Magical Secrets

Art 40 Basel

2009-07-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, Valerie and I flew back from Basel, Switzerland where we spent twelve days at the Art Basel fair, where Crown Point had a booth. Crown Point Press has participated in fair for the past seven consecutive years; we had a booth there previously, during the late ‘70s, when the fair was a more modest event. Now Art Basel is one of the preeminent art fairs and the oldest one. This year there were 300 galleries showing 2,000 artists, and 65,000 visitors came over a five-day period.

This year most gallerists were not sure what to expect because of the downturn in the world’s economies, and so the positive headlines after the first day of the fair (in The Art Newspaper) were a relief to many-the general take from gallerists was that though there was not the same sort of buying as in previous years, the market was not completely depressed. We noticed after walking through the fair that many galleries had brought work by their tried and true artists, there was not much experimentation with installations, and most booths were very elegant and low key. Per usual there were many European collectors and visitors to the fair though noticeably not very many Americans, at least this was our estimation based on those who visited our booth.

Valerie Wade, Crown Point’s gallery director, designed a beautiful booth this year-the configuration of walls and entry ways made the booth feel open and airy. We debuted new prints by Chris Ofili, Mamma Andersson and Susan Middleton, and we hung some early prints by Sol LeWitt, Barry LeVa, Jannis Kounellis, and Robert Ryman all together on one wall. Vito Acconci’s 20 Foot Ladder for Any Size Wall, 1979-81 climbed a central pillar in the booth, inviting passers by to stop in, curious to see perhaps where the ladder led. (The print is a photoetching of an aluminum ladder, and is comprised of eight sheets, each sheet individually framed and the whole piece hung vertically.) Included also in the booth, among others, were prints by Mary Heilmann, Edgar Bryan, Julie Mehretu, and Jockum Nordström.

During the five-day long fair, the Art Basel organizers host special evenings for collectors and exhibitors. A highlight this year was the theatre production Il Tempo del Postino, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno. The curators's intention was to present a group show of work by artists that would occupy time rather than space and they wanted to bring the exhibit to the viewer, rather than the usual, where the viewer goes to the exhibit. Artists were invited to each create a work that was time-based, and each work was displayed sequentially onstage. The piece debuted in 2007 in Manchester, England. The artists who contributed to the production were Anri Sala, Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, Tacita Dean, Trisha Donnelly, Olafur Eliasson, Liam Gilick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordan, Carsten Holler, Pierre Huyghe, Koo Jeong-A, Philippe Parreno, Tino Sehgal, and Rirkrit Tiravanija with Arto Lindsay. The production in Basel was directed by Obrist, Parreno, Anri Sala and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

In Basel the production was presented for two nights, and Valerie and I went the second night. We were admittedly tired from a long day at the booth, and we had rushed over earlier in the evening to the Kunstmuseum to see the Van Gogh show, which we unfortunately had to rush through. At the front entrance to the theatre, I wondered whether I could manage a 2-1/2 hour production. When we got our seats, a greater measure of insecurity and panic set in, because though we had wonderful seats, they were dead center in a row of chairs that stretched without an opening to either side of us for what seemed a quarter of a mile in each direction. There was no escape! We were committed to the entire evening. I scanned the playbill and noticed there would be an intermission. I breathed a sigh of relief and settled. I cannot possibly explain each piece in this blog though though I will share with you a few of my favorites. Tacita Dean’s film was titled Merce Cunningham, First Performance of Stillness (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’ 33"- with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007. In the movie, we see Merce Cunningham sitting in a chair in a dance studio that is empty. His back is to the long wall mirror and in the reflection we see the camera man, Trevor Carlson. The only sound we hear are the ambient ones in the dance studio: the city street noises coming through the windows, the faint piano from another dance studio. Cunningham sits quietly, not moving except for three different moments, when he shifts his weight in his chair. The film was very moving and intimate, and I felt that really in essence it was a love story.

Carsten Holler made a very funny movie called Upside Down People. He had found an old film from the ‘30s of an experiment where a man wore a device over his eyes that made him see the world upside down; he lived for two weeks with the upside down world, and the documentary followed his progress at adaptability. Holler edited in his own film, of contemporary young (Swiss?) people wearing new devices, and their management of their upside down world contrasted with the older film. (There was not much difference between the two, so I didn’t see much of a point of the newer film.) There were very funny moments of physical comedy, though it stopped there for me. Pierre Huyghe’s piece, Hola Zombies, was presented in three acts, interspersed throughout the entire evening’s production. Two characters were on stage, one a tall Snufalufagus-type creature, with long, yellow hair, and the other was a rat-like creature. The stage was dark, and the rat-like creature and the yellow fellow sat around a small cake with one candle in it. The rat-like creature sang happy birthday and blew out the candle, though the candle kept relighting and the creature would sing the song again. After about three times, he gave up, and both creatures fell over and that was it. The other two parts of the piece were similar, a dark stage, and the two creatures, though the large yellow creature died in the final act, and the rat-like creature cried by its side with a bouquet of white flowers. Initially I wasn’t sure if I liked looking at the creatures, and it all seemed creepy but then they became familiar and the end was comical though also tragic since it too was a love story.

