Yiran Guo (郭逸然) lives and works in Shanghai and New York. Her work ranges across experimental animation, printing, painting and ceramics. Recent residencies include the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, EFA North Fork and SVA Riso Lab. Her experimental animation has been screened in film festivals around the world, and her self-published artist book Höuse is held in the New York Public Library. She has an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and has taught at Johns Hopkins University.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Hide
“Hide is a series of Risograph prints that are part of an animation project 像 (Xiàng). The animation is inspired by a story from the Liezi, one of the Daoist classics. The story starts with a man who kills a deer and hides it under banana leaves. When he returns the deer has disappeared, and he thinks it must have been a dream. One day the man tells the story to a fisherman, who then goes out and finds the deer. The first man meanwhile dreams about the fisherman, and based on this dream sets out to find him—and the deer. Fascinated by the ambiguity of dreams and reality in the story, I made a series of collages with found images from traditional Chinese medical books and mono prints from the animation. The deer and the man hide and reappear from print to print.”

Cordato Man
“Cortado Man is a Riso printed accordion zine. The book unfolds into one hand-sized accordion page, bound by another smaller accordion page, filled with many big and small cartado men.”

“All men poured in Shanghai, printed by Yiran Guo at SVA Riso Lab in New York City. Summer of 2024.”

JooHee Yoon is a Rhode Island based illustrator and designer whose works can often be seen in magazines and newspapers such as The New York Times, posters, picture books, and textiles. Much of her process is informed by experiences with traditional printmaking techniques, separating layers by hand and exploring a limited color palette.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

During the residency JooHee experimented with combining analog collage and drawing techniques separating the color layers by hand and printing using the scan bed, embracing the serendipitous mistakes that occurred to create a series of prints inspired by the natural world.

Chase Taylor is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator whose practice spans illustration, animation, fashion, and painting. His work unfolds within a playful and provocative universe where alien temptresses shapeshift to embody themes of desire, fear, and queerness. Rooted in his upbringing in the Bible Belt, Chase’s work critically reinterprets the tensions between secular culture and Christian tradition, seeking out unexpected harmonies and nuanced perspectives.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

This print series explores the fusion of fashion, drag, and cartooning as a bold experiment in gender expression and character design. Through a collection of fashion illustrations, I present an imaginative response to societal divisions around LGBT+ identity, race, and religion. By embracing the absurdity of optimism and hope, the project proposes a vision of unity that transcends cultural differences, offering both amusement and insight in the face of divisiveness.

Josh Gosfield is an award-winning Art Director, Illustrator and Photographer. He was the director of New York Magazine for 10 years. He has created covers for the New Yorker and illustrated for all the major publishers, book and record record companies including The New York Times, Time Magazine, Random House, Sony, as well as having created artworks for Levi’s, Starbucks. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and many other clients. His projects such as the digital “Saint of the Month Club” and “Gigi – The Black Flower” (the recreation of a fictional celebrity) have been featured and written about in the New Yorker, New York Magazine, Print Magazine and The New York Times. His art has been shown in numerous solo and group shows in galleries and museums in the US and Europe. He co-wrote the book “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do & How They Do it So Well,” is the co-founder of Future Me, an innovative workshop to help young people identify and pursue their life dreams, and during the pandemic, he published “Public Eye,” a zine, featuring top artists and illustrators depicting their heroes.

Claudia Sohrens is a multidisciplinary artist, originally from Germany, based in Brooklyn. She received her MA in Media & Communication from the European Graduate School (EGS) in Switzerland, where she is a PhD candidate.

Sohrens’s practice is rooted in a discourse on photography and photographic representation. Her work is informed by feminist theory and politics and unfolds through a range of media –photography, video, books, sound, and installation, and has been presented in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her work is featured in private and museum collections at the Bronx Museum, Brooklyn Museum and ICP.

Sohrens received a NYSCA grant in 2023 for her most recent project that examines politics of reproduction, abortion rights and bodily autonomy. Other fellowships awarded to her include the 2023 SVA RisoLAB Residency, 2023 MGC Fellowship, 2018 VSC Residency, the 2017 ICP Artist Residency, 2014-15 A.I.R. Fellowship, the 2010 NYFA Fellowship for Photography, and the AIM23 Residency at the Bronx Museum.

Paige Fulton is a multidisciplinary artist and chaotic storyteller. Paige is inspired by nature, patterns, the ancestors and DIY outsider art. A mercurial zine maker at heart, Paige is founder of  DA HOLOGRAM, a publisher-channel-distro based in NYC that specializes in positive propaganda and psychedelic black power design comics. 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
“Water Poems is a chapbook. It’s a collection of poems, one page comics, and other streams that were channeled during my transition from living in Mexico City to NYC from 2020-2022. During the residency I attended Aidan’s Art Books class, which helped me see the running themes in my work and put them together in a more formal presentation. Turns out water was on my mind the whole time. Printed at RisoLAB for the Summer 2023 Residency. 5 x 7 inches. 6 colors. Very cute and a little scary.”

