Backwards/Forwards: A Call for Handmade Prints

Overview

Backwards/Forwards invites artists to submit handmade prints that consider time as material, memory, pressure, inheritance, repetition, rupture, and possibility. Time may be experienced as linear, circular, layered, transparent, opaque, fragmented, geological, ancestral, intimate, political, or otherworldly. This exhibition asks artists to look both backward and forward: toward histories that shape us, futures we imagine or fear, and the present moment where those forces meet.

Possible Approaches

• Memory, ancestry, archive, family history, migration, or cultural inheritance
• Environmental time, extinction, regeneration, seasons, land, weather, or geological change
• The body over time: aging, healing, loss, endurance, repetition, ritual, or care
• Political and social histories that continue to shape the present
• Speculative futures, imagined worlds, warning signs, hopes, omens, or portals
• Print processes that reveal sequence, layering, reversal, pressure, transfer, or trace

Submission Requirements

All entries must be handmade prints created by the artist using traditional printmaking and/or photographic processes and produced within the last 5 years. 3D and experimental work is encouraged. Any combination of processes may be employed including but not limited to silkscreen, letterpress, calligraphy, etching, woodcut, lithography, linocut, drypoint, mezzotint, monoprint, polymer plates, silver gelatin prints, photopolymer gravure, copperplate gravure, cyanotype, vandyke, gumbichromate, palladium, platinum, carbon, salt, chemigram, lumen, argrotype, oilprint, chlorophyll, instant transfers, and lifts. Digital processes may be included when they are meaningfully integrated with handmade printmaking methods. AI-generated and purely digital prints are not eligible. Work needs to arrive at the gallery ready to hang, but framing is not required. Magnets, clips, and other methods can be used.

Key Dates

• September 13, 2026, midnight Mountain Time — Submission deadline
• September 16, 2026 — Notification of accepted entries
• September 30, 2026 — Accepted works must be received
• October 8–November 7, 2026 — Exhibition dates
• October 8, 2026 — Backwards/Forwards opens
• October 9, 2026, 5–7 pm — Public reception
• October 9–12, 2026 — Southwest Print Fiesta
• November 7, 2026 — Exhibition closes
• November 9–13, 2026 — Return shipment of unsold work

Fees & Shipping

• $35 for three pieces
• Additional pieces $1 each
• Artist covers return shipping costs and labels
• FedEx is the preferred shipping method
• Double boxing is recommended; no peanuts, please

Eligibility

Open to international artists. Submit 3–10 handmade prints (maximum 10 total per artist).

Contact

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 575-574-8444
• Website: https://lightartspace.com/