Tuesday, December 18, 2012

To Dream

As an update to my previous blog about Mary Fielding McCleary's "Swan," I want to announce that her "Swan" is now known as "To Dream More, To Dream All the Time."  The edition is signed and the etchings are now available for purchase at Flatbed.

Mary's title was taken from the quote: "If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. "
Marcel Proust

In this holiday season, we dreamers are dreaming of peace.  I don't want to imply specific content here, but McCleary's swan exists in that dream state where all is possible and the reality of a broken, harsh world isn't in sight.  Dreaming and believing may just be closer to reality than we think.  Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream.  He dreamed all the time.  I think we are closer to that dream than when he spoke in 1963.

So this is my (Flatbed's) holiday message.  This is a time to dream and share dreams.  This is a time to seek beauty.  This is the time to share and grow the peace.

Peace and goodwill,
Katherine
 

 

Monday, December 3, 2012

Sangre de Cristo

Joel Salcido, Sangre de Cristo, chine collé, a la poupée polymer photogravure, edition of 24, 2012.
"The first thing I noticed when I entered the storage room inside the Tarahumara Indian Cusarare Mission, high in the Mexican Sierra Madre, was the "open wound" in the adobe wall, and then I noticed the crosses."

Joel Salcido, 1984


A good photograph captures moments, but a great photograph creates epiphany. Sometimes those greater moments have the power to become icons in our lives.  When Joel Salcido captured the moment of Sangre de Cristo twenty-eight years ago at the Tarahumara Mission using film and his 4 x 5 Hasselblad camera in a dimly lit storage area, it had a slim chance of capturing his vision. Yet, the strength of Joel's image has endured and this fall as we considered creating a photogravure etching together, Joel chose this photograph.  A polymer photogravure is a way of creating an etching starting with a photographic image.  The point of making an etching with the photograph is the ability of the etching medium to enhance both the visual and conceptual elements of the image.  Working with Master Printer, Tracy Mayrello, Joel found a way to transmit that moment in the Tarahumara storage area of the mission using the etching technique of a la poupée, selective inking.  The ediiton of 24 was signed today, December 3.  The image is 6" x 5" and is a chine collé  printed on Kitikata with a  15" x 11" Fabriano Artistico support and are now available at Flatbed.

Joel Salcido, well-known and collected photographer located in Austin, Texas, has had years of experience photo-documenting remote peoples, disaster areas, and the cultural turmoil on the border.  In 1991, he left his post as photo editor of the El Paso Times to pursue commercial and editorial photography.  Since then, he has produced work for galleries and publications like USA Today and Texas Highways.  Sangre de Cristo  is the second etching he has created and co-published with Flatbed Press.  For information about Sangre de Cristo's price and availability, link to Flatbed here: Sangre de Cristo.