Amiko Li is a visual artist working in photography, text and video. His works explore the paradox of intimacy and distance.  He is the recipient of the PDN The Curator Award, Center Project Launch Award, and Royal Ulster Academy Portrait Prize. Exhibition and projections include Center for Art, Research, and Alliance, New York; The Shed, New York; Ulster Museum, Ireland; Haus der Elektronischen Künste, Switzerland; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, China; Power Station of Art, China; and Flat Earth Film Festival, Iceland. His work and photographs have appeared on publications include Adbusters; American Chordata; Artforum; Esquire Russia; Juxtapoz; New Yorker; T Magazine and DIE ZEIT. 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
“During my time at RisoLAB, I enjoyed experimenting with the elegant simplicity of duotone, playing around with both found photographs and ones I’d made myself. By blending these different sources, I aimed to achieve a consistent dreamlike quality infused with a sense of mystery. My goal was to highlight the simple joy found in the colors and compositions of everyday objects and situations that were unnoticed by people. These overlooked moments become elements of my larger art installation titled ‘Sound Leaks,’ where they took on experiences of translation between images, sound and text.”

Dominica Harrison is an award winning artist from Moscow currently based in UK. She specialises in animation direction and illustration, with a particular focus on printmaking. Dominica’s work is inspired by the themes of nostalgia, memory and ritual.

Her  short film ‘Illusions’ was made entirely using a screenprint technique and had worldwide success at festivals and art exhibitions. She has worked as a painter and animator on feature animation ‘Loving Vincent’. She has also collaborated on mural, illustration and performance projects with artists from Kathmandu, Nepal; Oaxaca, Mexico, India and USA.

Her latest short film ‘Chado’ made with the support from BFI Network and produced by Animate Project has been longlisted for BAFTA 2021 and shown in more than 40 international festivals and selected for Vimeo Staff Pick.

As part of the presentation of the film, Dominica has toured UK with two solo shows showcasing printmaking work from the film. Rather than looking at animation solely as a form of cinema, Dominica is interested in presenting her films in the art and design spaces, working in the intersection between animation, performance and installation.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

For the risolab artist-in-residency program, Dominica created a 40-pages, 7 colour riso-printed book titled ‘Lover’s Leap’. The story explored the concept of ‘leap of faith’, looking at it from the perspective of religion and relationships. The story presents a diary-type narrative following a couple travelling  between continents and their conversations discussing the nature of faith, buddhism, paganism and the future of their relationship.

Dominica chose to include 2 animation sequences in the book, presented as a double spread of consecutive frames. These sequences illustrate the abstract ‘vision’ that characters receive while on their journey and add another narrative layer to the book.

Dominica presented the book with a signing event at Desert Island comics on 18th May 2023.

Sarah Zarina Hakani is a Shi’a Muslim multidisciplinary artist, based in Brooklyn, New York. With a background in neuroscience, Islamic studies, and education, she explores how linguistic repetition impacts memory. She relies on print/mark-making and Zikr (repeated invocation or prayer), as a basis for her explorations of repetition and mutable memory.

Sarah has been in-residence at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, POCOAPOCO, The Anderson Center, and more. Professionally, she builds inclusive technologies and curriculums for people of varying abilities and has partnered with organizations including Algorithmic Justice League, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, and Processing Foundation to increase accessibility and safety on the web. In 2018, she founded a creative publication that amplifies the narratives of marginalized Muslims, and she teaches in the Interactive Media Arts department at NYU Tisch. 

Angie Maria Hewitt is a Brooklyn based illustrator + comic artist whose work is inspired by mystery, memory and the otherworldly. Her work is heavily line-based, textural and features wonky characters who often embody adventure and curiosity. Focusing on the many odd things in daily life, she hopes to bring attention to some often overlooked moments with her art and comics. Her range of clients include Titmouse Animation, Cartoon Network Studios, Nickelodeon, Millie Magazine, The New Yorker, and Macmillan. She has worked in collaborative comics projects with Lucky Pocket Press and ShortBox Comics and her debut graphic novel Lone is being published through Vault Comics in 2023. She is currently working on her next unannounced graphic novel series while continuing to create independent mini-comics and zines in her free time.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

“For my project, I made a Risograph-printed zine with an accompanying print set series – the zine is a dreamlike fictional diary of illustrations, comic strips, poems, and collaged original drawings all encapsulating reflections on childish imagination, memory, physical and internal growth and the emotions tied to the inevitable passage of time in a non-linear narrative story using innocent yet emotionally devastating characters in a crushing yet beautiful world. If the print series is flipped through quickly, it has a choppy animated effect to simulate a walk cycle – the illustrations are of a character running, morphing into something new, growing and gaining while simultaneously shrinking and losing. I experiment with the limitations of riso printing to enhance imperfections as well as explore the contrasting emotion elicited from the vibrant ink colors used and the sombre content. My goal was to inspect the inherent beauty in terrifying concepts such as time, life and therefore, death using Risograph printing as the main vehicle to further acknowledge that even the printed material I make has a life span. The tangibility of the zine and prints will showcase its fragility while the content printed on the pages will expose its worth as an archive of imagination and curiosity.”