I also liked Rirkrit Tiravanija’s piece with Arto Lindsay; the former prepared a dinner onstage while the dinner guests sat at a long table, talking quietly, and Arto Lindsay played loud and cacophonic though strangely melodic electric guitar. I did like the guitar though it was a little abrasive, and it seemed to all make sense--to have music drown out the dinner guests conversations; the music acted like a mask, distorting the evening while simultaneously making the dinner party and its conceit mundane in contrast. (Tiravanija’s preparation and presentation of the food was secondary to the guitar piece.)

Doug Aitken’s piece, The Handle Comes Up the Hammer Comes Down was a big hit, with me and with the audience. There were about eight Mid-Western animal auctioneers in the audience, and they alternately and then simultaneously called out numbers, and eventually the calling out became a song, and the rhythm of their voices crescendoed and reverberated throughout the theatre space. That piece of course was very tongue in cheek. I could mention a few other pieces that I enjoyed very much though this blog very well might never end. I will not take the opportunity to say which ones I didn’t like suffice it to say two were by very Big Name Artists, and neither of their pieces were particularly interesting. At intermission we drank Moet Chandon champagne out of small bottles with funny plastic things attached to the mouth of the bottle so no one needed a glass. It was a funny sight, to see very well-heeled art people drinking out of bottles. After the performance, I walked back to my hotel, following the tram line, passing blooming roses and ancient homes. It was an evening well worth spent.

The next few days in Basel we busily spent at the booth. There were many new people we met at the fair, and great interest in the prints that we showed. On our last day, after packing up the booth, Val and I walked along the Rhine to find a restaurant a fellow exhibitor had told us about. As we walked, we finally saw how swimming in the Rhine was accomplished. Since the river flows so quickly, it is not possible to swim upstream but only to float downstream. Along the bank was a low sloping brick bank, and on it chains. It seemed that this was a spot for getting out of the river, where you would drift to the bank, and grab the chain and pull yourself out of the current. There were a couple of small beaches were one could easily walk into the water; some swimmers had their clothing in water-tight bags that floated alongside them. It looked wonderful to be in the water. The day was nearing its end, the air was still balmy and a few thunderclouds loomed dark east of us. Val and I pledged that the next time we were in Basel, we would make sure to swim in the Rhine. In order to get to our restaurant (Veronica it is called) we took a ferry across the Rhine, and the ferry was in fact a small boat with a wire attached to another wire that stretched across the river. The ferryman charged us 1 franc each, and we sat down and drifted across. It was lovely, quiet and perfect. (There was one other passenger.) Our restaurant had dining outside only, with a roof over our heads and no walls. The place jutted out over the Rhine, the whole edifice was a giant deck, with steps leading down to the water. At Veronica you could eat, drink beer, and rent out lockers to stow your stuff while swimming! There were even showers. As we ate the thunder clouds burst above us and the rained poured down, sheets of it falling into the Rhine all around us. The rain stopped just as we were leaving, and we waited for the tram across from a magnificently green park. Basel the city is an idyll, and the fair is an exciting, invigorating experience, one that is hard to forget.
-Sasha Baguskas

Global Implications: Southern Graphics Council Conference 2009

2009-04-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

Early last Wednesday morning, Crown Point master printer Emily York, and I headed out to the airport to catch our flight to Chicago for the annual Southern Graphics Council conference. This year’s theme was global implications, and Kathan Brown, founding director of Crown Point Press, had been invited to give a keynote address. The talk, “Go with All Your Heart”, was given on the first morning of the conference, to a full-house at the Hilton Hotel’s ballroom, and it was about Kathan’s travels with artists to China and Japan during the Press’ woodcut projects, and to the island of Ponape, where artists’ talks were recorded (and which later became a three-record set, Vision 4: Word of Mouth, published by Crown Point.) Kathan’s talk was a success, with many conference participants remarking on it throughout the next few days.

At each SGC conference, Crown Point sets up a booth during the Product Fair, to promote the Press and our summer workshops, and to sell books which include our Magical Secrets series, and printmaking supplies. This time around we debuted the most recent addition to the Magical Secrets series, Magical Secrets about Chine Collé, by Brian Shure. Brian is a former Crown Point printer, and luckily for us, he was attending the conference to be part of a panel discussion, so we were able to have him hang around the booth to take Q & A’s about his new book, and to help Emily out with her chine collé demonstration, which was being presented during one day of the conference.

