Danielle Aubert
Areas of Study: Department of Visual Arts Contact: Email Interests:
Graphic Design Practice and History, Labor, Social Movements, Print Materiality, Software as Tool, Typography, History of the Book
My research focuses on the labor and methods of production involved in the mass reproduction of print and digital materials. My background is in graphic design, and in my research and teaching I am especially focused on the relationship between practical production methods — the software, equipment, and materials necessary for graphic design production — and the labor of the designer as worker. My current work explores the role of the graphic designer, as a subject and agent, in political movement and the production of community.
My book, The Detroit Printing Co-op: The Politics of the Joy of Printing (2019), documents the work of a printing co-op founded in 1970 by a group that included Fredy and Lorraine Perlman, anarchists who wrote, printed, and published books through their press, Black & Red books. The Co-op was the site of production for tens of thousands of copies of radical leftist texts in the 1970s, including the first English translation of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. Working as self-taught printers and typesetters, many of these publications exhibit an inventive approach to color separation, typography, and collage. In 2021 I co-curated, with Andrew Blauvelt, an exhibition of this material for the Cranbrook Museum of Art.
I co-edited Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies (2012) about life in Lafayette Park, Detroit with Lana Cavar and Natasha Chandani. Described by architectural historian Phyllis Lambert as a “superb field guide” to the inhabitants of Lafayette Park, our book proposed an alternative to the way that iconic modernist architecture is often represented. I have also published several artist’s books, including Marking the Dispossessed (2015) and 16 Months Worth of Drawings in Microsoft Excel (2006). Marking the Dispossessed is a compilation of marks, comments, and underlines made by readers in over one hundred used copies of The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I was a Fellow in the Creative and Performing Art at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and a 2021 Kresge Award recipient.
I teach classes at the intersection of graphic design, writing, and production.
The muralist and multimedia artist on art’s impact on belonging and shared spaces
Stephen “ESPO” Powers is the iconic New York-based artist best known for his sign painting and graffiti. Beginning his career in the 90s under the alias “ESPO” (Exterior Surface Painting Outreach), he quickly became a New York staple, covering dozens of storefront grates with bright, playful block lettering and toeing the line of legality.
Since then, he’s made the switch from graffiti to become a full-time studio artist. He’s won a Fulbright Scholarship, curated the Dreamland Artist’s Club, which commissioned over 45 artists to repaint signage and transform Coney Island, and has been featured in numerous exhibitions across the globe. Join us as Powers discusses how he uses walls, storefronts, hand-painted signs, and everyday architecture to explore belonging, memory, and the social life of neighborhoods. And how he uses creativity to deepen our understanding of neighborhoods, the built environment, and civic life.
Speaker(s): Stephen ESPO Powers and Danielle Aubert