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Upcoming Artists & Events 


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April 11-15 / 2022  / Upcoming: Spring semester 2022
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Corwin Clairmont / Visiting Artist Print Residency
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Corky will be working in the printmaking studio all week on a new series of works.
(FA 403) 


Hailing from Ronan, Montana, Clairmont is a celebrated visual and conceptual artist whose decades of work have included printmaking, mixed media, sculpture and installation. He’s also a professor and former fine arts department director at Salish Kootenai College. After earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Montana, Clairmont continued his graduate studies with a fellowship at San Fernando State University and in 1971 completed his education with a Master of Arts degree from the California State University in Los Angeles. He spent the next 14 years within the Los Angeles art scene and worked as the printmaking department head at the Otis/Parsons Art Institute.
​Today, Clairmont is among an important group of Native American artists who use elements of their cultural background in combination with European artistic traditions to make political statements. Clairmont often uses elements of printmaking, photography and collage to create his artwork. These complex images give sharp attention to corporate and governmental injustices imposed on the Native American community and environment.
Though messages in his work are strong, their delivery is subtle, relying on ironic observations rather than overt accusations. Viewers must approach the work and examine the relationships of many visual and textual references in order to understand its full social and political commentary.
​

Funding for this project comes from the Jim & Jane Dew Visiting Artist Program,
Missoula Art Museum & Matrix Press.

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March 17 / 2022  / Upcoming
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Collaborative Presses / Pressing Forward Together:
Southern Graphics Council International (SGCI) conference panel @ The University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

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James Bailey, MATRIX press @ University of Montana, Missoula, Montana (Panel Chair)
Susan Goldman, Lily Press, Rockville, Maryland
Judith Baumann, Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts, Pendleton, Oregon


Together these three presses represent different approaches to developing collaborative presses representing the academic, the non-profit and the private atelier. The panel will share the prints of many of the collaborations and also discuss the practical sides of developing collaborative presses in these different settings.


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March 5 / 2022  / Upcoming
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Missoula Art Museum Art Auction
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The 2022 Benefit Art Auction will be live-streamed from the Carnegie Gallery at the Missoula Art Museum! This event will be free to watch and will begin at 6 PM Mountain time.  MAM will host an exhibition of the 2022 Art Auction in the Carnegie Gallery from January 7-February 4, 2022.

A number of pieces were donated by the Matrix Press at the University of Montana’s School of Art and Media. The print lab and MAM have a partnership that brings visiting artists to Missoula to produce new work with the aid of UM instructors and students and then exhibit at the MAM.
A monotype by Oregon artist Lillian Pitt (Wasco, Warm Springs, Yakama) boasts imagery that will be familiar to those who saw her popular exhibitionat the MAM in 2019-20, in which a mask submerged in waters looks on at passing fish. Neal Ambrose-Smith whose exhibition “Where Are You Going?” is still on view, collaborated on a print with Matrix’s James Bailey and Jason Clark, in which each artist contributed their own distinctive imagery.-Cory Walsh

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February 28-March 3 / 2022  / Upcoming: Spring semester 2022
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Marwin Begaye / Visiting Artist Print Residency
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Marwin will be working in the printmaking studio all week on a new series of works.
(FA 403) 


Marwin Begaye is an internationally exhibited printmaker, painter. As Associate Professor of Painting and Printmaking at the University of Oklahoma’s School of Visual Arts, his research has been concentrated on issues of cultural identity, especially the intersection of traditional American Indian culture and pop culture. He also has conducted research in the technical aspects of relief printing and the use of mixed-media. His work has been exhibited nationally across the U.S. and internationally New Zealand, Argentina, Paraguay, Italy, Siberia and Estonia. He has received numerous awards, including the Oklahoma Visual Artists Coalition Fellowship, Best of Classification in Graphics at 2019 Santa Fe Indian Market among many others. He has been featured in many publications and is represented by Exhibit C in Oklahoma City.

Funding for this project comes from the Jim & Jane Dew Visiting Artist Program,
Missoula Art Museum, Warhol Foundation & Matrix Press.

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October 25-29 / 2021 
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Neal Ambrose-Smith /
Visiting Artist Print Residency
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Wednesday, Oct 27 / Opening reception 5-7 pm for exhibition:
 č̓ č̓en̓ u kʷes xʷúyi (Where Are You Going?)

Gallery Talk at 6 pm.