Emily and Brian’s chine collé demonstrations were a highlight, in addition to Kathan’s keynote talk. Originally there were two demos scheduled, but the demand was so great that Emily had to add a third, though abbreviated, demo. She worked tremendously hard that day, talking and printing and collé-ing to an audience of over three hundred people, for five hours (nearly straight!) I held down the booth at the Product Fair, selling books and supplies, and meeting new and interesting printmakers from all over the country. During these conferences, it is invigorating to be surrounded by so many who are devoted to, and passionate about, printmaking, and it is always wonderful to be reminded of how many people there are out in the world who love etching as much as we do here at Crown Point.

Emily came and helped out at the booth on the second day of the Product Fair. She is a great help, and fun to be with. During our nights out, we explored a bit of Chicago, visiting the neighborhoods of Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village, and Lincoln Park. One day, the sunniest and warmest, I was able to visit the Art Institute, and to see the amazingly blue Lake Michigan. We were staying at the Hilton on Michigan Avenue, so were lucky to have the park in front of us, and we caught a glimpse of Agora, Magdalena Abakanowicz’s sculpture, (once at night, the other time layered in snow!) Unfortunately, we missed seeing Cloud Gate, Anish Kapoor’s sculpture in Millennium Park, because of our ignorance to the proximity of it!

The last day, Sunday, our travel day, it snowed. There was a funny sort of marathon out on the avenue, people running in the cold, wet slosh of snow, their legs burning red in the cold. We marveled at their endurance and commitment. I suppose one could say the same sort of thing about printmakers and the process of printmaking: it does take commitment, and endurance of mind and body to succeed.

Crown Point Weekend Workshops: Alumni Special

2009-01-31T12:00:00.000-08:00

Master printer Ianne Kjorlie prints with workshop participant Roberta.

On a recent Saturday, six alumnus of Crown Point's summer etching workshops gathered in the Crown Point studio. They were participants in the first of a series of weekend workshops the Press if now offering. Because the alumni were already familiar with the etching studio, they were ready for action the minute they walked through the door. There was experimentation with a string and sugar lift aquatint. One participant honed her skill at drypoint and another produced a four-plate etching. It was remarkable how much was accomplished during the day, said Emily York, Crown Point master printer and one of the teacher-printers for the day. Chine collé was also experimented with, and master printer Ianne Kjorlie (the other printer/teacher for the day) remarked that it was nice to see that all of the workshoppers were working on their skills learned during past workshops.

Workshop participant Kate experimenting with string and sugar lift aquatint.

One of our goals as an etching studio and gallery is to pass on what we know to the world outside our walls. Through education we hope to keep the medium of intaglio alive and appreciated and loved and used. We offer these workshops so that a range of people can experience first-hand how etching works, and what it has to offer the artist, the printmaker, the novice. Our next workshop in our weekend series is called the Process Diary Workshop, on February 28. This is the perfect workshop for those new to the etching medium, who have either done a bit or none at all, and would like to learn about each of the processes. Check it out on our workshop page of this website…. To learn is to live, and to live is to learn.

-Sasha Baguskas

The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art

2008-12-24T15:13:00.000-08:00

I attended The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art, a social gathering hosted by Tom Marioni at SFMOMA. The gathering is an artwork that is part of a current exhibition The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now.

Tom Marioni, a Bay Area conceptual artist, pioneered using social situations as art and has hosted free beer salons as social artworks at his studio, in museums, and in alternative spaces for over 35 years. A sculptural installation related to Marioni's 1979 salon at SFMOMA is also on view as part of the exhibition.

The current Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art is taking place at the SFMOMA Koret Visitor Center every Thursday through February 05, 2009 (except December 25, 2008, and January 01, 2009) 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. The beer salon features guest bartenders and readers- artists, writers and friends of the artist. Marioni kicked-off the series reading from his book, Beer, Art and Philosophy.

I had a lot of fun. The gathering was lively and there was free beer! Afterward, I walked upstairs to view The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now. The exhibition was engaging because unlike many other museum shows, it invites you to directly participate in the art-making process. It highlights the historical context of direct participation in art, covering nearly 60 years across a wide spectrum of genres and media: restagings of important installations, as well as new commissions that change as you and others participate.

Come drink, meet people, hang out with friends and be part of a social artwork. Then walk up to the fourth floor and participate in the exhibition, it's great.

