INK & PAPER & MUSIC & THE STREET

Kiva Stimac (Popolo Press) is an artist based in Montreal, Quebec who has been making poster, book, and album art for over 20 years using a variety of printmaking techniques. She is the keynote speaker for the 2025 APA Wayzgoose in Rochester, NY.

Artist Statement:

I have spent the last 23 years making poster, book and album art. This work was for musical, art, literary or activist events in my community locally as well as inter­nationally out of my studio, Popolo Press, in Montreal. I use linocut, woodcut, let­terpress, risography, screen-printing, lithography and etching. I also incorporate collage, papercutting, photography and hand typesetting into my practice. I love to experiment and layer my works using multiple methods. That experimentation and learning is a deep part of my art practice.

Making art and putting it out in my community for the last couple of decades, the hydro poles and mailboxes became my gallery out of necessity but also because it makes my heart sing to beautify, connect with and challenge my neighborhood and the greater city I live and work in. I have a body of work that spans a few thousand posters in addition to my other graphic works. With the onset of the internet I have also had to learn to adjust my art practice to incorporate the digital. Often a work I create on paper exists in both realms, the street and the internet now.

When making a poster, mostly I want to respect the music/inspiration, but also be inspired by the sounds/words/visuals to try new things, colors, textures and tech­niques. I love figuring out ways to do new and different things and being limited by the space of a poster and given the parameters of communication through imagery and type. It is communication on the most basic scale and trying for connection on a grander scale.

Book Arts and Graphic Arts are deeply part of my personal and familial history as both my parents were printmakers, painters and activists and my great grandfather was a Yiddish poet, bookbinder and letterpress printer. Although I am unschooled, I learned from my family that a print-shop could be set up anywhere! But also, that using an artistic practice to communicate and connect has the ability to create, col­laborate, debate, agitate, innovate, liberate, and/or inspire change not just for one­self but for the community I live in and the national and international one I work in as well. Although I work mostly alone to create my pieces, collaboration with others and my community in the initiation of a piece is also a deeply rooted part of my art making.

Music has also played an integral role in my journey to becoming a visual artist as it was often the inspiration and starting point for many of my pieces. I am also the cofounder and visionary behind the music venues, La Casa del Popolo and La Sala Rossa and the Suoni per ii Popolo festival in Montreal. Because of this connec­tion/intersection of music and visual art I have developed a unique and prolific practice.