Backwards/Forwards
2026 Juried Exhibition
Opening Reception: Friday, October 9 from 5-7PM
Juror’s Talk: Friday, October 9th at 5:30PM
2026 Juror: Terran Last Gun
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.
As artists, how do we come to terms with our cultural past? What do we inherit, repeat, revise, resist, or transform? How do personal and collective histories surface through mark, matrix, impression, edition, erasure, pressure, layering, and touch?
Submissions must be rooted in handmade printmaking processes. Eligible techniques may include, but are not limited to, relief, intaglio, lithography, screenprint, monotype, monoprint, collagraph, letterpress, book arts, experimental print processes, handmade photographic processes, and mixed-media work that substantially incorporates hand-pulled or hand-printed elements.
Digital processes may be included when they are meaningfully integrated with handmade printmaking methods.
AI-generated and purely digital prints are not eligible.
Submission deadline: September 13th, 2026, midnight mountain time
Notification of acceptance: September 16th, 2026
Exhibition dates: October 8th – November 7th, 2026
Entry fee: $35 for 3 pieces, $10 for each addition piece
Delivery of work to the gallery (shipped or hand deliver): September 30th , 2026
· Sales: 50/50
About Our Juror:
Terran Last Gun, Saakwaynaamah’kaa (Last Gun), (b. 1989, Browning, MT) is an enrolled citizen of the Piikani (Blackfeet) of Montana and a visual artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Piikani are one of four nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy, collectively called the Niitsitapi (Real People). Born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, Last Gun works across media to explore color, form, and abstraction. Drawing inspiration from land, cosmos, cultural narratives, and experiences, Last Gun pushes the boundaries of Piikani abstraction.
He has exhibited at venues including the SITE Santa Fe (Santa Fe, NM), Zimmerli Art Museum (New Brunswick, NJ), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO), Glacier Art Museum (Kalispell, MT), Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, MT), Bates Museum of Art (Lewiston, ME), Newberry Library (Chicago, IL), The 8th Floor (New York, NY), Museum of the Plains Indian (Browning, MT), Contemporary at Blue Star (San Antonio, TX), and Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM), among others.
Last Gun received his BFA in Museum Studies and AFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2016. He has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2024 Biennial Award, First Peoples Fund 2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship, Santa Fe Art Institute 2018 Story Maps Fellowship, and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture 2016 Goodman Aspiring Artist Fellowship. Last Gun was named one of the 2022 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in Southwest Contemporary.