-Javier Briones

Chatting with Torrie Groening, Print Collector & Fan of "The Morandi Effect"

2008-12-03T16:03:00.001-08:00

I sat down with San Francisco artist and printer Torrie Groening to talk about her print collection. She is a Crown Point Press fan, and has been since the late 80's. Her husband Stephen Melvin shares her enthusiasm for prints and all kinds of art.

Q: How did you first hear of Crown Point Press?

A: It was back when I started my own printshop, Prior Editions in Vancouver, that I heard Kathan Brown speak at a Tamarind Institute conference (filled with huge-armed lithographers.) This was in the late 80's. I was interested in her way of bringing out the best in artists. I did think about Crown Point during that time ...there is a lot to be said for giving an artist and their work total respect and attention. I remembered and reminded the printers to fully focus on one artist at a time, and to please not mention another artists work. "We love all the artists equally!" was our mantra.
Q: How did you begin collecting art?

A: I started acquiring art by trading with other artists in art school and later at the co-op print studios I worked at in Vancouver and Toronto. I should have kept that Janet Cardiff!

Q: Do you and your husband agree on everything?

A: I’d have to say that Stephen is more interested in conceptual work than I am. I find myself most attracted to objects, images of objects. Something solid.

Q: Like still life?

A: Like Morandi. So, I love William Bailey, and Wayne Thiebaud. If I could have anything it would be either the Thiebaud Eight Lipsticks or Cherries. The one thing I'm still kicking myself for is not buying another Marcel Dzama way back when. I do have a a collaborative drawing by Marcel Dzama and Neil Farber (of the Royal Art Lodge) called "Animal Hospital" that I bought in Vancouver in 1999. It was two hundred dollars!! It doesn't matter if it has gone up anyway - I've never sold anything, or bought on speculation. We do this for love and these are things we live with. We have donated quite a few pieces to museums in Canada, a lot of those were prints from Prior, and we were glad to be able to do that.

Q: Do you have a philosophy of collecting?

A: With almost everything in our collection, there is a personal connection there, either we know the artist, or it was something I printed, or a work I traded for.

A little while ago we had a group from the Achenbach Society come to our home. That was a good opportunity to get some things framed, and really go through and see what we have. It’s so expensive to do framing that it gives you a chance to think hard about what you want to put up and how everything relates.

Stephen actually bought me a print as an engagement present. That made me say, "I think I should marry this guy!" There were other reasons, but that was my big rock. It was a print by a Canadian artist, Tom Hopkins. It was something we had seen together but he contacted the gallery on his own and bought it while I was out of town. I bought him a Tom Hopkins print as a gift too. We have those two displayed together in a special recessed space in our dining room. It’s something we share. When I was working in the gallery myself, selling prints, I’d always cringe when someone would say, “I have to talk to my husband," or "I have to talk to my wife.” I’d think, well, there goes that sale! But it really is something you do together.

I'm finding now, collecting art with my husband brings a different appreciation and possibility of discovery. I'm more emotional, he's more analytical and inclined to research the artist. We will see something together and by the time I get to my computer, he has sent me links to the artists work. For instance, today he sent me a link to Tom Marioni.

Wayne Thiebaud Eight Lipsticks, 1988
Published by Crown Point Press
Wayne Thiebaud Cherries, 1983
Published by Crown Point Press

Q: What do you want absolutely the most for your collection?

Any Morandi, of course, and Thiebaud's Eight Lipsticks. When you look at those paintings (Giorgio Morandi's) there is nothing you would add or take away. I call it the Morandi effect. I wish that happened more often. I never know what I'm going to be taken by, though. I fell for a a piece this year, A Deborah Oropallo that was out of my usual area of interest. It's a portrait, but the piece is dead on. Sometimes it is love at first sight.

William Bailey, Urbino, 1998
Published by Crown Point Press

Read the New York Times

2008-10-24T17:10:00.000-07:00

Acid Line Up, Mary Heilmann 2006

This is just a little poke to read Ken Johnson's review of Mary Heilmann at the New Museum .

In Memory of Terry Fox

2008-10-24T12:25:00.000-07:00

Pendulum Spit Bite, 1977

We are very sad that Terry Fox (1943-2008) died in Cologne on October 14.

Fox made works for many years related to the form and idea of the Labyrinth. He first visited the Labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral as a young man. An essay by Constance Lewallen (which you can read in its entirety here) discusses Fox's sincere and persistent exploration of the sacred maze.

"The labyrinth, which Fox encountered in the summer of 1972, was to dominate his thoughts until 1978.

The labyrinth is made of blue and white paving stones set onto the stone floor of the cathedral. It is a unicursal path winding in thirty-four turns through eleven concentric rings to the center. It is 12.87 meters in diameter and has 552 steps following its course from the entrance to the center: Although it exists physically, on the floor of the cathedral, it is not really an object at all; it is a metaphor (Terry Fox: Metaphorical Instruments, 1982).

