Outlaw Printmakers

The Outlaws of Printmaking, also known as “The Outlaws” and “Outlaw Printmakers” are a collective of printmaking artists that exists internationally. They formed as a show in New York in Big Cat Gallery in 2000. While searching for a name to designate this loose collective, Tony Fitzpatrick, the owner of the Big Cat Press which is associated with the gallery, decided to call it "Outlaw Printmaking" to reflect attitudes of the printmakers involved and their non-academic approach to prints. Sean Star Wars elaborated that the circumstance of it is what really made it happen, since it happened during the Southern Graphic Council Conference was happening at the same time, helped get them all together in the first place ). Many of the artists associated with the movement cite the printmaker/artist Richard Mock as a primary influence. Mock's political and social narrative prints appeared in the New York Times op-ed pages for more than a decade in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Organized by Tom Huck, the traveling exhibition titled “Outlaw Printmaking” started touring the nation in 2003 including works by Sue Coe, Michael Krueger, Peregrine Honig, and Bill Fick. Their work can be found in the collections of the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The New York Public Library, New York, New York, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Artists/Printmakers

Richard Mock

Richard Mock (1944 – July 28, 2006) was a printmaker, painter, sculptor, and editorial cartoonist. Mock was best known for his linocut illustrations that appeared on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times from 1980 through 1996.[1]

Born in 1944 in Long Beach, California, Mock earned his bachelor's degree, studying lithography and block printing, at the University of Michigan. Settling in New York City in 1968, Mock had exhibitions at 112 Greene Street, The Whitney (in 1973), Exit Art, and his most recent show at the Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn. In addition, Mock's art frequently appeared on the covers of the magazines Fifth Estate (Official site: www.FifthEstate.org), Alternative Press Review and Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. His work has been cited as an influence by a number of contemporary American printmakers, among them Tom Huck and Bill Fick. Huck and Fick are both members of a group of artists known as the "Outlaw Printmakers", which as a collective unit cite Mock's work as one of its main influences.

Mock died on July 28, 2006 after a long illness.

Bill Fick

Bill Fick (born on October 19, 1963 in Lirik, Sumatra, Indonesia) moved to the United States when he was young and he received his B.A. from Duke University in 1986 and his M.F.A. from University of North Carolina-Greensboro in 1990. Bill Fick is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke University. He has exhibited in several solo and group shows nationally and internationally including the Czech Republic, New Zealand, and Finland. In addition, throughout his career, Fick has acted as a visiting artist, artist in residence, and professor to several art schools across the country.

Sean Starwars

"Country Croc 2" from the "One Woodcut a Week" project

Sean Starwars is a printmaker living and working in Laurel, Mississippi. He is a relief printmaking artist specializing in woodcut printmaking. Sean Starwars recently completed a project titled 'One Woodcut a Week" and is currently working on his new project 'One Woodcut a Day'. Sean Starwars B.A. from Old Dominion University in 1996 and his M.F.A. from Louisiana State University in 1999. On his name “At first it amused him to have professionals address him as “Mr. Starwars,” but he soon discovered it was also a great marketing tool for his woodcuts. “My real last name is pretty common,” he said. “This is a way I could stand out.””

Tom Huck

Tom Huck (born 1971) is an American printmaker best known for his large scale satirical woodcuts. He lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri where he runs his own press, Evil Prints. He is a regular contributor to BLAB! of Fantagraphics Books. His work draws heavily upon the influence of Albrecht Dürer, José Guadalupe Posada, R. Crumb, and Honoré Daumier Huck states in his artist statement: "My work deals with personal observations about the experiences of living in a small town in southeast Missouri. The often Strange and Humorous occurrences, places, and people in these towns offer a never-ending source of inspiration for my prints. I call this work 'rural satire' Huck's woodcut prints are included in numerous public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Spencer Museum of Art, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Saint Louis Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Fogg Art Museum, and New York Public Library. Huck is represented by David Krut Art Projects in New York, New York, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo. and Eli Ridgway Gallery in San Francisco, Ca. In September 2011 Huck was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.

Tony Fitzpatrick

Tony Fitzpatrick (born 1958) is an American artist born and based in Chicago.

