Transformed

Randy Twaddle at work on Lankydoo

I have been a long-time fan of Randy Twaddle and his large scale drawings. The conceptual underpinning of Randy's work is the tight balance and contrast of controlled, logical and systematic linear elements against the fluid beauty of chance, arbitrary, and atmospheric stains.  As a lover of art history, I compare his Transformer drawings to a marriage of the sensibilities of Michelangelo's Pieta with Helen Frankenthaler's Bilbao. Control and Determination meet Mystery and Flux.  Linear and Narrative meet Exponential and Free-forming.  When Randy accepted our invitation to come create work at Flatbed,  I was honored to be able to collaborate with him in a project.

Randy came to Flatbed to plan his etching and we discussed working with a Transformer image.  Randy's transformer images are influenced by heavy electrical wiring and transformers seen (and not really "seen") in our urban environment.  Randy has long been fascinated with these images and we deemed it ideal for the printmaking techniques of aquatint and line etching.  We determined that he would create the linear forms with line etching and tightly controlled aquatint etched to print a deep and dense black.  The free-form fluid "ground" to be printed in a transparent brown would be created with aquatint etched with his pouring a nitric acid solution directly onto the copper plate.  Randy would have some control over the directional "run" of the acid but ultimately, the flux of the acid would create its own shape and gradations.

Master Printer Tracy Mayrello proofing Lankydoo

The process of working with Randy to etch and proof two plates took about five days before we came up with the R.T.P., a right to print proof which determined how we were to print the edition. During the collaboration there were dramatic moments, not the least when Randy applied the liquid acid and gum Arabic mixture to the copper plate and holding and moving a large copper plate, while he controlled the direction of the "run" of the acid. The linear plate was straightforward for Randy to draw and for us to etch, but the primary variable of this etching proved to be the exact, transparent sepia colored "stain" ink for the background. Randy was fond of the stain that coffee makes on paper, and we attempted to get that luminous color by mixing several earth colors of inks and making the mixture very transparent.  However ink colors can vary even from reputable vendors, and after several weeks of re-mixing and ordering new inks then re-proofing, we achieved the right color and could go forward with the edition.  Editioning this large etching took two months, and Randy signed all the prints of the edition of 24 in July 2012.  

As is the case with all fine art prints as well as any art object, this work should be experienced first hand. Lankydoo is now on exhibition at Flatbed.  Our gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 10am - 5pm and Saturday 10am - 3pm. We are also open by appointment to all who would like to see this or any of our prints outside of normal open hours.

Archive

Larry Scholder at Flatbed Press, 2009

A reception is planned this Friday evening, June 21 at Flatbed from 6 until 8 pm for Larry Scholder celebrating his exhibition Archive.  This exhibition of works does not constitute an archive or a collection of every print Larry has created, but in this case the title refers to Larry's shapes, lines, forms and minimal color that have become more than a visual vocabulary.  They are his Archive.

The show has been up for a few weeks now, and I get to linger and look longer than I usually do at exhibition openings.  I am reminded of Girogio Morandi and his archive of forms.  Like Morandi, Larry works with minimal forms and repeats them.  He also works with minimal color.  Stripping most of the color away from what might be considered biologically based shapes, we are left with bare, flattened shapes and the spaces between them.  These forms themselves are not the subject matter, but the relationship of the forms to each other and the space they occupy seem to become pressingly important.  Some of Larry's prints at times seem visually playful.  Two of Larry's relief etchings hang side by side.  Spawn I and Spawn II at first seem the same, and yet, with close inspection the minute difference start to sharply erupt on our vision and our visual memory is acutely challenged.

Scholder, After, aquatint, 2006

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The exhibition represents nearly twenty years of Larry Scholder’s work as an artist/printmaker and constitutes a retrospective of his developing vision. Archive was first mounted at the Pollock Gallery of the Meadows School of Art at Southern Methodist University, where it was exhibited in the fall of 2012.  Scholder served as professor at SMU from 1968 until 2012.  In 1994, Flatbed published one of Scholder’s prints as a part of the Flatbed Portfolio and since that time he has continued to work with Flatbed on various intaglio projects.

Scholder, Apogee, aquatint, 2005

Archive will be up until August 24. Flatbed's gallery hours have changed and now are Tuesday - Friday 10 am until 5 pm and Saturday from 10 am until 3 pm.  We are also open by appointment.

Jules Buck Jones In the House: UPDATE

JULES BUCK JONES

Update: Continental Divide

 

Tuesday, May 21, Jules signed the edition of 10 ten etchings and a few color trial proofs. The title that Jules gave to the 44" x 12" etching is "Continental Divide." Jules explained that he drew his inspiration for the etching from his time in Costa Rica. At one point he stood at the continental divide which of runs through the Monteverde Cloud Forest and Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve of Costa Rica, one foot on the Pacific side and one on the Atlantic, surrounded by the dense cloud forest. Six impressions remain of the edition.

 

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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.