Assistant Professors of Art Stacy Asher and Aaron Sutherlen conducted a one-day screenprinting workshop at Nebraska Innovation Campus’ Maker Space in late July for the Sovereign Native Youth Leadership Academy, presented by the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs.
More than 70 Native junior high and high school students participated in the workshop, in which they created a t-shirt with their own messaging. Their week-long academy features a variety of speakers, field trips and activities.
“They came to the University’s Maker Space for a day to learn about different processes of making, including robotics and nanotechnology,” Sutherlen said. “We were there to give them an experience in art. It was a nice contrast to the other technologies they were doing. They were learning about the process, but they were also learning about creating messages, too. It was really fun to work with them.”
The UNL Maker Space at Innovation Campus allows students to learn new skills and pursue their creative passions in a student-run environment. It’s designed to get people from multiple disciplines working on different projects in the same physical space.
“It’s just a playground for creativity,” Asher said. “I love how they call it a recreational center for making. That’s exactly what it is.”
Asher hopes the screenprinting workshop inspired the Native youth.
“Not only does the workshop get our message out about being artists and authors of visual language, it also inspires youth,” she said. “It gets them thinking about what they can do on their own to create things on a personal level. They find a process that they love, and they can explore it and make art that they love to represent who they are.”
Sutherlen said the workshop also enabled the Department of Art and Art History and graphic design program to reach new students.
“The workshop was a way for us to reach an audience as ambassadors for UNL that we don’t necessarily get to reach otherwise,” he said. “The students came from all over Nebraska, and many of them were not thinking about coming to UNL. They get to come here, see the Maker Space and create work. You’re doing work in a Maker Space like any other artist would be doing, so that gives them a connection to the university that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get.”
Asher likes the idea of skill sharing with students.
“I think that’s at the heart of social practices in art,” she said. “You share skills that you have to empower other people to use those skills if they want to make their own t-shirts or they want to understand graphic language a little deeper or pulling ink or even how to rig up a clothesline. There were a lot of different steps there where we were sharing some skills, and I like that.”