Kacie Lees is a multidisciplinary artist who examines optical phenomena and the affective powers of light. Splitting her time between Brooklyn and Chicago, Lees teaches the craft of neon bending at New York University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2021, she published the contemporary neon bible, ‘Neon Primer: A Handbook on Light Construction’ (Plazma Press, 2021), now available worldwide.

Lees’ work is currently on view at The Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA (2023), and The Museum of Neon Art, Glendale, CA (2017-2023) and is preparing for an upcoming commission for the Rakow Research Library at The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

“For my Fall 2022 residency at the RisoLAB, I experimented with color, made a series of psychedelic suminagashi prints and furthered an investigation into nuclear energy and ultraviolet light.

The Warped Print Series features layered suminagashi prints (aka “floating ink”) placed on the Risograph’s scanner top and distorted via scale, color and location to create images with vibratory visual effects.

The High Energy Print Series is an eclectic survey of pop culture takes on nuclear power, faster than light travel, and early photographic processes that see outside the optical spectrum — alluding to the idea that light is a key to new dimensions.

Making work at the RisoLAB was a blast! I greatly appreciate the unprecedented access to the Risograph machines and the support from Pan, Andrew and Sarula along the way.”

Kate Hush is a Detroit based conceptual artist working primarily in the mediums of neon and fluorescent pigment with a passion for color and light. For the past decade she has been shaping light and phosphorescent hues into vignettes of wily women, poking fun at the hyperbolic male gaze. Taking part in every step of the process from conception to electrification. Kate’s work has been featured across the globe in museums, fine art publications, and films; as well as commissioned for several high profile ad campaigns.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

“Forever fascinated by the way women can be punished through portrayal, my artwork seeks to poke fun and flip the idea of the myopically-male-gazey wicked woman on its head. After years of depicting freeze frames of these wily characters out of sculpted neon light, I wanted to explore using the centuries-old medium of the printed message where the actions of women have been sensationalized across the globe since Gutenberg’s first press. Calling on the rich history of puritan-driven propaganda through print, from the Salem Witch Trials to the Temperance Movement and now all the way to the Risograph’s own use in modern churches to spread The Word fast and quick – I’ve circulated my own messages about what really happens amongst the sisterhood when the men are all asleep. Will you heed the warnings?”

Marco Scozzaro is an Italian artist based in NYC, working across photography, video, performance, music, and installation. He studied Psychology at the University of Parma, Italy, and Photography at the School of Visual Arts, NY.

His work has been the subject of solo shows including Baxter St, NY, and FMAV Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, Modena, Italy. Selected group shows include the Bronx Museum, Aperture Foundation, Microscope Gallery, BRIC, in NY, and the Lishui Photography Festival in China, among others.

He has been awarded residencies and fellowships by BRIC, the Institute for Electronic Arts, the Camera Club of New York, and the Bronx Museum for the Arts, NY. His work has appeared on Artnet, Der Greif, GUP, and Osmos and his photographs have been commissioned by The New York Times, Vogue, and Wallpaper, among others. With his project l’oggetto he releases underground dance music on his label MKDF Records.

He teaches in the MFA Photography program at Parsons and BFA Photography and Video at SVA in NY.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

“My work explores media and consumer culture and the RISO duplicator has been a logical tool to explore and incorporate into my practice. During my residency at the RisoLab, I worked on deconstructing my images, reducing them to their essential elements, and translating them into something different from the prints I usually make. I mostly worked with duotones, playing with the halftones, inverting the image, and layering the incredible hues and saturations that the Riso inks deliver.

“I am interested in archives and I collect ephemera of all kinds, including my daughter’s drawings. I thought this residency was the perfect opportunity for the two of us to collaborate on an edition. Can I Play With You? is my latest artist book made in collaboration with Futura, who is 6 years old. The book sets another chapter in my ongoing exploration of contemporary imaging, visual vernacular, and the stereotypical language induced by mass media. Futura’s figurative drawings are juxtaposed with my abstract photographs, creating subtle intergenerational conversations that expand into open narratives.”

