Current Grant Wood Printmaking Fellow Matthew Willie Garcia presented at the MAPC 2024 Conference hosted by Kansas State University on October 4, 2024. Along with panelists, Yoonmi Nam & Katie Baldwin, Shawn Bitters, David Wischer, Blake Sanders, Natalie Deam, and Laura Peturson, Garcia spoke on the topic of Innovation through Collaboration. Raluca Iancu, Assistant Professor, Iowa State University, chaired the panel.

Innovation through Collaboration

Two heads are better than one, so the saying goes. When we work together across disciplines, we open up new avenues to innovate in previously unthinkable ways. That is the magic of interdisciplinary partnerships! Printmakers are inherently cooperative, as we rely on communal studios to create our work. These communal studios are transformative and can serve as hubs of collaborative invention to delineate the future of printmaking.

Panelists will share their experiences with collaboration and reflect on how this has impacted their practice. They will share the outcomes of their collaborative work and expand on how they have adapted and transformed as a result of partnerships with others, whether they are other artists, faculty, professionals, from their own or different disciplines. Panelists will talk about how they have used these connections to develop sustainable studio solutions, challenge conventions, and/or preserve traditions.