Exhibition Statement

Congratulations to the Juried Open Portfolio Award Winners!

By Blake Sanders

The Puertograbando conference was an inspiring paradigm shift for SGCI six or seven years in the making. After the pandemic forced the organization to cancel 2020’s Puertografico, it was a profound joy to follow through on our promise to the island and bring the global printmaking community to San Juan. Throughout the week, puertorriqueño printmakers demonstrated a technical competency and conceptual rigor that set the tone–and laid down the gauntlet!–for the artists visiting from the mainland and beyond. This began on the opening night of the conference when we witnessed the La Huella Indeleble exhibition at the Museo de San Juan, and carried into Open Portfolio where artists shared the Los Rosales conference hall with a vendor’s fair that was loaded with print shops and collectives from around the island.

The Board chose to highlight what they knew would be an incredible and unique open portfolio by recognizing a handful of printmakers from what proved to be an especially strong cohort of artists. The diversity of approaches and techniques on offer in San Juan was matched by the novel presentation of engaging and thought-provoking content. It was a pleasure to see the work of the printmakers recognized in this exhibition in the bustling context of the conference and it’s a privilege to now present them here where our readers can have the time to absorb and reflect on the work.

Emerging/Mid-Career

Brittany Gorelick – Ft Hays State University

Taro Takizawa– UNC Wilmington

Marco Sánchez- El Paso Community College

Undergraduate Students:

Jae Corales- Western Illinois University

Brook Connolly- East Carolina University

Jasmine Dulay- Florida Atlantic University