Asuka Ohsawa is a Brooklyn-based artist who works primarily in the medium of printmaking, artist’s books, and drawing. Her graphic works fuse elements of popular culture, found images, and comics to reveal personal narratives that mine the wonders and worries of her world.

Her works are included in numerous public and private collections, including: Center for Book Arts in New York, NY; San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA; Emily Carr University of Arts and Design, Vancouver, Canada; State University of New York at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY; Ohio University, Athens, OH; the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC, Wellington Management, Boston, MA; Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH; and Japigozzi Collection, New York, NY. She received BFA from California State University, Long Beach, and MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She is a Lecturer in the Department of Print, Paper, and Graphic Arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston as well as at Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Project Description:
“My project for the residency entitled Press/Play was all about play and exploration as a learning process. Prior to my residency at the RisoLAB at SVA, I had working familiarity with Risograph, but my experience with the medium was limited to reproduction purposes. During the duration of the residency, my focus was to explore the potentials of Risograph as an artistic medium that is unique and distinct from any of the traditional printmaking or digital print mediums. Building on my previous body of work that focused on the strange power of objects that trigger memories and emotions, I used images from the printed ephemera that I have collected over the past two decades. Admission tickets, hand-written notes, cigarette packages, somebody else’s drawings, maps, coasters, food packages, magazine photos, postcards, match labels, stickers – these seemingly insignificant ephemera from various locations in the world evoke personal (and perhaps collective) stories of the tremendous restlessness and global nature of our contemporary life. I scanned, digitally processed, and printed these images on top of one another randomly. The immediacy of Risograph and its ability to produce multiple-color prints relatively quickly allowed me to incorporate more spontaneous and experimental approach to image making. The transparent nature of Riso inks offered an opportunity for color mixing and overlap, and the range of textures Risograph could reproduce helped to create additional layers for visual effects. The modification I made in my original digital matrices could be printed out and viewed instantly, which helped me to form my ideas much more quickly and expansively than I would have with labor-intense traditional printmaking mediums. Once I was satisfied with my experiment, I chose some of the best prints from the large number of one-of-a-kind prints I made, and re-printed them to be bound into a book. I am grateful for the general support from the RisoLAB that made this learning process possible.”

Alexander Laird is a comic artist, who illustrates, and also produces videos, films and animations. Using a variety of mediums and forms from plasticine to vhs pixel art to risograph printing, he works to create absurd, weird and psychedelic stories. Alexander is based in New York, NY but is from Toronto, Ontario originally where he graduated from York University, in Toronto, ON in May of 2016, majoring in film production, and minoring in history.

He has had his work featured with platforms and publications such as the New Yorker, the New York Times, Vice, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The FADER, Okayplayer, FORGE Art Magazine, NoBudge, SLUG, not to mention numerous album covers and gig posters. In May 2018 he was nominated for the Doug Wright Awards for his comic series Crohl’s House. He is the co-founder of Sensitive Athletes, a filmmaking and comic making collective where he releases most of his work through.

Project Description:
“For my Summer 2019 Artist-in-Residence at the RisoLAB, my primary focus was developing a comedy/comics/video show, hosted by myself somewhere in Brooklyn. The original plan was for the show to happen 3 or 4 times a year and to publish a collected curated zine to go along with each show. Each zine would coincide with a show that would have brand new comics, writing and other materials from performers, collaborators, as well as from myself. I spent a lot of time developing my personal comic work, including finishing the funky spiral bound Videogame Comic, working on a comic series The prestige television series, Goblins, and reprinting my watercolor/pixel art/plasticine adventure comic Oubliette. Most of these printed projects would contribute to the larger show and zine project.

After completing the residency I continued to develop the show idea. It eventually became a monthly show called BIG MILK which had two successful packed-house shows in February and March in 2020. Shortly after the second show in March everyone quarantined and I had to bring the show online – the first online show was in May. You can watch that and whatever future live-streams that happen on bigmilk.online

In the future, pandemic pending, I will continue the work I was developing during the residency and create a new regularly published BIG MILK mini-zine that would coincide with the show apparatus. The mini-zine would include interviews, art, and new comics from people who have and will perform on the show.”

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Heesang Lee is currently working as a book designer in New York. She was an Artist-in-Residence at the RisoLAB during the summer of 2019. During her time at the RisoLAB, Lee used the unpredictable nature of the Riso printing process to inform her botanically inspired print designs.

Project Description:
“I’m interested in capturing a moment of real life and presenting observation through my interpretation. The “moment” embraces all sensory experiences of the scene I encounter. In the scene, the subject constantly changes due to the shift of time, light, and perspective. Interactions with the subject are visualized through my works; moreover, I amplify small and mundane traits that could easily go unnoticed into beauties.”

