Against the Grain: An Art Talk and Woodcut Workshop with Lavett Ballard, Didier William, and Alexis Nutini

Alexis Nutini (b. Mexico City, Mexico; l. Philadelphia, PA) received a BA in fine art from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St. Mary's City and an MFA in printmaking from the Tyler School of Art & Architecture, Temple University, Philadelphia. 

Nutini runs Dos Tres Press, where he publishes his own prints and develops collaborative projects with other artists. The focus of Dos Tres Press is experimentation with relief techniques through hand-carved, reduction woodblock printing combined with the digital technology of a laser engraver and CNC router. Nutini was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in Barcelona, Spain and has exhibited his work at venues in Los Angeles, CA; Manhattan, KS; Nashville, TN; Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, both PA; Seattle, WA; and St. Mary's City; as well as in Barcelona, Spain; Brisbane and Melbourne, both Australia; Rome, Italy; and Veracruz, Mexico.

Didier William is originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He earned an BFA in painting from The Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Bronx Museum of Art, The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, The Museum at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Carnegie Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Figge Museum Art Museum.

He is represented by James Fuentes Gallery in New York and Galerie Peter Kilchmann in Zurich, Switzerland. William was an artist-in-residence at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in Brooklyn, NY, a 2018 recipient of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2020 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants, a 2021 recipient of a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and a 2023 recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant. He has taught at several institutions including Yale School of Art, Vassar College, Columbia University, UPenn, and SUNY Purchase. He is currently Associate Professor of Expanded Print at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

Lavett Ballard is a mixed-media visual artist, art historian, curator, and author whose work reclaims and reimagines the narratives of people of African descent, with a particular focus on the histories and presence of Black women. 

Through richly layered collage and assemblage, she constructs alternative visual narratives that bridge ancestral memory, historical inquiry, and contemporary identity.

Ballard holds dual Bachelor’s degrees in Studio Art and Art History, with a minor in Museum Studies from Rutgers University, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her work has received national recognition, including being featured twice on the cover of TIME Magazine, first in 2020 for its Women’s Suffrage Centennial issue, and again in 2023 in connection with Isabel Wilkerson’s CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontent.

Her work has been exhibited widely across the United States and internationally and is held in notable private and institutional collections including the Petrucci Family Foundation, the African American Museum of Philadelphia, the Francis M. Maguire Museum, U.S. Art in Embassies, Syracuse University’s Community Folk Arts Center, and the Jule Collins Smith Museum at Auburn University.

Rooted in both material and metaphor, Ballard’s practice transforms archival imagery and reclaimed surfaces into powerful meditations on identity, memory, and resilience.

Michelle Donnelly is the Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at PAFA. 

She is the co-curator of One After Another: Series and Studies (2026–27) and To Be Continued… (2026–27) and the curator of Proof Testing: The PrintLab Artist Residency at Brandywine Workshop and Archives (2026–27). She seeks to center the work of women artists and artists of color and is particularly interested in the politics of materiality, process, and site. Prior to joining PAFA, Michelle held curatorial positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale Center for British Art, the Morgan Library & Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Heckscher Museum of Art. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Grey Room, Woman’s Art Journal, The Public Review, and Pennsylvania History, as well as publications by the Getty Research Institute, Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Yale School of Art. She earned a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University, an MA in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Art History with Honors from Vassar College.