The unicursal labyrinth dates from ancient times and, unlike a puzzle maze, which has dead ends, it is undeviating: The center is reached inevitably. Medieval worshippers are presumed to have traced the 180-foot path of the Chartres labyrinth on their hands and knees until they reached the center, thus symbolizing the difficult progress along the path to Heaven. For Fox, the labyrinth’s metaphorical implications were stunning:

This labyrinth was a revelation to me in many ways. I had undergone cycles of health, sickness, health, sickness, with attendant hospitalization, release, hospitalization for eleven years. The thirty-four turns leading to the center of the labyrinth also corresponded to these cycles. I had just gone through a major operation that finished once and for all these cycles, and seemed to have reached the center of the labyrinth. My energies up to this point had been involved in reaching this center; and I decided to reverse this process and work my way out by basing all my future work on the labyrinth at Chartres (Terry Fox: Metaphorical Instruments, 1982)."

Listen to Fox's sound piece: The Labyrinth Scored for the Purrs of 11 Different Cats.

You can see more of his works at Ronald Feldman Gallery, MOMA, and Gallery Paule Anglim.

Crown Point Benefit Brings in 10K for Obama

2008-10-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

Last night, Crown Point Press held a debate party to benefit the Obama Campaign. We moved some couches and the giant TV into the gallery, we even ordered cable. We brought up delicious food from Two. It is much better to hoot, cheer and scowl at the screen as a group rather than home alone, and this way we raised $10,000.

We raffled off a print (winner's choice) from our current show, Abstract Mash-Up. Gary Garrels, senior curator of painting and sculpture at SFMOMA was the winner. He picked Amy Sillman's sweet/tart triangle composition, R&E. Garrels is the curator of Oranges and Sardines: Conversations on Abstraction at the Hammer Museum in L.A., which includes Sillman and will open in November, so he's glad he came. This may have been the super-bargain of his collecting career, at $300 a ticket.

Amy Sillman: R & E, 2007

The event was hosted by Kathan Brown, Connie Lewallen, Tom Marioni, Susan Middleton, Gay Outlaw, Valerie Wade, Angela Williams and Griff Williams. Thank you to everybody who came out to support the campaign. It's not over yet. Call your relatives in swing states tonight. If you missed out, you can plan your own event!

Together Again! 871 Fine Arts & Crown Point Press

2008-09-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

Crown Point Press and 871 Fine Arts are neighbors again!

871 Fine Arts (bookshop and gallery) takes its name from its original address, 871 Folsom Street. Crown Point Press shared the same address until the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake wrecked the building and kicked everybody out. Since then, 871 Fine Arts has anchored at 250 Sutter Street and 49 Geary Street. Adrianne will open downstairs at 20 Hawthorne in mid-October. See Kenneth Baker's Chronicle review of the final show at the 49 Geary location here.

Your blogger looked in to see how the unpacking was going and met the proprietor Adrienne Fish's sister who was here from New York to help put books on shelves. She has an art history degree herself, and was taking just an occasional peek between the covers.

The first stack that caught my eye had Mark Rothko, Isamu Noguchi, Barnett Newman, Gerhard Richter, and leaning temptingly on its side was a charcoal cloth bound volume on Yoko Ono that I am going back to see, and maybe buy, later. You can preview the collection at the 871 Fine Arts
website.

Look at all those shelves.

Blogger Amy Ione took note of the move on her interesting blog about cognitive research and art. Yelp.com denizen Barb B., of San Jose, CA said, "This place is a gem! Every time I go in here, I come out with at least 3 books. We came out with six (!!!) tonight! I had been looking for books on avant-garde artists from Japan (Gutai) and lo and behold...of course this place had some. I had been looking for this old book on triptychs as well and there it was!!"

Make time to come see this gem for yourself.

2008-07-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

Crown Point Press Etching Workshops Summer 2008

This is the last week of summer workshops. It's been a busy season, with more classes than ever! We have had participants from Ireland, Australia, and Canada, as well as Cincinnati, and Seattle, and many spots in between, including Oakland.

Oakland based printmaker Kate Van Der Riet went to bed on Monday evening of her workshop feeling (about etching) "Oh, it's all just so easy!" She woke up on Tuesday morning with with the bliss wearing off a little. She realized before long that there is just a ton of work ahead if she is to successfully apply what she has learned. At the end of the workshop, though, she has some concrete revelations to pack up and take home with her. These are the big ones:

1) I know now (but still can't believe it) that I can get a total black from a single aquatint.