Erin Palumbo is a multidisciplinary artist and designer from New York. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018. During her time as a resident at the RisoLAB, she also participated in Textile Arts Center’s Cycle 10 Artist In Residence Program. Her project, Cute Soft, was first shown at TAC’s Cycle 10 exhibition this past September.

Currently she is pursuing a Master of Science in Textile Design at Thomas Jefferson University, specializing in knitted textile sciences. From 2019-2020, she was the Graduate Assistant for Jefferson University’s Surface Imaging Lab. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she will be the Graduate Assistant for Jefferson’s Knit Lab.

Project Description:
“Comprised of 56 hand-bound Risograph books and an interactive installation, Cute Soft serves to translate a digital aesthetic into a physical entity by means of printmaking and textile fabrication. As the viewer read through the Risograph book while standing inside of the installation, they were completely immersed within the realm of Cute Soft, a hallucinogenic, manipulated space of my making. Through the mixing of visual styles and psychedelic color, Cute Soft playfully explored the escapist qualities of “cuteness” and its relation to consumption in a post-internet society. To further emphasize this idea, I designed and constructed two garments with digitally printed fabric depicting artwork exhibited inside of the Risograph book. One garment was displayed alongside the installation while the other was worn by myself to the opening night of the exhibition.”

Born and raised in Shanghai, Pixy Liao is an artist currently residing in New York. Her long-term photo project Experimental Relationship challenges conventional ideas of gender dynamics. She also explores female identity in video and sculpture. She has participated in exhibitions and performances internationally, including the Rencontres d’Arles in Arles (France); Asia Society (Houston); National Gallery of Australia (Sydney); Chambers Fine Art Gallery (New York & Beijing); Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong); Stieglitz 19 Gallery (Belgium); Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool); the Museum of Sex (New York); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing); and He Xiangning Art Museum (China).

Project Description:
“I made a series of Riso prints for my conceptual project: Evil Women Cult. This project is devoted to all the powerful female rulers in the history who were described as evil women. I made Riso prints based on historical images and also photographs I made in the past. The technique I use is basically splitting color images into one or two color channels and combining them with a different color paper.”

Wren McDonald is an illustrator and cartoonist living in Brooklyn, NY. He’s the author of the cyberpunk epic, SP4RX and dystopian revenge story, Cyber Realm as well as several other self-published minicomics including his current series Precinct X99 as well as editing Ex.Mag for Peow. He’s worked with clients including The New York Times, The New Yorker, VICE, Wired, GQ and more.

In the Summer of 2019, Wren joined the RisoLAB faculty. He teaches Mini-Comics: From Page to Production at the LAB as both an in-person and online course.

Project description:
“Body Work is a minicomic about a cyborg that falling apart on the way to get repaired. It’s 24 pages and printed with red and violet ink on natural paper. Various prints and experiments were also created over the course of the residency, including City Chemist, Panels, and more.”

Alfonso de Anda is a Mexican illustrator based in Mexico City with a strong inclination for communication and storytelling. He graduated from the MFA illustration program from The School of Visual Arts and has worked for clients like Google, The New York Times and Snapchat. Aside from commercial work and teaching workshops, Alfonso focuses on printed media, self-publishing, painting murals, and woodworking.

Project Description:
“While doing the residency I focused on printing 2 zines: Pick up notice, a 20 page zine about being mad at the US postal service printed in black, yellow, green and blue, and I wanted to close my eyes cause of the music but Kept them open because it was beautiful, a 16 page zine about seeing the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor live printed in Black, Bright red and Fluorescent Pink. I also printed a couple of prints including one printed on paper bags.”

Ivy Zheyu Chen is an artist and self-publisher based in New York. She founded UPON studio in 2018 with a pure intention: to explore anything for fun and experience. Ivy has been showing at various Art Book Fairs such as New York Art Book Fair, Los Angeles Art Book Fair, and many others. Her artist books have been collected by major institutions such as the Library of The Metropolitan Museum, retail operations of The Whitney Museum, the Library of Yale University and Rhode Island School of Design, and many more.

Project Description:
“My project during the RisoLAB residency focused on color, form, and texture. The Risograph machine renders colors in a soft, powdery look which I found intriguing. I experimented with all the ways colors blend into each other, while exposing the bones of the gradient compositions.”

Aidan Fitzgerald received a BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Washington. He was the co-founder of the free Seattle all-comics newspaper Intruder, and the graphic designer for the Seattle small press festival APRIL. He started Cold Cube Press in 2015, and dedicated his art practice to publishing and showcasing other artists and illustrators. Over the years, Cold Cube has published over 120 artists and writers from all over the world. He was the managing editor of Gramma Poetry, and he has taught classes at Western Washington University, Hugo House (Seattle), and Seattle Central Community College. He lives in Seattle for the time being.

