Paper Pushers showcases works on paper by esteemed artists across the nation.  Featuring work by: Carlos Hernandez, CR Stecyk III, David Amoroso, Elizabeth McGrath, Laura Jane Hamilton, Martin Mazorra, and Miso.

The work of Houston-based serigraphy artist Carlos Hernandez has been featured in the 2011 Communication Arts Typography annual, the 2011 & 2012 Communication Arts Illustration annual and was also recently published in the 2012 book Mexican Graphics by Korero Books-UK.  He has designed and printed gig posters for such artists as The Kills, Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, Santana, and more. Most recently, he was selected as the official poster artist to design the commemorative poster for the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival. Carlos serves as an instructor of Screen Printing at Rice University, Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts.

Craig R. Stecyk III lives and works in Los Angeles.  As a result of familial and neighborhood connections in the Venice and Santa Monica areas of Los Angeles, Stecyk grew up around car “customizers” and auto-style progenitors like George Barris, Dutch Darrin, Gil Ayala, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Von Dutch Howard, Phil Hill, Dean Jeffries and Ed Iskenderian, as well as legendary surfers and board builders Dave Sweet, Dale Velzy, Miklos Dora and Greg Noll. In the late 1970s, as an original member of the “Dogtown” skateboard gang in Southern California, Stecyk changed the look and attitude of skateboarding forever.He began his career as a surfboard designer and graphic artist while working out of the small Zephyr surf shop. Stecyk is considered one of the first to incorporate many outlaw elements of surf and skate culture into the equipment and attendant gear. He is perhaps best known as a documentary photographer. His articles and photo essays of the 1970s for Skateboarder magazine set a standard for throngs of rebellious individualists to follow. This original documentation of the mid 1970s Dogtown scene altered the lives of a generation, inspiring confidence and encouraging the rebel instinct to flourish. It was through his photographs that the modern skateboarder archetype was brought to light. Since then, Stecyk has continued his documentary recordings, immersing himself in Southern California’s surf, hot rod and low rider scenes. In 1993, he curated the highly successful exhibition, Kustom Kulture, at the Laguna Art Museum, which featured such seminal underground artists as Robt. Williams, Von Dutch and Roth. Stecyk also organized Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing, was a founding member of the Juxtapoz magazine collective, and was the production designer and writer of the Sundance Film Festival award-winning Dogtown and Z-Boys.

David Amoroso shows his admiration for Latin culture through his artwork. His artistic passion is divided between painting, photography, and block and screen prints.  Although the majority of David’s work is dedicated to painting iconic portraits of everyday people, he also represents Mexican pop culture through his work.  His involvement within the Latino art community has allowed him to create Mexican altars for Día de los Muertos and Guatemalan Alfombras de Aserrín. His art has brought him to exhibit and work in the DC Metro area, California, Arizona, Mexico, Central and South America.

Los Angeles-born artist Elizabeth McGrath has always had an eye for the strange beauty in the grotesqueries of life; this appreciation is nowhere more evident than in her work. Inspired by the relationship between the natural world and the detritus of consumer culture, she brings forth a new cavalcade of creatures from the darker corners of the streets, the city, the imagination. It is this melancholy interaction between man-made status symbols and suffering specimens of nature that make up her intricate body of work.

Martin Mazorra is a Brooklyn based artist, originally from West Virginia. The woodcuts he makes are hand-drawn and hand-carved and hand-printed. The letterpress is moveable type, and printed on a Vandercook press. Mazorra loves the unique characteristics of wood type, and the slight differences between letter forms.  The combination of woodcut and letterpress provides editorial content and graphic impact, while preserving the individuality of the hand that makes the cut.

A graduate with a BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, Miso’s work is presented through a variety of mediums including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and etchings. Her art is often stimulated by her interpretation of the known and her experimentation with the unknown. Fascinated with biology, pathology and the science of evolution, Miso has sought to fabricate a world in which strange creatures, born of her making, exist and thrive among us. These homunculi are organic representations of the term that provides her name. A Miso is an organic representation of an, or many existing organisms, such as fungus, plants, insects, animals, or microorganisms. Miso currently works and resides in Los Angeles, California.