Ignorant Artists is an art history explainer series for people who love art.
No pretension. No jargon. Just the real stories behind the people who made the work — the printmakers, visionaries, rebels, and outsiders who changed how we see the world.
About Don Hudgins
Don Hudgins is a printmaker based in Eugene, Oregon. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. His work spans multiple series including 72 Demons, Stand Tall, Dream Big, Wage Slave, Food Chain, Vexations, and others. Humor and layered symbolism are central to his artistic voice.
“Hiding challenging ideas in plain sight.”
His prints are available at donhudgins.com.
The Show
Each episode of Ignorant Artists focuses on a single artist, movement, or artifact — told from the perspective of someone who makes things by hand and wants to know how other people did it, why they did it, and what it cost them.
New episodes releasing regularly on YouTube and coming soon to Spotify.
The Origin Story
“Ignorant Don’t Mean Stupid”
Ignorant Artists goes back further than the podcast.
In 1984, a group of Chicago artists fresh out of grad school self-organized an exhibition under a name coined by artist Michael Bulka: Ignorant Artists. The premise was simple — standing on the shoulders of giants was too great a burden to take into the studio every day. As artists, we were only responsible for producing work that pleased us, and hopefully others.
The announcement was created the old school way — a transparency overlaid on an original print, hand lettered with vinyl letters, photocopied in black and white. We plastered the River North District with them. We had promotional pens that said “Ignorant Artists” and “Ignorant Don’t Mean Stupid.” We might have had t-shirts.
Before the exhibition, the group pulled off something better. A loose collective including Bob de Vaughn, Mike Bobo, Mike Bulka, Tim Richards, and Don Hudgins were officially tasked with guarding Red Grooms’ Chicago sculpture on loan from the Art Institute at Navy Pier during the Mile of Sculpture. When the Art Expo ended, the Mile of Sculpture still had a week to run. Left with golf carts, leftover sandwiches, kegs of beer, very few visitors, and loose supervision from Chicago PD — who joined the golf cart races — the group snuck small sculptures into the Mile of Sculpture and hid them in plain sight.
That was the spirit of Ignorant Artists then. It still is.
I’m the last man standing from that original group. This podcast is for them.