Neal will be working in the printmaking studio all week on a new series of works.

(FA 403) 


Neal Ambrose-Smith is Flathead Salish, Metis, and Cree, and a descendent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. He received a B.A. degree from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and an MFA degree from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Working in the arts for twenty years, Ambrose-Smith has been a studio assistant; a goldsmith apprentice; a designer for an Albuquerque entertainment magazine; a freelance digital photographer for artists; a consultant for the Joan Mitchell Foundation as well as exhibiting his own artwork. He has traveled extensively in the U.S., Mexico, Europe and did an independent study in Spain for a year. His work is in collections such as, Beach Museum, KS; Missoula Museum, MT; Galerie D’Art Contemporain, Chamalieres, France; Boise Art Museum, ID; New York Public Library Print Collection, NMAI/Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC,Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, Contemporary Art Museum, Hong-ik University, Seoul, Korea, Cork Printmakers Special Collection, Cork, Ireland, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN, Monash University, Gippsland, Australia and Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, MO.
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Funding for this project comes from the Jim & Jane Dew Visiting Artist Program,
Missoula Art Museum, Matrix Press and the Warhol Foundation.

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October 1-8 / 2021
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Tim Musso / Visiting Artist Print Residency 
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Friday, Oct 1, 2021 Opening reception 5-7 pm for "Below the Bark"; 
​Gallery Talk at 6 pm.

Tim will be working in the printmaking studio all week on a new series of works.
(FA 403) Oct 4-8.


As a visual artist Tim Musso responds to what he finds during his time in the wilderness by creating visual images that make visible some of the intricate relationships of insects/animals/plants/geology so often overlooked and underappreciated in the fast paced times in which we live.In this body of work the artist focuses on the forests and the impact of bark beetles. It is amazing that one small insect no larger than a grain of rice can bring down one of the largest living things on the planet—the. The David in this amazing battle is the humble bark beetle and the Goliath is the massive pine tree. As the beetle bores through wood to make their own wooden ‘writing’ Musso carves through wood with small gouges to create works of art that tell the incredible story of this small insect and its huge impact on the forests of North America.
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Funding for this project comes from the Jim & Jane Dew Visiting Artist Program,
Missoula Art Museum and Matrix Press.

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June 12-July 25 / 2021
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RICHARD MOCK / THE CUTTING EDGE
A Retrospective Print Exhibition
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Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY

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A beautiful retrospective exhibition on Richard Mock is currently being held at the Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn, NY.  It features some 300 prints covering Richard's extensive portfolio of work.  Accompanying the exhibition is a wonderful Brochure and Essay written by Joyce C. Polistena, Ph.D. (Art Historian at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

The Brochure features Mocks "New Republican Agenda" created in 1998 at Matrix Press, along with one of his preliminary sketches for the work.

R.MOCK_Kentler Exhibition Brochure
File Size: 7723 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File


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March 29 / 2021- MATRIX Press Print Residency
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Reinaldo Gil Zambrano /
Visiting Artist Print Residency
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ZOOM / 10:15-Noon & 2:15-4

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Reinaldo Gil Zambrano is an artist, printmaker and educator born in Caracas, Venezuela.  His narrative raises questions of daily issues equally experience by people across culture and borders using relief printing as an storytelling tool for its illustration and reflection. He studies the universal idea of home and how it affects individual personalities by exploring iconography derived from the Majority World and fascinating storytelling inspired by Hispanic literature’s magical realism and illustrations from the Venezuelan Rosana Farias.

Reinaldo will also be discussing his work with the Spokane Print and Publishing Center and his numerous public art works.

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March 31th / 2021
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Dagny Walton / Visiting Artist
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In Person / 10:15-11:00 

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Dagny Walton is a first year graduate student in the MFA program at the University of Montana, concentrating in illustration and printmaking. She has lived in the mountainous west nearly her entire life, and the American West's history, culture, and mythos is the primary guiding force behind her current work. She is particularly interested in exploring the often disastrous convergence of nature and colonial ambition, and the ghosts that endure as remnants of this conflict. ​

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March 24th / 2021-MATRIX Press Print Residency
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John Hitchcock /
Visiting Artist Print Residency
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ZOOM / 10:15-Noon 

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John Hitchcock is an Indigenous artist (Commanche), Professor of Art, Department Chair of Theatre and Drama and Associate Dean of Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is an award-winning artist who uses the print medium to explore relationships of community, land, and culture. He has taught printmaking at UW-Madison since 2001.  He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Texas Tech University.
The Comanche word “Kaku” can be translated to mean grandmother. My Kaku, Peggy Joy “Pohoxicut” Reid, was a beadwork artist, tribal singer, and attended intertribal gatherings nation wide. When I was a child, my Kaku ask me to design floral patterns and geometric shapes for her beadwork designs. This is how I learned how to draw and understand my and my peoples relationship to the land.

