Call Description

Call for handmade prints!
This call invites artists to explore the aspects of their work that blur or transcend specific boundaries or lines.   Do elements share some common ground? Or is there a complex weaving of elements, making it hard to separate or identify them individually?  What is obscured and what is revealed?  

Submission Requirements

All entries must be handmade prints created by the artist using traditional printmaking and/or photographic processes and produced within the last 5 years.  3D and experimental work is encouraged. Any combination of processes may be employed including but not limited to silkscreen, letterpress, calligraphy, etching, woodcut, lithography, linocut, drypoint, mezzotint, monoprint, polymer plates, silver gelatin prints, photopolymer gravure, copperplate gravure, cyanotype, vandyke, gumbichromate, palladium, platinum, carbon, salt, wet plate, chemigram, lumen, argrotype, oilprint, chlorophyll, instant transfers, and lifts. AI-generated images will not be accepted.

**Digital photographic images can be used in combination with other processes, but straight digital prints will not be accepted. 

Work needs to arrive at the gallery ready to hang, but framing is not required. Magnets, clips, and other methods can be used.  

Juror: Anna Hepler is based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. She discovered printmaking in the 4th grade after carving a linoleum block with the image of an owl. From there, she studied printmaking in college, learned to set movable type on a letterpress, discovered bookbinding, and in 1989  founded Beo Press. She is currently a visiting faculty member in the print studios at Smith College.

Hepler works across media, between sculpture and printmaking. Both hand-held and architectural in scale, her work overturns first impressions – wire forms flatten into drawings, clay impersonates metal, plywood coils like rope, plastic inhales and exhales. Hepler values embarrassment, uncertainty, blunder, and fragility as active agents in her studio process.

She has exhibited widely, and her work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Modern in London, England, and the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, amongst others.

Sponsored by the Southwest Print Fiesta, Silver City, NM

First Place                            $300
Second Place                       $200
Third Place                           $100

Important Dates:

September 11th - Midnight Mountain time deadline for submitted work

September 15th– Notification via email

October 1st- Work due at Light Art Space

October 9th – Nov. 1st, 2025 Exhibition dates
Opening Reception: Friday, October 10th, 5:00 - 7:00 pm.  

Entry Fee:

Entry fee: $35 for 3 images. $5 for each additional image. 
Sliding scale discount: Use coupon code: disc    $20 for 3 images. 
Artists may enter up to 10 artworks.  You must submit 3 images, you can send duplicates of images if you have less than 3 different images to submit. 

Light Art Space invites all to submit, including Black, Latina, Indigenous people, and all self-identifying people of color, historically underrepresented artists working in the visual arts. 

 Sales:

Sales are encouraged, but artwork does not need to be for sale. Light Art Space will retain a 50% commission on any artwork sold. The sale price on the entry form must include commission and cannot be changed after acceptance. All artwork will remain on display in the exhibition through November 1, 2025.
 

Application Requirements

Submission Requirements

All entries must be handmade prints (created by the artist) using traditional printmaking and/or photographic processes, and must have been produced within the last 5 years.  3D and experimental work is encouraged. Any combination of methods may be employed including but not limited to silkscreen,  letterpress, calligraphy, etching, woodcut, lithography, linocut, drypoint, mezzotint, monoprint, polymer plates, silver gelatin prints, photopolymer gravure, copperplate gravure, cyanotype, vandyke, gum bichromate, palladium, platinum, carbon, salt, wet plate, chemigram, lumen, argrotype, oilprint, chlorophyll, instant transfers, and lifts. **Digital photographic images can be used in combination with other processes, but straight digital prints will not be accepted.  Work needs to arrive at the gallery ready to hang, but framing is not required. Magnets, clips, and other methods can be used. 

*AI-generated images will not be accepted.

**Digital photographic images can be used in combination with other processes, but straight digital prints will not be accepted. 

Work must arrive at the gallery ready to hang, but framing is not required. Magnets, clips, and other methods can be used.  

Eligibility Criteria

All artists making handmade prints are eligible to apply.