Print's Not Dead - Group Exhibition

Jude Akrey (they/them) is a white, trans, and Autistic artist living on Between the Lakes Treaty Territory No.3 (Guelph). Their interdisciplinary practice is rooted in painting, printmaking, and community-engaged methodologies. Their work explores and represents facets of Autistic experience, including routine, stimming (self-stimulatory behaviour), and pattern-seeking through formal exploration of framing devices, gestural brushwork, and colour relationalities. Jude’s practice is rooted in trans and Autistic experience, shaped by relational care and communication. They are committed to investigating the power of empowered communities through shared leaning and community-engaged artmaking.

Frame work (1)

Jude Akrey
Acrylic and linocut on paper, 10” x 8”
2024
NFS

Frame work (2)

Jude Akrey
Acrylic and linocut on wood panel, 8” x 8”
2024
NFS

Frame work (3)

Jude Akrey
Acrylic and linocut on wood panel, 8” x 8”
2024
NFS

Frame work (4)

Jude Akrey
Acrylic and linocut on paper, 12” x 12”
2024
NFS

Wesley Bates studied painting and printmaking at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. He works full time as a printmaker and letterpress printer under his own imprint at West Meadow Press in Clifford, Ontario.

His wood engraved prints have been exhibited widely and are held in public and private collections in Canada, the United States, England, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Japan and China.

Bates has illustrated for major publishers in Canada and the United States – such as McClelland & Stewart, Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, Larkspur Press, Porcupine’s Quill, Bird & Bull Press, Gaspereau Press, and Running the Goat Press – and for private presses in England and North America, and in particular Larkspur Press.

He has illustrated books by such authors as W.O. Mitchell, Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, Richard Taylor, Stuart McLean, Timothy Findley, Russell Smith, Mary Dalton and Don McKay.

Bates’ work is represented in public collections including, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Laurentian University, Glenbow Art Gallery, Grimsby Public Gallery, University of Kentucky, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and San Francisco Public Library - Special Collections.

He is the author of two books: Point of the Graver and In Black & White.

Celeste Carter (she/they) is a printmaker and interdisciplinary artist working in Stratford, Ontario. She uses screenprinting and relief printmaking techniques to develop patterns and motifs from nature and her collection of secondhand objects. Drawing on the flat aesthetic qualities and industrial history inherent in printmaking processes, Celeste often combines prints on ephemeral and archival surfaces with mass-produced and found materials to examine production cycles and the permanence of waste.

Celeste holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Guelph (2024). They were Print Artist in Residence at Otherwise Studios in Guelph (2024) and were a recipient of the University of Guelph’s Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation Printmaking Prize (2023). Celeste has presented their work at Necessary Arts, Otherwise Studios, Art Not Shame, The Third Space, Matilda Swanson Gallery, and the Stratford Perth Museum. They participated in Huron County Library’s artLAB: Print Matters programming as a workshop facilitator (2025).

Expand/Recoil

Celeste Carter
Screenprints on newsprint, bond paper and cotton rag paper embellished with polymer clay and found jewelry, 108” x 96”
2026
NFS

Art has been an integral part of my life quite literally longer than I can remember. There are countless photographs of little Joy drawing and colouring whenever there was time and wherever there was space — even in the hospital room when my little brother was born. The margins of my notebooks were filled with doodles (did anyone else draw approximately one million realistic eyes on their notes?). Eventually I found my way to watercolours, a medium which I still love and practice and which holds a special place in my heart and personal history, but found that my perfectionism and left-brain way of thinking was holding back my creativity.

Enter printmaking.

I’ve had a fascination with printmaking since high school, but it always seemed like such an inaccessible medium. I certainly couldn’t afford a press working part-time at the pharmacy, nor was it feasible for me to work with the acids and solvents needed for etching processes. I didn’t have the graphic kind of brain for linocuts which would have at least allowed for hand printing, and so I let that unrealized interest lie.

And then, in 2021, I decided to get creative.

So I started creating small dark field monotypes (single edition prints using a method of reduction) and drypoint prints using my mom’s Cuttlebug embossing machine. If you have a scrapbooker in your life (or are one yourself), you probably know what I’m talking about. That cute little green and cream machine meant to emboss scrapbooking paper with fun designs and cut out little shapes for your layouts. I looked at it and realized that it was essentially just a teeny tiny printing press. I added a few minor modifications from craft supplies I already had, and hey presto — I’m cranking out 5x7 prints and beginning to think that printmaking was what I was meant to do all along. Because finally I found a medium where I could combine all my favourite subjects, whether portrait or landscape, still life or floral, and have the work feel cohesive. To feel like all the beautiful old photographs I have spent my whole life admiring and scouring, and most importantly, to feel inexorably like me.