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​February 24th  /2021 & April 7th, 2021 
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Christa Carleton /
Visiting Artist 
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Feb 24: from 2:00-4 via Zoom
April 7: from 10:15-Noon via Zoom


The artwork I make communicates messages of unrest, anxiety, and frustration as a woman. I relay these themes by using my unshakeable urge to be vulnerable. Through this urge I source my private memories, experiences, mantras, unspoken thoughts, and weak moments to bring fellowship and rapport with my viewer. I am driven to create work that focuses thematically on the agency of women because we live in a society where a woman’s voice is still marginalized and mocked.

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​October 28th, 2020 
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David Miles Lusk / Visiting Artist
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FA 403 / 10-Noon

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David Miles Lusk started Anomal Press in 2016.  He is an independent artist/printer whose work is inspired by the intersection of science and mytholog, and nature and humanity.   

David will be in the studio sharing his work and process and what's involved in running an independent press.

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​October 27th, 2020 
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Max Mahn / Visiting Artist
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FA 403 / 9-11 am.

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Owner & printer of Twin Home Prints.  Max runs an independent print studio in Missoula, dedicated to creating Gig posters and fine art prints.  His clients include bands like WILCO, The Melvins and Pigeons Playing Pingpong amongst many others.

Max will be in the studio sharing his work and process and talking about running an independent press.

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​Opens August 28th, 2020 - January 7th, 2021
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MATRIX Press: 20 Years of Collaboration
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Jundt Art Museum, Spokane, WA

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The Jundt Art Museum at Gonzaga University will be presenting a retrospective exhibition of prints created at MATRIX Press over the course of the past 20 years.

The exhibition will feature an array of 80+ prints created by 26 nationally recognized artists along with some of the working proofs, tools, printing plates and 100's of photos of the artists at work.  

​Full 60 page color catalog accompanies the exhibition.

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August, 2020 / Now Available

Catalog / MATRIX Press: 20 Years of Collaboration
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Jundt Art Museum, Spokane, WA

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This beautiful full color, 60 page catalog features a 100 images of works from the exhibition, studio shots, and portraits of the artists at work.

The catalog also features essays by James Bailey, Director of Matrix Press and biographies and artists statements of the artists.

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July, 2020

KNOWING NATIVE ARTS by Nancy Marie Mithlo

This newly published book, features Sara Siestreem's beautiful suite of prints she created at Matrix Press titled Thanksgiving/Giving Thanks (Prayer, Un-armed and Non-Violent) on the cover.

Knowing Native Arts brings Nancy Marie Mithlo’s Native insider perspective to understanding the significance of Indigenous arts in national and global milieus. These musings, written from the perspective of a senior academic and curator traversing a dynamic and at turns fraught era of Native self-determination, are a critical appraisal of a system that is often broken for Native peoples seeking equity in the arts.

Mithlo addresses crucial issues, such as the professionalization of Native arts scholarship, disparities in philanthropy and training, ethnic fraud, and the receptive scope of Native arts in new global and digital realms. This contribution to the field of fine arts broadens the scope of discussions and offers insights that are often excluded from contemporary appraisals.

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Visiting Artist / Corwin Clairmont
Open studio night with the artist / April 8, 5-7 pm FA 403.

​(postponed till Spring 2022 due to Covid)
Corwin Clairmont is a member of the Salish & Kootenai tribal nation and is among an important group of Native American artists who use elements of their cultural background in combination with European artistic traditions to make political statements. Clairmont often uses elements of printmaking, photography and collage to create his artwork. These complex images give sharp attention to corporate and governmental injustices imposed on the Native American community and environment.Though messages in his work are strong, their delivery is subtle, relying on ironic observations rather than overt accusations. Viewers must approach the work and examine the relationships of many visual and textual references in order to understand its full social and political commentary.