Project Description:
“I wanted to make books that used an iterative process, from their conception to their execution. For the book Any Day Now, each page is a stage in the iteration of two drawings: the drawings on the left side of the book slowly add to each other, like a stop motion animation. The drawings on the right side of the book take elements from each preceding page to build in their complexity. I wanted to make a short animation film of an abstract drawing, in book form. For Absolutely Something, I used an algorithm plug-in in Photoshop to generate “Content-Aware” sections of a digital drawing, and then printed the hand-made tracing of each drawing. The book progresses from the “final” iteration of this drawing, to the first iteration. For Ten Portraits, I wanted to use the widest-ranging color gamut I could create on the Riso, to produce an accurate representation of the color pencil portraits I was making.”

“For over 40 years, I have been on a creative journey. My guides, have been the Personas, representatives from another dimension, here for peaceful purposes, which I have meditatively wrapped into human and animal forms as archetypes of human potential. In 1979, I quit an intellectual approach to art making and instead explored my art through intuitive channels. Along the way, I investigated various forms of spirituality from Taoist to transcendentalist; from Buddhism to shamanism. I feel I have been a medium for the Persona creation. To date, I have I have been compelled to make 31,000+ individual sculptures and also thousands of drawings, prints, paintings, and tableaus. The Personas and their images have been exhibited world-wide. The meditative and intuitive nature of my relationship with the Personas has directed me to seek connectivity beyond myself. This non-western, non-ego approach encouraged me to begin creating sharing communities like Public Image (NYC) in the 80’s and Artwell Gallery in the 90’s into the 21 Century with my new online venture, personaland.com – my online global arts villages that has showcased over 260 artists from 38 countries, a movie,“Fugitive,” dancing flowers, wishing well and challenging art games. More to come.”

After graduating from Cornell University’s Fine Arts program in 2011, Rachel Shim participated in Scholastic’s Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Residency and Brooklyn Art Space Recent Graduate Residency for painting. She was awarded the Korean Government Scholarship in 2012 to pursue an MFA in Visual Communication Design abroad. While residing in Seoul, she participated in the Seoul Design Festival, Venice Biennale with MOTOElastico, and taught Design at Seoul National University and Hongik University. Upon returning to New York City in 2015, she has collaborated on a wide range of design projects. She was also an Artist-in-Residence at the RisoLAB in 2017 and collaborated with SVA’s MFA Visual Narrative program to create the identity for their 2018 thesis exhibition. In her most recent role as a Visual Designer at Language Dept., her interests revolve around design systems and the exploration of data visualization.

Project Description:
“This residency gave me the time and space to explore my interests through a medium that encourages play and experimentation. I seek to articulate stumbled-upon coincidences and cross-cultural experiences that invite dualities in the familiar-foreign, public-private, permanent-temporal. The root of my imagery are loose adaptations of architectural forms and objects native to New York City’s landscape. Through layering strange new textures, shapes, and colors, I found great joy in the limitless ways to activate space on a single printed page. Ultimately, this body of work aims to capture momentary feelings of belonging to a place, influenced and reflected by our forever fluctuating environment.”

Born in Pulau Bidong, Malaysia and raised in Cleveland OH, Thu Tran is an artist, writer, and producer. She is the author of Dust Pam, published by Peow Studios, and the illustrator of Weed: Everything You Wanted To Know… written by Michelle Lhooq, published by Prestel. Her comics have been published in anthologies Kuš Brooklyn, Colorama Clubhouse #11, and Lifted Brow #43. She is the co-creator and host of cooking shows for IFC and MTV, (Food Party, Late Night Munchies), and short-form videos and animations for outlets such as Adult Swim, SuperDeluxe, Giphy. Her work has shown at Museum of Moving Images, Babycastles, and Fantastic Arcade.

Project Description:
Food Sheets
“This is set of food drawings where I was trying to explore different color combinations in riso. Each sheet is somewhat thematic – breakfasts, dinners, seafoods, snacks, etc. Not very deep just meant to look fun.”

Walk in The Zoo
“Before I knew what Risograph was, I tried to mimic the look with inkjet printing. I had fallen in love with the print quality of John Pham’s Epoxy from 2014, mainly the blue and fluo pink lines and the limited color palette which I later learned was ubiquitous to Riso. I had an older zine I inkjet printed only 20 copies of, and wanted to do a proper run of 100 in Risograph. I updated the zine by drawing new backgrounds for each spread, redid the lettering, and separated the colors. The zine is inspired by bestiaries and is a stream of conscious walk thru a mysterious place and encountering strange creatures.”

