Pressing Change: How Educating and Printmaking Empower Communities

When it comes to social justice, teaching can inspire tremendous change. But when the subject being taught is printmaking, in what ways does the practice also inform the printmaker? In their exhibition “Pressing Change,” printmakers and educators Felisa Adderley, Joy Lai and Sofie Rose Seymour pull from their experience in both worlds to examine the ways the act of printmaking intersects with the act of educating—and how both can be tools to share information and empower communities.

This exhibition pairs the artists’ striking print work with a series of free workshops—sharing affordable printmaking practices with the public they hope to serve. How is your message heard when, carved into a linoleum block, it can be stamped over and over again? What empowerment is found when you are given the opportunity to reclaim and reshape the symbols that shaped you? How can the repetition and layers of printmaking become practice for the tireless advocacy and nuance of social justice work?