Gentlest Embrace

Joy Garofalo
Mezzotint, 5” x 7”
2025
$75

A Sliver of Grey Moonlight

Joy Garofalo
Monotype, 5” x 7”
2023
$45

Little Wren

Joy Garofalo
Mezzotint, 5” x 5”
2024
NFS

Miranda is an interdisciplinary maker with a focus on print, ceramics and collage, celebrating the process and variations of printmaking on paper and clay bodies.

Her work explores themes of ritual and renewal through nature’s cycles, incorporating familiar and symbolic plant and animal imagery.

Tammy Ratcliff is a Guelph artist specializing in printmaking and fibre arts. She maintains an active studio practice while co-managing Wyndham Art Supplies, the family business she runs with her partner. Since completing studies at Beal Art, London, ON (1993) she has shown work regionally, nationally, and internationally. Notable exhibitions include ‘Fibreworks 2020’ at Idea Exchange, Cambridge, International Print Centre New York juried exhibition ‘Homebody’ (Coursework Prize), and the Mid-American Print Council’s juried show at the University of Kentucky (honourable mention prize). Her work is included in numerous private, public, and corporate collections including the Dan Donovan Collection at University of Toronto, Art Gallery of Guelph, Ernst & Young and Idea Exchange. She has travelled extensively for artistic research and development, including residencies in Tromsø, Norway, Belgium and to Japan to research fine paper making history and techniques.

Tammy is inspired by the botanical world – the impermanence and resilience of plant life as well as its many examples of perfect imperfection. The papers she uses in her print practice literally and conceptually support her imagery of flora – they are handmade from plant fibres and part of the botanical life that her work often depicts. On a trip to Japan in 2019, Tammy had the great privilege of visiting traditional papermakers to learn more about the fibres and processes involved in creating her favourite art material. Some of these beautiful papers are simultaneously delicate and incredibly strong. After this trip, she was inspired to push her materials and processes further which led to the creation of a body of work that transforms etchings and monoprints on washi paper into sculptural renditions of common garments, including sports socks, an apron and underwear. These pieces were created through a process of printmaking on layers of fine, handmade Japanese papers, then stitching them together by hand. Items of clothing whose utilitarian value diminishes as they become threadbare and fragile through use are thus transformed into artifacts of shared memories of the passage of time. This nostalgia parallels a longing to preserve the complex traditional art of growing and processing plant fibres into exquisite papers.

catch

Tammy Ratcliff
Mixed media print monoprint with chine collé, 20” x 20” x 2”
2026
$625

pine

Tammy Ratcliff
Mixed media print monoprint with chine collé, 20” x 20” x 2”
2026
$625

John Richer is an artist & printmaker based in Sheffield Ontario, compelled to portray the beauty and wonder of the world as it appears to him through artistic methods. John’s relief prints are carved and printed by hand, often depicting plants and animals interwoven with each other. He is interested in exploring narratives of cyclical transforming ecosystems, predator/prey relationships and our role within our continually evolving environment.

“I hope my work evokes some sense of reverence or reflection toward our environment, encouraging an awareness that our relationship with Nature is not one of separation or dominance, but a genuine and intrinsic connection. In acknowledging this bond, we are reminded that to care for the natural world, in essence, is to care for ourselves.”

Glimpse of Life

John Richer
Ink on paper, 24” x 36”
2026
$275

Isabella “Issy” De Tullio (she/they) is a queer multi-disciplinary artist based in Guelph, Ontario. Rooted in her Italian heritage and community values, Issy’s practice invites viewers to reconsider where we assign value and how we define worth. Through humble materials and layered storytelling, their work honours resilience, resourcefulness, and reverence for simple blessings. Exploring the tensions between cherished relationships and the stains of grief and expectation, she embraces what she has inherited and discards what has been imposed. Gesturing towards connection across generations, cultures, and silences, Issy offers radical love within frameworks built to be demanding and repressive.

I’m Home

Isabella “Issy” De Tullio
Multi-plate etching and aquatint, 42” x 36”
2022
$1500