2) The deburring tool is going to change my life.

3) Mirror finish copper, see above.

4) I can grind fresh rosin for the aquatint box every single time I use it.

5) I will never paper wipe a plate again.

6) This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

Crown Point Press printer Ianne Kjorlie working on hand wiping with Anna McKee from Seattle.

Success!

Leigh Wells, from Seattle, was surprised that she gravitated towards some techniques more than others. She really wanted to try spit bite, but found herself more sucked into making lines -- which let her to realize "I'm a line person, not a tone person." She draws all the time, but didn't notice this until she had to commit a plate or two to an etching technique. Here is Leigh at work, with Barbara Stikker:

Master Printer Emily York and student Tom Cottrell basking in the acid glow:

Ianne helps Betsy Goodman take a plate off the press:

Emily and Nina Zingale (Seattle) monitoring the rate of the etch:

Patricia Weiss is thinking:

Ginger Talonen, deep in the process:

Pat Hayashi models proper safety attire. I asked Pat if he had any technical breakthroughs. He said, " Breakthoughs? I had breakdowns!!" (They were productive ones.) After an adventure with spit bite that proved the aphorism from Emily York's new book, "Tooth is tone," Pat is excited to try a print that with two plates with color escaping the plate mark.

Marin County printmaker Joanne Coffino who took the Photogravure workshop came back to pick up her prints, and a few things at the bookstore. I asked her to tell me about her experience.

"My biggest worry is how am I ever going to go back to another place to print?? How am I going to get along without that beautiful sprayer contraption for chine colle?? I feel honored to have had the opportunity to work with Asa [Asa Muir-Harmony, Crown Point printer], who is brilliant. I feel more confident with the whole wiping process now. The number of people in the class allowed for quietness and space to concentrate. There was just a very good feeling."

We hope the classes were inspiring for all the participants, and you will share what you've learned with your friends. Keep in touch!

Crown Point Press at Art Basel, by Sasha Baguskas

2008-06-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

A crane maneuvering Roxy Paine's silver root at the Art Basel Fair in Basel,Switzerland.

This year was the seventh year that Crown Point Press has had a booth at the prestigious Art Basel fair, where nearly 300 dealers from around the world show the work of over 3,000 artists. Crown Point’s booth is located in the Editions section of the fair, along with other print publishers such as Gemini GEL, Pace Prints, Paragon Press, Two Palms, Borch Jensen Editions, to name a few. Kathan Brown, founder and director of Crown Point, showed prints at Basel in the 1970s. Valerie Wade, along with Kathan, has been at the fair for the past seven years.

On Friday, May 31, Valerie and I traveled across the US, the Atlantic and part of Europe to land in the fair city of Basel, Switzerland. We landed mid-morning on Saturday, and spent the day separately, adjusting to the time change. I walked around the Old City, and managed to get caught in a quick thunder shower. I hovered in a doorway till all was clear.

I ate some herring at my hotel, in the garden, and then promptly fell asleep, which is not recommended for the jet lagged, but I really couldn’t help it. In the evening I met a friend at the Kunsthalle beer garden, a popular spot for drinking with the Art Basel crowd. You can see a Tinguely fountain and a Richard Serra sculpture from the garden bar, though sadly the Serra sculpture has graffiti all over it.

The following day was the first of two installation days. We arranged to have the crates unpacked upon our arrival, so we were all ready to hang the art. Valerie had figured out in advance (on the plane? in her sleep?) how the framed prints should be arranged in the booth, and with her usual alacrity and aesthetic expertise, the design of the booth went smoothly and seemingly effortlessly.

Installation Day

We brought with us the three new etchings by Swedish artist, Jockum Nordström as well as two new prints by Julie Mehretu. Amy Sillman’s suite of four etchings paraded across an outside wall; these are not technically new releases though are new to the Basel crowd. Basel is the place to debut anything new.

Jockum Nordstrom's new prints are to the left.

We displayed our books, and premiered our newest Magical Secrets title, Magical Secrets about Aquatint, by Crown Point master printer Emily York. The books were a success, and helpful for explaining intaglio processes, especially to a crowd whose first language is not English. The Vision journal is always popular with Europeans, as is John Cage Visual Art, by Kathan Brown, and Tom Marioni’s, Beer, Art and Philosophy.

Our book table, by Pia Fries and Ed Ruscha prints.

Valerie in our booth.

The opening day, the Vernissage, was Tuesday and it lasted from 11 in the morning til 10 at night. The Vernissage is open only to those with a special invitation; the days following are opened to the paying public.

Here I am, all ready!

Most visitors to the booth commented on how lovely the prints were, and often people made mention of how our booth was an oasis of calm. One visitor exclaimed that the booth “had personality!"