This project is made possible with the support of the Jim and Jane Dew Visiting Artist Fund, MATRIX press and the Missoula Art Museum.

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Starting Fall Semester 2020
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Missoula Art Museum and Matrix Press team up again on Warhol Grant. 
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The MAM was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to fund two years' worth of programming in its Lynda Frost Gallery, which is dedicated exclusively to Native artists.  
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Included in the new grant proposal were four artist printmaking residencies with Matrix Press, beginning Fall semester 2020.  This is the second time MAM & MATRIX PRESS have been awarded a Andy Warhol Foundation Grant.

Two of the artists being invited to Matrix Press include:
​Edgar Heap of Birds, a Cheyenne-Arapaho artist based in Oklahoma, who has shown his work in the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. He works in many different types of media, often with messages of advocacy.
&
Neal Ambrose-Smith is department chair of studio arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the son of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, the artist who donated work that originally seeded the MAM's collection of contemporary Indigenous art



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Fall Semester / November 12-15, 2019
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Christa Carleton / Visiting Artist Print Residency
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Fine Arts Building/Printmaking Studio FA 403
Christa will be working in the print studio all week.

The artwork I make communicates messages of unrest, anxiety, and frustration as a woman. I relay these themes by using my unshakeable urge to be vulnerable. Through this urge I source my private memories, experiences, mantras, unspoken thoughts, and weak moments to bring fellowship and rapport with my viewer. I am driven to create work that focuses thematically on the agency of women because we live in a society where a woman’s voice is still marginalized and mocked.

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Fall Semester / November 6-8, 2019
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Lillian Pitt / Visiting Artist Print Residency

Fine Arts Building/Printmaking Studio FA 403
Lillian will be working in the print studio W-F.
Lecture at Missoula Art Museum, Saturday, November 9th at 1:00 pm.


Lillian Pitt is Wasco, Yakima tribal heritage, says of her work "My prints and tapestries reflect Native American culture by incorporating the same symbols used by these rock artists. These artists etched out thousands upon thousands of pictographs and petroglyphs up and down the Big River."  

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This project was made possible through the collaboration between Matrix Press and the Missoula Art Museum and the Jim and Jane Dew Visiting Artist Fund.

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Fall Semester / October 16, 2019
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18th Annual Steamroller Print Project

Outside in front of the George & Jane Dennsion Theatre
10:00 am - 4:00 pm

​Students and community members will be printing large scale woodcuts using an asphalt roller.

BLOCK-PARTY LIVE T-Shirt printing will also be going on. 10-4 pm.



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Fall Semester / October, 2019
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Contemporary Indigenous Voices 
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University Center Gallery, Missoula, MT

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Opening reception: Thursday, October 3rd, 4-6 pm.
​Gallery Talk by Jason Clark, Monday, October 14th, noon-1pm


The exhibition will highlight the work of seven contemporary native artists in honor of Indigenous People's Day.  These include; Melanie Yazzie (Navajo); Joe Feddersen (Colville); Sara Siestreem (Coos/Lower Umpqua); John Hitchcock (Comanche); Duane Slick (Meskwaki); Jason Clark (Creek/Algonquin) and Molly Murphy-Adams (Oglala/Lakota).

The works included highlight a range of visual expressions, from large scale woodcuts talking about climate change, to lithographs expressing protest, resistance and resilience.  Additional works in the exhibition explore myths and legends or investigate cultural patterns found in beadwork or basketry.  Together these seven artists embody a bold and vibrant approach to the medium.  

This exhibition showcases the collaborations between the artists, MATRIX Press and the Missoula Art Museum, with all works being printed in tandem with UM printmaking students.

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Fall Semester / September 16-20th, 2019
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Visiting Artist / Reinaldo Gil Zambrano
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Fine Arts Building/Printmaking Studio FA 403
Reinaldo will be working in the print studio all week.

His narrative raises questions of daily issues equally experience by people across culture and borders using relief printing as an storytelling tool for its illustration and reflection. He studies the universal idea of home and how it affects individual personalities by exploring iconography derived from the Majority World and fascinating storytelling inspired by Hispanic literature’s magical realism and illustrations from the Venezuelan Rosana Farias.

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Fall Semester / September 9th, 2019
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Visiting Artist / Max Man
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Fine Arts Building/Printmaking Studio FA 403 from 2-4 pm.

Max will be discussing and presenting some of his recent prints.

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