ABOUT
Alto Gallery is pleased to present Close to Home, a group exhibition guest curated by Emily Moyer. Close to Home brings together ten printmaking artists to explore what “local” means in personal and collective ways. The multi-media exhibition considers individual narratives to create a complex picture of what "home" can be. Individuals are shaped by proximity and experience to become part of a larger group. Through diverse printmaking approaches, the artists reflect on the people, environments, and values that define what is close to them. Together, these works invite viewers to reflect on what it means to be close to home.

Exhibiting artists: JayCee Beyale, Tiana Boisseau-Palo, Taiko Chandler, Virginia Diaz Saiki, Jennifer Ghormley, Lizeth Guadalupe, Lucy Holtsnider, Andi Newberry, Luis Perez, Jeff Shepherd


BIOS AND STATEMENTS
Andi Newberry is a printmaker and interdisciplinary artist from North Texas, now based in Colorado. Her work explores the permeance of memory, connections with others, and the lines drawn between memory, storytelling, and imagination. In Close to Home, her installation and monotype pieces play with the detritus of home and the humor underlying the objects and memories we make effort to collect, preserve, and shepherd.

Lucy Holtsnider is a printmaker and collage artist based in Denver. Her work is inspired by the colors and textures she observes outdoors as a runner and volunteer trail builder. Her vibrant collages result from joyful material experimentation using monotype prints, handmade paper, hand built ceramic tiles, plywood, and recycled fabric. The dense and unusual compositions that result create new visual languages that invite viewers to move closer to each piece and investigate. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Arvada Center for the Arts, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art, Design and Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara, and the International Print Center, New York.

Jeff Shepherd is a letterpress printer and graphic designer. With more than a decade of experience running a pressroom, he’s printed a wide spectrum of pieces, ranging from disposable napkins to fine art. When not in front of a press, he’s usually tinkering with bicycles, making pottery, studying Japanese, and battling a houseplant obsession.

Statement: Printing these patterns is all about building collective and thematic imagery. Individual sequences might be rhythmic, melodic, abstract, historical, symbolic, literal, figurative, et cetera. They each have personality. Bringing them together in space and highlighting each with translucent ink lets them build their own community. Repeated interaction develops relationships and interdependence. New shapes, colors, and even new patterns are formed just as our shared experiences help us grow and form collective identity.

Assembled here are motifs crafting images with sentiments of time and place. Picking berries on a hike through a valley with friends, fishing from the banks of a stream with family, and riding bicycles through fields with my wife. Common occurrences with people close to me, in places we enjoy together. Reminders of where we live and what we do.

Lizeth Guadalupe (she/her/ella) is a multidisciplinary artist who employs various mediums and techniques to express concepts focusing on culture, physical health, and feminism. She aims to engage people from all walks of life, spark meaningful conversations, and promote awareness through art.

Statement: Community shows up for each other and protects the most vulnerable. We’ve seen the survivors being judged, criticized, and harassed. Society talks about thoughts and prayers but never takes the action to make a change and protect our youth, our future leaders. The youth will have these future communities and if they have to deal with childhood trauma, then how will they form a community?

Taiko Chandler, originally from Nagano, Japan, is a Denver-based artist who trained and worked as a nurse in Japan and the UK. In 2011, she took her first art class, printmaking at the Art Students League of Denver. While her work remains rooted in printmaking, her practice has expanded to three-dimensional forms.
She has exhibited widely in Colorado, including solo exhibitions at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and Denver Botanic Gardens, and nationally in group exhibitions. In 2023, her site-responsive installation Blue Surge was featured in Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Printmaking Today, and A Tale of Two Balconies (Smithsonian Institution & Giles Ltd., 2024).

Statement: “Contested Void (2026)”
Printmaking is central to my practice, where thought and emotion take physical form through repetition, pressure, and resistance. This installation combines monotype prints on Tyvek sheets and hundreds of heat-manipulated organza pieces, hand-sewn into a single form. The tension among materials and shapes reflects the tension in my evolving cultural values — East and West — in constant dialogue, where conflict and complement coexist, sometimes easily and sometimes under stresses and strains. The work resists a fixed form, remaining fluid and responsive to both space and experience — it is both community and a collection of competing forces.