More booth, with Peter Doig, Laura Owens, Fred Wilson, and Alex Katz.

Opposite our booth was a large and colorful piece by the Danish cooperative SuperFlux, (FREE BEER FREE BEER!!!) which, depending on one’s mood, would lead you to our booth, for the quiet contemplation of Tom Marioni’s Walking Drawing.

Tom Marioni's Walking Drawing.

The Old City of Basel is medieval with many small streets winding up and down hills, fountains brimming with fresh Swiss glacial water (I am guessing), and lovely painted details on the houses.

Basel streets.

Painted buildings!

Adjacent to the fair is the Unlimited, a huge space where 70 artists are represented by one work each. The artists are selected by the Art Basel Committee, and this year they were in colloboration with curator Simon Lamuniere.

Unlimited, from above.

Daniel Buren's striped escalator at Unlimited.

Sol Lewitt sculpture at the side entrance to Art Basel (during de-installation)

During the de-install day, the cranes were out, taking away the outside public art works.

Two workers puzzled about moving Ugo Rondinone's clay heads.

We had a wonderful time, we met some great people at the booth and saw great art. There are more stories, of course, but hopefully this gives an idea of how it all went.

Julie Mehretu

2008-05-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Julie Mehretu was in town for the "Cosmos: A Group Exhibition" reception at Crown Point on Friday night. Her new prints, The Residual, and Unclosed are the centerpiece of the exhibition. She signed prints in the afternoon, and when that was done signed there was time to talk and nibble.

A girl could get lost in these prints.

It looks like Kathan Brown is tossing pixie dust, but she's showing Julie Mehretu's lovely sister, Neeshan Mehretu, Tom Marioni's Taking Flight.

If anyone is in Williamstown, MA, you can catch Mehretu's City Sitings at Williams College Museum. City Sitings started out in Detroit - it's a chance to see 11 of her monumental paintings at once. This is just one of them:

Grey Space (distractor), Julie Mehretu 2006.

If you can't make it that far, come back and see the new prints again and watch the video interview , which is great.

Crown Point Press Hits the Midwest

2008-04-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

Our gallery associate, Tiffany Harker just got back from Minneapolis, where she was representing Crown Point Press at the Minneapolis Print and Drawing Fair, hosted by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in this lovely building:

She brought work from Ed Ruscha and Amy Sillman, and...

...Wayne Thiebaud, Pat Steir, and Richard Tuttle and others. Dorothy Napangardi's works seemed to excite everybody there. There were books, including the NEW title in the Magical Secrets Series, Magical Secrets about Aquatint: Spit Bite, Sugar Lift and Other Etched Tones,
by Emily York, which is being shipped here as I type this - for everybody who pre-ordered it and everyone who wants to run in to the Crown Point Bookstore sometime after May 5.....

Many of the other exhibitors at the Minneapolis Print and Drawing Fair deal in Old Master prints. Some visitors who are already in love with the kind of touch evident in historical etching were interested in the “Look Ma, no hands!” quality of techniques like sugar lift and spit bite, used by our artists, as well as the idea of a connection between new art and very old art through the process of etching.

Tiffany visited the Walker Art Center (which she has a crush on) where she was thrilled to see Transcending: The New International, Julie Mehretu's epic 2003 painting.

She was really impressed by the education and outreach efforts of both the Walker and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Thursday evening, she went to a panel discussion on the exhibit "Next Exit: The Shifting Landscape of Suburbia" which brought together a developer, a designer and a journalist. She was all ready to dislike the developer, but he turned out to be working earnestly on developing city centers and mass transit planning, Surprise! She found the talk made her want to go back and see the show again.

A sculpture by Sol Lewitt, another Crown Point Press artist, was presiding over the Walker's cloud-menaced roof garden.

Come see Crown Point Press at the BookExpo America in Los Angeles May 30-June 1, and at Art Basel in Switzerland, June 4-8. we are everywhere!

All photographs (except the one of the MIA) by Tiffany Harker.

The Cosmos

2008-04-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

A new group exhibition is going up at Crown Point Press.
The Cosmos: A Group Exhibition runs April 10-May 31, 2008.

The newest work is from Julie Mehretu's second project at Crown Point Press.

The Residual, Julie Mehretu 2007

Unclosed, Julie Mehretu 2007

In quite a few of these works, I keep referring to my favorite John Ashbery line, "Holes are blobs of darkness." Holes are voids and objects, and who knows what is in them along with the darkness? Individual marks can do so many kinds of things. Mehretu has talked about giving each of her marks “individual agency,” and several of the other artists in this show want that too.

