Live Printing Event
with
Herstory Print Collective

Sunday, May 8th, 11am–3pm
Railyard, shade structure by Farmers Market
Santa Fe

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Exhibition: Feb 22-May 15, 2022
visit www.axleart.com for daily location

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Visit Herstory on

Instagram: @herstoryprintmaking

FB: herstoryprintmaking

 

 

Join Julianna Kirwin, Ilene Weiss, and Michelle Korte, founders of Herstory Print Collective here in Santa Fe on May 8th for a day of designing and printing, They will have tables, chairs and all materials available. You can come to watch or join in and learn their technique of printing using readily available and accessible printmaking materials including sticky foam and yard signs to make art.

This event and workshop is free and open to all.The artists will also have postcards available for sale and be collecting donations to support their work. Donors can also contribute to the project online here: https://gofund.me/edb40d99

 

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The Albuquerque-based Herstory Print Collective will cover Axle's exterior in their prints. For the past couple of years the artists have created a series of portraits of women, and pasted up these prints on walls in Albuquerque. We are thrilled to be able to present their work here in Santa Fe.

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The Herstory Print Collective was founded by Julianna Kirwin, Michele Korte, and Ilene Weiss

The portraits include the faces of Amanda Gorman, Augusta Savage, bell hooks, Malala, Violeta Parra, Tarana Burke, Deb Haaland, Friedle Dicker Brandeis, Dagmar Llewelyn, Greta Thunberg, Jennifer Keelan, Margaret Randall, Rachel Carson, Dolores Huerta, Georgia O’Keefe, Sylvia Rivera and others.

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The women included reflect each artist’s particular desire to hold up their chosen subject's life and amplify their impact. The portraits reflect all kinds of women...race, ability, gender, age, local, national, international, living and passed.

The Herstory print collective often work with community guest artists, many of whom are learning to print for the first time or may be creating portraits for the first time and are growing their visual language.

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herstory/noun/ -- history viewed from a female or specifically feminist perspective with a special attention to the experience of women.

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The artists write short bios of the women depicted in the portraits.

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Amanda Gorman in her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” expressed the deepest feelings that many of us felt as we watched the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden. She is America’s Youth Poet Laureate and more than that, she speaks her truth on issues that America has not been facing or adequately addressing. Her voice is important and essential to the United States that we aspire to be.  

 

Georgia O’Keeffe is so much more than the paintings that she is known for. She is a woman of herstory standing fully in her power. In a history of photography class at UNM, I’ve learned that her husband Alfred Stieglitz photographed every square inch of her body in the fashion that photography normally objectified women with the lens. However, Stieglitz did not direct the narrative of the lens; in fact, O’Keeffe commanded the imagery, taking it from explicit objectification to empowered and visceral artistic expression. 

 

Augusta Savage (1892–1962) was an African-American sculptor, educator, community organizer, curator, mentor, activist, and leader. She was at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. Despite racism, sexism, and being stalked and harassed by Joseph Gould, she was committed to making a place for her work and that of her students. Although little of her work has survived, her students are among many of the better-known black artists today.  

 

Dolores Huerta, civil rights activist born 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico.  Huerta fought for equal rights for farm workers, immigrants, and women.  A recent quote of hers resonated with me deeply, especially in the current environment: “I personally believe that we should get rid of the word race,” Huerta said. “We only have one human race, so when we refer to other people by a ‘race,’ it’s really a misnomer because we only have one human race, it’s called Homo sapiens.”  

 

Deb Haaland is the first indigenous Cabinet Secretary in US history (it’s about time!). A woman from the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, she is a single mother, an environmental guardian who reminds us it is sacred, an advocate for the missing and murdered Native Americans, and a UNM Law School graduate. “I Believe Native Americans, women, and all of us deserve representation, and that we all need to fight with everything we have to make it so.” Deb Haaland       

 

¡Yo! We all have a part in Herstory--how we show up and what we do matters. This self-portrait is a reminder to start within; with what is inspiring to our own hearts, and radiate that outward. It represents all women, and our ability to do amazing things. 

Friedl Dicker Brandeis was an artist, educator and designer who studied at the Bauhaus School. While imprisoned by the Nazis in the Terezin Ghetto Model Camp, she taught children’s art classes. “Sometimes I felt like she was a doctor. She herself was medicine. Until today I cannot understand the mystery of her freedom. It flew into us from her like a current.” -- Edna Amit (artist, student, survivor).  Friedl was murdered, as were many of her young students, in the Auschwitz gas chambers. After the war ended, 5,000 works of art were found in suitcases and under floorboards.  

 

Emma Gonzalez (who uses the pronouns they/them) survived the February 2018 shooting at MSD High School in Parkland, Florida and became a very outspoken gun-control advocate. Gonzales is one of the organizers of March For Our Lives. They inspire me with the beauty of their clear and direct speech after having witnessed such a tragedy. I wanted to honor Emma Gonzalez and all that they stand for.  

