election, has been updated to reflect ongoing unsolved issues we continue to face in 2022. Privilege. Printmaking. Purpose. celebrates how Alden chose to spend his PPP loans in 2020 and 2021 to print the yard signs mentioned above, as well as to host participatory public screen-printing workshops resulting in more than a thousand free protest T-shirts printed in twenty designs (the next event is on April 16, just in time for Earth Day). Good deeds deserve our attention!
Big Ink Workshop
Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada
Saturday and Sunday, April 2 and 3, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Big Ink, a national initiative bringing large-format wood-block printing demonstrations to cities across the nation, will land at the Arvada Center over the first weekend in April, putting two groups of Colorado printmakers to work with Big Ink’s unusual transportable “Big Tuna” press. Observing is free, and when we say big, we mean BIG: The press makes 4-by-8-foot prints.
Innovations in Printmaking and Mixed Media
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, April 7, through May 1
Opening Reception: Friday, April 8, 6 to 9 p.m.
D’art Gallery gets in the Mo’Print mode with a late but comprehensive exhibition, juried by Melanie Yazzie and focusing on innovation in the printmaking world. This call for entries goes big by including the use of mixed media on top of the vast variety of printmaking techniques for an expanded look at print possibilities. Cash prizes will be awarded for Best in Show and three Honorable Mentions.
Steamroller printing in action at RMCAD.
Courtesy of RMCAD
Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, 1600 Pierce Street, Lakewood
Saturday, April 16, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Cone Zone Printmaking Exhibit: Friday, April 22, through May 27, Rotunda Gallery, RMCAD
The Cone Zone typically signals the end of Mo’Print for another year, but it’s a really big climax. In another display of large-scale printing, participating artists will prepare humongous wood or fiberboard blocks that are placed on the pavement and pressed down by a two-ton steamroller. Prints will then be peeled off the block to be hung for a show in RMCAD’s Rotunda Gallery. It’s a fitting spectacle for Mo’Print's last hurrah. There is a $30 fee to participate; see guidelines and register online in advance no later than April 9. Spectating is free.
