Wednesday, April 15 @ 5:00 – 6:15pm
Chazen Auditorium
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Ben Blount is an artist, designer, and letterpress printer best known for work that explores ideas of race, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves about living in America. Blount was born and raised in Detroit and has spent most of his adult life as a graphic designer in the Chicagoland area. As a designer, he has worked with a range of non-profit, educational, and creative arts clients including Cave Canem, Chicago Poetry Center, Poetry Foundation, The TEAM (NY), City of Evanston, Northwestern University, and Harvard University Press.
Blount is a believer in the power of the printed word and shares his passion for print and design by teaching and speaking to students and educators around the country. He has been a visiting artist at Colorado College, Columbia College Chicago, Florida Atlantic University, Indiana University, Kent State, Lawrence University, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He also occasionally teaches Designing Your Life in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University.
A proud member of his local arts organization, Evanston Made, Blount is also a founding board member of Artists Book House in Chicago and current advisory board member of Artists Book House and Partners in Print in Seattle. He was the Transit Artist in Residence at Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum and has completed grant-funded work for Hamilton, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Sixty Inches From Center, and District 65 (Evanston school district).
His work is widely exhibited and included in the collections of the Newberry Library, the Chicago Field Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Blount earned a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts from Columbia College Chicago and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. He lives just north of Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, and prints at MAKE, his sunny storefront studio in Evanston’s West Village neighborhood. He is into family, friends, Saturday sports, Sunday sports, soulful music, movies in the theater, and dessert. benblount.com
Reserve your spot for the April 15th Colloquium now!