Risographs & Chemigrams—Working with Family Archives
ProjectArt Workshop at Greenspace Miami
Risographs & Chemigrams—Working with Family Archives
In Partnership with ProjectArt and Greenspace Miami
7200 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL 33138
Risographs & Chemigrams—Working with Family Archives is an intergenerational workshop that will introduce the mediums of risograph printing and chemigrams to participants. Facilitated by Isabella Marie Garcia, this workshop invites participants to use their family archives as the foundation for concrete and abstract image-making. Both mediums are key to the artist’s practice and present in her installation found on view in the Told, Retold: The Pedagogy of Knowing & Becoming exhibition at Greenspace Miami.
Risograph printing is a digital printing technique that uses stencils to transfer ink to paper, resulting in bold colors, tactile textures, and perfect imperfections. Participants will learn about the history of risograph before practicing their own printing with a PrintGocco, a popular at-home printing device produced by Japanese company Riso Kagaku starting in the late 1970s. Participants are encouraged to bring their own family photographs that they would like to print, while also being provided archival familial images sourced from the Miami-Dade Public Library System.
Chemigrams are created by forcing a chemical reaction between photographic paper and a resist—typically a form of varnish or liquid i.e. oil, honey, sugar, etc.—and utilizing traditional darkroom chemistry to create an experimental visual result. Participants will learn the history and basics of this experimental photo technique before creating their own results with photo paper and resists provided by the facilitator.
Participants will leave with concrete and abstract images sourced from personal and collective family archives. The workshop will serve to uphold the indisputable value of the tactile to intergenerational storytelling and material preservation as living testaments of familial lore.
Artist Biography
Isabella “Isa” Marie Garcia is an interdisciplinary lens-based artist, writer, and photographer living in her native Miami, Florida. Interested in alternative educational spaces, holistic aftercare, and supporting visual artists in the American South in her practice, Garcia is a recipient of a 2025 Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Award and the 2024 WOPHA Research Fellowship for The Photography Care Matrix: Teaching Traditional and Experimental Photo Techniques within Prison Environments, Residential Rehabs, and Alternative Schools, the recipient of a 2024 Visual Aids Research Fellowship, and the 2023 Locust Projects Wavemaker Research and Implementation Grant Recipient for What Happens When the Dust Settles?. She currently works as the editorial assistant at Burnaway, as a 2024-2025 ProjectArt Miami Resident Artist, and as an O, Miami Lead Sunroom Teaching Artist. Garcia graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts in English from Florida International University. More information on her work can be found at www.isamxrie.com.