He graduated from Montini Catholic High School in Lombard, Illinois in 1977.[1] In the early 1980s, Fitzpatrick began seriously drawing with colored pencils on slate boards in a store front gallery in the town of Villa Park, Illinois. The gallery was called The Edge. He worked by day and bartended at the bar across the street at night. During that time, he developed separate friendships with Chicago radio personality and bluesman Buzz Kilman and film director Jonathan Demme. Demme and Kilman are longtime friends, and the three became close. As a result, Tony has appeared in a few of Demme's films and other films as well. During the late 1980s, he begin getting gallery shows in Chicago and New York City, establishing connections that would lead him to be a successful working artist who has sold paintings to several film directors, among others. Tony is also an accomplished poet and has published several books of his art and poetry, including The Hard Angels and The Neighborhood. Sports often figures into his art and poetry; especially his favorite baseball team, the Chicago White Sox, but he also gains inspiration from the city of Chicago, and the underbelly of society. Tony in his past has been a boxer, bouncer, and bartender; along with several jobs as a waiter.

In November 2009, Newcity named Tony Fitzpatrick the "Best iconic Chicago personality now that Studs is gone."[2]

David Sandlin

David Sandlin (born 1956) is a Northern Irish-born American artist. His drawings, prints, paintings, and installations are in private and public collections worldwide, and his limited-edition artist's books are in the collections of several prominent libraries, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York University, and Bard College. He has been the recipient of grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Swann Foundation, and the Penny McCall Foundation. In 2010, Sandlin was awarded a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Since he began his professional career as an artist in the 1980s, visual narrative has been a core component of his work. In addition to painting and printmaking, since 1995 Sandlin has worked on a book series, A Sinner’s Progress, in various formats ranging from hand-silkscreened editions to an abecedarium published by Fantagraphics. Sandlin is also well known for his illustration work for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and other periodicals. His comics have been published in many anthologies, including Raw and The Best American Comics 2009, edited by Charles Burns. He lives and works in New York City.

Dennis McNett

Dennis McNett (born in 1972 in Virginia) is a printmaker living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Currently, McNett is the director of WolfBat Studios, which specializes in woodblock printmaking. Dennis McNett. He received his B.A. from Old Dominion University in 2000 and his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York in 2004. McNetts work deals with a raw graphic style reminiscent of skateboarding and punk rock. “His work ranges from larger than life Viking ship performances/parades in Philly, resurrecting Nordic giants on West Broadway in Manhattan, Dragon slayings in Oklahoma, masks, installations and sculptures to unique hand-carved wood cut pieces, traditional relief prints, and graphics.”

Sue Coe

Sue Coe (born 28 November 1951 in Tamworth, Staffordshire) is an English artist and illustrator working primarily in drawing and printmaking, often in the form of illustrated books and comics. She grew up close to a slaughterhouse and developed a passion to stop cruelty to animals. Coe studied at the Royal College of Art in London, lived in New York City from 1972 to 2001. She currently lives in upstate New York. Her work is highly political, often directed against capitalism and cruelty to animals.For a quarter century she has explored factory farming, meat packing, apartheid, sweat shops, prisons, AIDS, and war. Her commentary on political events and social injustice is published in newspapers, magazines and books. The results of her investigations are hung in museum and gallery exhibitions and form an essential part of personal fine print collections by artists and activists alike. Coe's paintings and prints are auctioned as fund raisers for a variety of progressive causes, and since 1998, she has sold prints to benefit animal rights organizations.

Her major influences include the works of Chaim Soutine and José Guadalupe Posada, Käthe Kollwitz, Francisco Goya and Rembrandt. She is a frequent contributor to World War 3 Illustrated, and has seen her work published in The Progressive, Mother Jones, Blab, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Newsweek The Nation and countless other periodicals.

Ericka Walker

Ericka Walker (born June 16, 1981 in Hartford, Wisconsin) is an American artist and printmaker. She lives and works in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Julia Curran

Julia Curran (born April 5, 1988 in Saint Louis, Missouri) is an artist and printmaker living and working in Nashville, Tennessee. She is the youngest member of the Outlaw Printmakers and is known for her colorful and vivid large-scale silkscreen collages. According to her artist statement, Curran's work is "...a satirical deconstruction of American pop-culture and socio-political history, and how fear and the desires to own and to control drive hyper-masculinity and hyper-consumption." Curran primarily works in silkcreen, relief, and mixed-media collage.

External links

• Evil Prints Official Site
• "Brutal Truth" exhibition at SLUMA, 2011.
• Sean Starwars official site
• Dennis McNett Official Website
• Julia Curran Official Website