In September of 2024, eight current and former students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) visited the Newberry to see and learn about the items on display in Making an Impression: Immigrant Printing in Chicago. In response, each student created their own broadside designs to share with exhibition visitors. The artist's statement below accompanies their finished broadside and explains the artist's style, approach, and intentions.
My great grandfather Wojciech (Polish version of Albert) immigrated to the US from Poland in 1902. Shortly after immigrating to Chicago he began going by the name George. Whether he faced internal or external pressures to "Americanize" himself I may never know, but I wanted to represent that weight. Printed in Polish is the phrase "Witaj w domu" meaning "welcome home", but it is almost completely drowned out by the message in English and overlapping imagery of the nuclear family.