Nail Posters
“I printed these as decoration for my mother’s nail salon. For a while, she decorated her salon with the free posters she would receive from her suppliers, which would often be glamour shots of hand and feet models with logo overlays. My dad complained that her shop was looking “junky” and would encourage me to make some new art for her salon. I coordinated a photoshoot with Josef Kraska to photograph, Jocelyn Helm to hand model, Lauren Gregory to feet model and Miss Pop Nails to do the nail art. We created a photo set that tried to mimic the imagery from the nail supplier posters, but without the branding. Something cohesive that might blend in the background but also look nice and relaxing. I used faux CMYK to print the different color channels in riso. Funnily enough, my mother rejected these, complaining the prints were too small, that the nails don’t look perfect enough, and that it lacked the high definition of a photograph. I cried and threw them all away. We went shopping at the thrift store and found paintings to hang instead.”

Duotone Figure Drawing Workshop
“The idea behind this workshop was to draw figures from observation using 2 colors, looking at cools and warms, lights and darks, or whatever logic made sense to you. Students drew on two pieces of paper to account for each color layer, and printed directly from the scanner bed of the Risograph. In hindsight, maybe an impractical exercise to make duplicates of sketchy figure drawings, but the results were loose and colorful.”

Alyssa Berg was born in the Great Northwest and is currently based in Brooklyn where she paints, studies plants, and self-publishes small edition zines, comics, and art books. Her work has appeared in Smoke Signal, INK BRICK, and on the Comics Workbook website where she won the 2015 Composition Competition. She has completed residences at AS220 in Providence and at the RisoLab at SVA. In 2019, Grindstone Comics and Czap Books published her edition of Ley Lines titled, “Forget-Me-Not.”

Project Description:
“In Recollections, a collection of Risograph-printed comics made between 2013 and 2016, I presented a selection of my poetry comics inspired by dreams, loss, and longing. Each image began as a full color painting and was meticulously color-separated and translated into Riso prints using between three and 8 ink colors. The books are 32 pages, hand bound in a faux-perfect binding style with silk screened covers, and made in an edition of 100.”

Greg Foley is an artist, designer, author and illustrator. He was born in the Philippines, raised in Texas and moved to New York after attending Rhode Island School of Design. He has collaborated on creative projects with diverse brands as Louis Vuitton, Dior, Warner Bros. Records, Sony, Gap, Levi’s, Gucci and Tiffany&Co., and developed cutting-edge projects with designers, artists, and musicians. His work has been exhibited at such institutions as The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. As a founding member of Visionaire and V Magazine, Foley has collaborated with David Bowie, Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford, Peter Saville, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono, and has created free-form editions that have revolutionized the perception of a publication. Foley was nominated for a Grammy in 2003 for Best Album Design for the Pet Shop Boys’s Release. He has also received awards from I.D. Magazine, and the Art Directors Club. Foley teaches at Parsons School of Design and is a visiting critic at RISD, Columbia University, Yale, and UT. He is the author-illustrator of ten children’s books including the acclaimed Thank You Bear series (Viking) as well as the illustrated history of subculture COOL: Style, Sound, and Subversion (Rizzoli), and a contributing cover artist for The New Yorker.

Project Description:

“Lux Ex Tenebris is an edition of one hundred, hand numbered copies completed during Greg Foley’s RisoLab Artist Residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York during Winter 2016-17. Each edition contains twenty original prints on 80lb acid free vellum, with a signed colophon, inside a custom made folio with embossed cover. For the RisoLAB residency, Greg Foley began by researching the diverse color palettes of print media from his life–ranging from children’s books to comics, adolescent interests, style magazines, and art books–each one influencing his cultural perspective. The images were built slowly using a combination of digital software, then separated for the risographic print process. Using a range of three to eight transparent inks, layering colors, the Riso prints become deeply saturated and diverse. Each piece exists as a sense memory to an iconic cultural reference and time period.”

Khatia Chitorelidze is an author and illustrator who lives and works in Georgia, where she was born in Rustavi in 1992. She attended the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, graduating with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Book Illustration. Chitorelidze went on to attend the Printmaking Summer School at Salzburg International Art Academy in 2015 and was a RisoLAB Artist-in-Residence at the School of Visual Arts in 2016. She was a selected illustrator for the Bologna Illustrators Exhibition in Bologna, Italy in 2016 as well as the Nami Illustrators Competition (NAMI CONCOIRS) in Seoul, South Korea in 2017. In 2018, she was a finalist for the Best Book Cover Design, Litera Competition. She was the winner of the Children’s Picture Book Idea Award in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2015. In 2016, she co-founded the art and illustration publication Contact. Chitorelidze works as a freelancer illustrator and graphic designer.

Project Description:
“At the RisoLAB Artist in Residency program I worked on two different art books: Rustavi, a photobook, and Where do we go when we go to sleep, an  album of illustrations about the dreams of animals.  The Rustavi is about my hometown which was built while Georgia was part of the Soviet Union. This project documents old places which have remained unchanged for over 70 years, seeking to channel some kind of voice from the past. This artist book is in black and white and printed on kraft paper to create a vintage look.

