Katia Santibanez working during her Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency in 2006.
The annual Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency occurs each October, with two invited artists working with printer Julia D’Amario, formerly of Pace Editions (New York) in Sitka’s printmaking studio. Support for this residency is provided in part by Jordan Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.
Julia D’Amario is a professional etching printer who printed at Pace Editions in New York City for 17 years. She first came to Sitka as a resident artist in the spring of 1997. In 2002, a print residency was established to provide artists the opportunity to come to Sitka and collaborate on etching projects with Julia D’Amario. Jordan Schnitzer, one of Portland’s most prominent print collectors, generously pledged his support for the project and has been funding it since its inception.
Each fall, two artists are invited for a period of two weeks to work intensively in the print studio with Julia D’Amario. The artists learn how to translate their work into a new medium. At the end of the artists’ residency, Julia editions the prints, which are then divided equally between the artist and the Sitka Center. Copies are also given to the Gordon Gilkey Print Center at the Portland Art Museum and Jordan Schnitzer’s print collection. Every other year the guest artists’ prints are exhibited in January at Prints Arts Northwest in Portland.
2011 Printmaking Residents
Gala Bent
Gala Bent studied painting and received a BFA at Ball State University in Muncie Indiana, and then received her MFA in visual art at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, concluding her formal education in 1999. She currently lives and works in Seattle, Washington with her husband and three sons. Gala is a drawing-centric painter, working most often on paper, but also on walls in site-specific spaces. In her gouache-colored drawings, she introduces the viewer to a world where wheels, books and boats do their best to serve a class of unclassifiable creatures. One thing becomes another, and borders are uncertain. The result is a fertile, cataclysmic landscape where constructed elements and organic patterns of flow both collide and mesh, often angling toward abstraction. Her most recent series, O Mountain, takes the singular form of a mountain as its focus. These forms become sentient characters, heaving their masses into sighs and tears. Learn more about Gala Bent.
MJ Anderson
Living a double life between her studios on the Oregon coast and Carrara, Italy, M.J. Anderson carves marble sculpture. Several larger projects include a Percent for Art project for the Justice Center in Salem, OR, Noosa Gardens Sculpture Bequest, Queensland, Australia and Wellspring Medical Center in Woodburn, OR. In addition to creating work for liturgical and public art commissions, she exhibits at Davidson Galleries in Seattle, Murdoch Collection and Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery as well as Coast Gallery in Manzanita and Julie Nester Gallery in Park City, Utah. Learn more about MJ Anderson.
