SGC International presents four awards at each conference. We are proud to announce this year’s awardees for Puertográfico 2020:

Consuelo Gotay: The Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking Award

The Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking Award is given annually to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the professional development of printmaking as a fine art. This is the only SGCI award that may be given posthumously. Nominations are solicited from the conference host institution only and accepted by the SGCI Awards Committee.

Consuelo Gotay is a printmaker, designer, and teacher. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 1969 and completed her master’s degree at Columbia University in New York in 1971. She began as an apprentice in the Graphics Workshop of the School of Architecture, with José A. Torres Martino as her mentor and in Lorenzo Homar’s studio. She also studied printing at the Bernardino Cordero Bernart Vocational School in Ponce and at the Center for Book Arts in New York. She studied non-toxic printmaking with Keith Howard in Canada. Her teaching, in both Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, has been ongoing, and significant. Her work has been awarded prizes and honorable mentions throughout her career. She works in silkscreen, linoprints, and woodcuts, does font design, and has created artists’ portfolios and books in which image, word, and design mesh. Her prints tend to be poetic portrayals of the local landscape using textures and elegant lines. Consuelo is an artist fully committed to the Puerto Rican and Latin American art. She is a designer, printer and art entrepreneur who founded Centro para el Grabado y Artes del Libro, a wonderful space to train and teach printmakers in the Old San Juan area.

Her woodcuts have been shown in numerous national /international exhibitions and have won many awards like the Bronze Medall at the LatinAmerican Graphic Arts Biennial in Barranquilla, Colombia. Her works are part of the collections of the Museo Arte Historia y Antropología de Universidad de Puerto, the Institute of Puerto Rcan Culture, the Ponce Art Museum, Venezuela’s Cartón y Papel, Princeton University Graphic Arts Collection (they have all of Gotay’s typography and woodcut portfolios), Boston University Library, Yale University, Library of Congress, Smith College Rare Book Room, Colección Caja Granada (Spain), and many other institutions important. During her tenure as head of the printmaking department at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico, Consuelo introduced a Book Arts curriculum while teaching.

These complementary interests capture a vast array of interests that ranges from the leaf that the autumn forgot on the bed of the wind, some dry branch found at random on some wall, it does not matter. Consuelo Gotay takes that leaf or that branch and from it she shows us her essences, her magic, her visual resources and those resources she turns to us with a refined, clean, and powerful craft.

Nelson Sambolín: The Printmaker Emeritus Award

Barrio Coquí, Salinas, Puerto Rico, 1944
MFA, Pratt Institute, New York
BFA, University of Puerto Rico

Nelson Sambolín is a printmaker, painter, graphic designer, professor, cultural and community activist.

He was the promoter, founder, and member of various independent graphics workshops that emerged in Puerto Rico in the 60’s and 70’s. His work has been widely exhibited, and he has taken part in many relevant international events.

He is represented in prestigious collections, such as: Poznan Museum, Cracow, Poland, Museum of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, Art Museum of Puerto Rico, Santurce, Puerto Rico, Contemporary Art Museum, Santurce, Puerto Rico, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Cooperativa de Seguros Múltiples, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, Empresas Papel y Cartón de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela, among others, as well as individual private collections.

Has received various international recognitions, such as the Poznan Museum Award at the X Cracow International Print Biennial, Kraków, Poland. He has designed and produced over 500 screen printed posters about a wide variety of artistic, cultural, political, environmental and social issues.

Karin Broker: The Honorary Member of the Council Award

Karin Broker received her B.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1972 and her M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1980. She studied under Stanley Hayter and Krishna Reddy at the Atelier 17 in Paris, France during the Fall of 1973 and studied at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Broker began teaching at Rice University in Houston Texas in 1980 and is a Professor of Drawing & Printmaking in the Department of Visual & Dramatic Arts. Robert McClain Gallery in Houston Texas represents her work. She was named the 1994 Texas Artist of the Year and received two National endowment for the Arts Grants. Broker was the first female SGC president from 1984-1986 and co-hosted the 1985 SGC Conference at Rice University and the University of Houston.

Broker has exhibited her prints in Russia, Taiwan, Korea, Brazil, Germany, Iceland, England, South Africa, Italy, Cuba and the United States. Her drawings have been included in numerous books such as The Art of Found Objects: Interviews with Texas Artists, by Robert Bunch, Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2016, Drawing & Painting: Materials and Techniques for Contemporary Artists, by Kate Wilson, Thames & Hudson Ltd.(International) 2015, and NATURE MORTE Contemporary artists reinvigorate the Still-Life tradition, by Michael Petry, Thames Hudson, 2013. Broker’s most recent solo exhibition was “Love Me Love Me Not” at McClain Gallery in Houston, Texas in 2018.

Sean Caulfield: The Excellence in Teaching Printmaking Award

Sean Caulfield was named a Canada Research Chair in Fine Arts (Tier 2) from 2000 – 2010, and is a Centennial Professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta, living and working in Treaty Six territory. He has exhibited his prints, drawings, installations and artist’s books extensively throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan. Recent exhibitions include: Dyscorpia, Enterprise Square Gallery, University of Alberta; The Flood, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Firedamp, dc3 Art Projects, Edmonton; The Body in Question(s), UQAM Gallery, Montreal; Perceptions of Promise,Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA/Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta.

Caulfield has received numerous grants and awards for his work including: The Special Award of the Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Krakow Triennial, 2015; SSHRC Dissemination Grant: Canadian Stem Cell Network Impact Grant; SSHRC Fine Arts Creation Grant; Canada Council Travel Grant; and a Visual Arts Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council, Illinois, USA. Caulfield’s work is in various public and private collections including: Houghton Library, Harvard University, USA; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England; Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA. In 2017 Caulfield was elected to the Arts Division of the Academy of the Arts and Humanities of the Royal Society of Canada.