Where do we go when we go to sleep is a book about the surreal side of animal’s dreams. I started doing research on dreams a couple of years ago and I found out that animals also dream. So I started to illustrate and create work about this theme, leading to two books.”

Natalie Andrewson is an illustrator, comic artist and printmaker from Charlotte, North Carolina, currently residing in Los Angeles, California. She’s worked all across the creative spectrum for clients like The New York Times, NPR, Simon & Schuster, Disney and Dreamworks. She loves to draw dream-like adventures with vibrant colors and energetic lines and in her spare time she enjoys making fantasy-inspired Risograph prints and comics. She’s recently completed her debut graphic novel The Nutcracker and The Mouse King, published by First Second.

Project Description:
“My residency sort of didn’t go as planned. I had originally intended to make a narrative book but then realized that was a much more ambitious project than time allowed- plus I needed to become acquainted with the Riso first before embarking on such a large project. I turned my time at the lab into an experimental residency, learning as much as I could about the printing and color layering process so I could later make the book I had intended to make. In my time I experimented with two color prints, slowly adding one or two colors to them to see how I could push Riso to make fun new combinations of colors. It was in this time that I truly found my footing with Riso that would help me grow my skills for later projects.”

Björn Miner is an illustrator & cartoonist living and working in Seattle, WA. He graduated from Seattle Central Creative Academy in 2019 with associates in Design and studied comics at Sequential Artist Workshop in 2014. His comics have been featured in The Seattle Weekly, The Stranger, and Best American Comics 2017. He has shown work at Toronto Comics Art Fest, Short Run, Comics Art LA, Comics Art Brooklyn, Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, & Small Press Expo. In the fall of 2016, he was one of the first Artists-In-Residence at the School of Visual Art’s RisoLAB. In his free time, he enjoys making video games, Risograph comics, and gardening in Animal Crossing.

Project Description:
“During my artist in residency at the RisoLAB, I wrote, drew, and printed four books. I was trying to push what Riso printing could look like for my work. I made color charts and tested ways of simulating CMYK printing with the limited pallet of a Risograph. I completed a fashion-inspired zine called Cherries, which was a series of drawings of people in unique outfits, a Halloween inspired zine which had several vintage Halloween inspired illustrations, a sketchbook collection, and Daisies, my largest book. Daisies was my main project in my residency and the culmination of everything I had learned about printing during the residency. It collects several comics, and illustrations, and received a notable mention in Best American Comics 2018.”

Harvey Redding, an artist, designer and curator has created multiple projects ranging from a retrospective for photographer Peter Berlin to a traveling museum for the G.I. Joe action figure. His own artwork has been represented in numerous exhibition spaces Iin The United States and abroad, including a solo exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum Project Space in New York City.

In 2001 he founded The Drawing Studio, a weekly erotic life drawing session for Gay artists. The group’s Dirty Little Drawing exhibitions and book has achieved world-wide fame. He served as Artist In Residence at the School of Visual Art’s Visual Narative Graduate Department in 2016.

The artist’s publishing credits include Purgatory Pie Press and Bruno Gmuender.

Project Description:
Transform the 2-D Riso printing medium into a 3-D sculptural medium.

Fawn Krieger is a NY-based artist, whose multi-genre works examine themes of touch, ownership and exchange. Her Flintstonian tactility and penchant for scale compressions reveal an unlikely collision of private and public, where intimate moments also serve as social ruptures. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design, and her MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at The Kitchen, Art in General, Nice & Fit Gallery, The Moore Space, Von Lintel Gallery, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Human Resources, Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Real Art Ways, Soloway Gallery, and Neon>fdv.  Her work has been written about in the pages of the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, NY Arts, Flash Art, and Texte zur Kunst.  Krieger’s received numerous awards, including those from Art Matters Foundation, John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund, American Council on Germany, the Jerome Foundation, and most recently, from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation.  She serves as the Program Director at The Keith Haring Foundation, Consultant for the Berlin-based MFA & PhD program Transart Institute – part of Else Foundation, and Adjunct Faculty at Adelphi University.

Project Description:
“OUTFIT is a line of hand-made, modular and practical work-wear informed by Cold War “soft power” consumerism: propagandistic merchandise in the form of domestic luxury goods, implemented as a medium of protest. These constructions are experiments in holding materialist, feminist, and socialist ideals simultaneously. Framed as a mail-order economy, OUTFIT is informed by East German and Soviet mail order catalogues, which I’ve been collecting over the past 5 years.  OUTFITS are designed for working bodies moving through urban spaces from morning through night.  This project is my continuation in looking at how physical matter holds things like memory, experience, and ideals (values non-commodifiable), and exploring ways to access, expose, and hold these assets, notably in a digital and economically inequitable era.”