 

Dagmar Llewellyn leads the Planning Group at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Albuquerque office, where she and her team use science and public engagement to plan for the impacts of climate change on our water supply, to help us continue to thrive in this arid landscape.  In an interview with Laura Paskus, she said: “There is no new normal. We talk about the flow of the Rio Grande relative to the ‘average’, or to the ‘normal’, but the challenge of climate change is that we’re losing the whole concept of normal, and now must learn to live in a climate, and with a hydrology, that is constantly changing.”  

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Jennifer Keelan (Chaffins) is a lifelong advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. She is portrayed in the mural at age of 8, during a 1990 demonstration in support of the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA). As part of a larger action 60 folks set aside their crutches and wheelchairs to crawl up the Capital stairs in Washington, DC; dramatically illustrating governmental inaccessibility. Her age and determination caught the eyes of Congress and changed some minds. She is still doing this work, “Our family had been subjected to many forms of discrimination, because of my disability, our activism, our socio-economic status, my Mom is a single parent. It’s what made us the advocates/activists that we became.” 

 

Greta Thunberg is a young Swedish activist; she has Asperger’s syndrome, and with her direct and fearless voice has inspired international youth strikes on climate change, fights for gun control, and battles for democratic representation. “How Dare You,” she cries to politicians and the world at large, “How Dare You” feed us fairytale images of a utopia built on endless economic growth, when it fact the greed and lies leave humanity and the planet in a ever-looming state of destruction. 

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Laura Paskus is the environment reporter for New Mexico PBS, where she produces the show, “Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present and Future.” Paskus has been writing about the Rio Grande since 2002, when she began her journalism career at High Country News. She has freelanced and worked for local, regional, and national outlets as a writer, radio producer, and television producer. Her book “At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate,” was published in September 2020 by the University of New Mexico Press. 

 

Violeta Parra was a Chilean composer, singer, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist. With her charango, she played revolutionary and peasant songs She also wrote and composed in the tradition of the music she worked to keep alive. Her most well known song is “Gracias a la Vida”. Violetta’s arpilleras (brightly colored hand-stitched textiles that tell a visual story) were shown at the Louvre in Paris.

 

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist with over 150 books published. Es poeta, escritora, fotógrafa, militante feminista y activista social. Es autora de más de 150 libros de poesía, ensayo y historia oral. Born in New York City, she lived for many years in New Mexico, Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and spent time in North Vietnam during the last months of the U.S. war in that country. “As writers, I believe we must bear witness. Bear witness in our work to life as we know it, this beautiful life they are doing their best to destroy, erase, and make meaningless.”

 

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani-born activist who has risked her life, surviving a shot in the head by the Taliban, in her quest to give women access to education. By the age of 25 she published an autobiography “I am Malala”. She has been granted the Simone de Beauvoir Prize, the Nobel Peace Prize, and is the recipient of countless other awards. Malala co-created an international fund that partners locally in eight countries and advocates for girls becoming agents of change in their communities.   

 

Sylvia Rivera was a trans Latina advocate for the marginalized. She fought against the exclusion of transgender people, especially transgender people of color. She was abandoned by her father, orphaned by age 3 and ostracized by her grandmother. She was living on the streets by age 11 and was a victim of sexual exploitation. After meeting Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera was inspired to help others. Together, they founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young LGBTQ+ youth. She was actively involved in the Stonewall Inn uprising.

 

Tarana Burke is a lifelong activist and community organizer.  While doing this work she met many young women of color who were survivors of sexual violence and abuse. Being a survivor of sexual abuse herself, Burke identified with these young women. Burke began using the phrase ‘me too’ to promote the idea of “empowerment through empathy.” In 2017 people all over the world began posting the phrase on social media to align with the movement. Her work has further expanded and disturbed the silence around violence world-wide.

 

Rachel Carson on the evening news. I remember stopping my play at the sound of her voice, a woman speaking clearly and intelligently on the evening news--a rare occurrence in the early 1960’s. Her book “Silent Spring”, is considered a turning point in the environmental movement, a new perspective on human’s interaction with nature.  Her other books, including “The Sea Around Us” and “The Sense of Wonder” make the relationship between humans and nature more personal. In her words “In nature, nothing exists alone.”

 

bell hooks was a writer, activist, scholar, and educator who helped to redefine feminist discourse beyond the white middle class by making and holding space for the experiences of Black and working-class women. To her accomplishment, bell hooks, wrote and published over 30 books commonly known for addressing issues of “imperialist white supremacy capitalist patriarchy” wherein she calls on all people to fight the forces of oppression and domination. 

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