Carving Through Borders: Print Portfolio
What we know: art and storytelling can convey complex human events like no other medium. Carving Through Borders, a project born in 2013, combined skills sharing and collaborative creation to give life to migrants' diverse experiences.
The project drew inspiration from historic graphic campaigns that shed light on everyday people whose stories are too-often unseen and unheard. In this tradition, the Carving Through Borders portfolio of woodblock prints illustrates various aspects of migration—detention, deportation, displacement, discrimination—and also communities' resistance and resilience. It features the work of artists from across the US: Santiago Armengod, Felipe Baeza, Carol Montes, Julio Salgado, Favianna Rodriguez, Susa Cortez, Oree Originol, Chucha Marquez, Imin Yeh, Emory Douglas, James Williams, Rommy Sobrado-Torrico, DJ Agana, and Erin Yoshi.
Experienced print and graphic artists provided mini-apprenticeships and socially-engaged mentorship to local immigrant youth and community members who helped carve and produce a wood-cut billboard. By getting their hands dirty alongside established artists, these emerging and aspiring creatives learned skills to incorporate into their own organizing and artistic practices.
The collection of 13 oversized woodblock prints employed the traditional technique of printing using a steamroller to print on fabric. It was printed by master printers and students from Syracuse University at the Southern Graphics Council International Conference in 2014 in San Francisco.
A fine art collection of these prints were printed on Japanese paper at Favianna Rodriguez’ West Oakland studio by printmaster Nichol Markowitz, and were exhibited at San Francisco’s Galeria de la Raza.
