Miguel Rivera Selected for Prestigious McKinney Visiting Artist Series at IU Bloomington
10.28.2025
Miguel Rivera, Associate Professor and Chair of Printmaking at KCAI, says he’s sharing his practice of “Post Digital” Printmaking, merging digital design tools with traditional print processes to explore the intersection of technology and craftsmanship.
Miguel Rivera, Associate Professor and Chair of Printmaking, has been selected for the McKinney Visiting Artist Series at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University Bloomington. This highly competitive opportunity allows Rivera to introduce his pioneering work, focusing on the relatively new, yet significant, practice of "Post Digital" Printmaking.
Inspired and advised by artist Mike Lyon's innovative vector-generated works, Rivera has pioneered a new bridge between CNC technology and plate engraving as the finished work or as the matrix for reproduction.
“It is essentially taking an image, whether created digitally in Photoshop or by hand, and converting it into vectors, the reality of the digital world. From that point, we use other processing tools to play,” Rivera says.
“Using these tools has a lot to do with aesthetics. For example, a program like Gravity Sketch has certain limitations on its graphics and appearance, and that actually helps me to drive the final piece. Another program I love to use is Aspire where I can program it to produce a specific look, giving me exactly the result I want,” he says.
“It is essentially taking an image, whether created digitally in Photoshop or by hand, and converting it into vectors, the reality of the digital world."
Graphic Fusion
The McKinney Visiting Artist Series at IU Bloomington brings renowned visual artists to campus for a short residency, letting artists interact with students, present public lectures, and engage with the university's academic and research environment. More information here
As part of Rivera’s visit, he will demonstrate the workflow for translating images from the computer to a controller and then to a router, using a CNC machine to carve the printing blocks.
“We'll be preparing a new print, in this case, a multi-colored one, and I will be sharing with graduate students how to design and execute using these technologies. I’ll also be conducting critiques with the MFA program, group critiques with the BFA program, and giving a lecture on the final day, which will be followed by an opening of the works we create there,” Rivera says.
Global Printmaker
An experienced educator and practicing artist, Miguel Rivera has taught at KCAI since 2008. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the globe, including in Argentina, Romania, Hungary, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Mexico, Japan, China, and the United States. Prior to his time at KCAI, Rivera served as an Associate Professor of Printmaking and Computers in Art and was formerly the Chair of the Art Department at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.
Prior to joining the University of Guanajuato in 1998, Rivera was an associate artist at Inkling Studio in Portland, Ore., and instructor at West Virginia University in Morgantown, where he completed his M.F.A. degree in printmaking and applied digital media in 1997. He earned a B.F.A. degree in printmaking and painting in 1995 from Southern Oregon University in Ashland and an associate degree in printmaking in 1992 from the University of Guanajuato.
Rivera has given visiting artist lectures in Mexico, Peru, Argentina and the US, including at the conferences of the Southern Graphics Council. He is a co-director with artist Cara Jaye of "Crossover," an artists' collaboration project that started in Guanajuato, Mexico in 2006 and has continued to develop in the US, Mexico, China, and Argentina. Lately he has held artist residencies in Sweden, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Japan, Italy, and China. His work has been featured at the Napoca Museum in Romania, and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art and Kemper Museum of American Art, both in Kansas City, and belongs to other museums, universities, galleries, and private collections.
For more information about this faculty member, visit: https://www.miguelriveraartstudio.com/