UW–Madison alumna Devon Stackonis, who earlier this month graduated with an MFA in printmaking from the School of Education’s Art Department, has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to pursue research in Wrocław, Poland, furthering work she started as a student at UW–Madison.
Stackonis will head to Wroclaw in Sept. 2024, where she will spend 10 months creating mezzotints and studying the Upper Silesian Coal Basin.
Stackonis is a visual artist and printmaker specializing in mezzotint and intaglio processes. Her current body of work serves as a personal reflection of the mountainous coal regions of Eastern Pennsylvania where she grew up and the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of extractive industry.
Stackonis is also the guest curator of an exhibition at the Tandem Press Apex Gallery, on view through Aug. 16.
Titled “On Tenterhooks,” the exhibition asks the viewer “to consider what is to come, to acknowledge the moment of anticipation between definitive events, to sit with the unknown and its many possibilities, and to find some grounding amidst the precariousness of it all,” Stackonis writes in a curator statement.
Stackonis, who worked as a curatorial assistant at Tandem through the 2023-24 academic year, conceptualized and created the exhibition of prints as one of her final projects, selecting pieces from the Tandem Press inventory.
“I have selected a group of works from Tandem Press’s inventory that embody this notion of being suspended, stretched, or held in tension, either formally or metaphorically,” she writes. “These prints speak to extended moments of waiting nervously as events unfold. They represent various possible responses to a state of suspense, whether it is with great anticipation and excitement of a desired outcome, or with agitation, distress, and fear of its opposite. An acknowledgment of tension and discomfort in uncertainty can serve as a significant catalyst for change. In these moments between known and unknown, fear or stress may even shift to hope.”