Holland Cotter once called Mehretu's work a "conceptual version of history painting." The marks in The Residual and Unclosed are advancing on each other like armies converging, but they are soothed by sanding down and soft fogs of color. Some of the color might refer to glow from distant explosions but it looks so gentle.

Dorothy Napangardi's Sandhills uses individual marks that evoke movements over time (her work involves the Australian Aboriginal concept of Jukurrpa or Dreaming which describes the travels of ancestors and maps the location of living spirits.) It has such a different mood than Mehertu’s operatic orchestration. Each dot could be somebody's footprint, or a whole year spent in one place.

Sandhills, Dorothy Napangardi 2004

Fred Wilson's Bang also traffics in discrete marks. The drip pattern in Bang might refer to the Big Bang, cell division at conception, or deadly bacteria booming in a petri dish, but I like to think of the individual tiny bangs of each drop hitting the page. It's like the bottom of a liquid hourglass. They preserve the time that they took to fall on the page. You can almost hear them. They are very loud.

Bang, Fred Wilson 2004

There is more noise coming from Tom Marioni's Taking Flight, which is a woodcut the artist made by having friends throw darts at a piece of wood. The dart marks look just like silver stars, but once you know how it was made you hear each one hitting the wood. Stars are usually so quiet.

Taking Flight, Tom Marioni 2000

Come see the show, the reception is May 15.

Crown Point Artists Influential at Whitney Biennial

2008-03-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

Crown Point Press artists, John Baldessari, Robert Bechtle, Mary Heilmann, and Sherrie Levine, are in the Whitney Biennial this year. Holland Cotter identified Mary Heilmann and John Baldessari as "influential elders" of the show in his New York Times review.

Mary Heilmann, Spill, 2007.

John Baldessari, Arms & Legs (Specif. Elbows & Knees), Etc.: Elbow (Blue) with Desk, 2007.

According to Cotter, Heilmann is holding sway over younger artists Karen Kilimnik and Rachel Harrison, while Baldessari has given grist to a bunch of young artists including the collaborative entity New Humans, Patrick Hill and Joe Bradley.

Our gallery assistant, Lauren Karas will be there later this week. She'll tell us what she thinks.

The Biennial has a blog, too.

Oliveira on Valentines Day at CPP

2008-02-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

Nathan Oliveira's show Rocker II opened on Valentine's Day at Crown Point Press. The house was packed.

The work sparked lots of lively debate...

Oliveira was willing to consider all the angles...

And everyone came dressed in their Valentine's day finest.

This project was printer Ianne Kjorlie's first as lead printer.

Oliveira worked hard, but made it look so easy.

Come by and see this beautiful work -- the show is open through April 5, 2008.

Coming Soon! New Magical Secrets Book

2008-02-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

Crown Point Press master printer Emily York’s new book, Magical Secrets about Aquatint: Spit Bite, Sugar Lift & Other Etched Tones Step-by-Step is due out in April. If you would like to pre-order, email sasha@crownpoint.com, or give us a call at 415.974.6273.

I caught Emily for a few minutes between printing tasks to ask her about the new book and what she learned writing it.

KLB: If there is one common error that you hope people will never make again after reading your book, what is it?

EY: Over-melting the rosin. It’s something I did in college, and I was always trying to correct it in the printing, but it’s actually a mistake people make right at the beginning of the process.

KLB: When you were researching the book, what work did you fall in love with the most? I remember you getting excited about Tony Cragg.

EY: I only knew some of the artists in the book through the prints they made here before I started the research. It was really great to find the connections between their outside work and the prints. Tony Cragg’s sculpture was one of those surprises.

KLB: What is your favorite technique to explain?

EY: In terms of aquatint, something spontaneous that people like the idea of right away is spit bite. You’re etching the plate directly, by painting with acid on a plate prepared with rosin. The mark you make on the plate is the mark you see printed, so it’s conceptually the easiest. It’s really easy to grab onto and jump right in. A lot of people like the look of it, plus it has a quirky little name.

I kept thinking, “Oh, this chapter’s going to be easy, it’s just spit bite!” But there are all these things that you do without thinking. There is a lot more information than I thought. In the first two chapters those little things are especially important because they make the foundation for every other technique. That’s what I was excited about sharing, because the easiest little changes can make a huge difference.

KLB: How would you like your book to change the way people think about printmaking?

EY: For me, the most important thing about this book is the opportunity to relate the techniques to contemporary artists who are working now. I like to see artists discovering new approaches to these techniques all the time, the back and forth between their prints and other studio work. I like to be able to say to people, “You should try this too!”

--Kim Bennett

Amy Sillman at SFAI, Crown Point Press

2007-11-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

O & N, Amy Sillman 2007

Amy Sillman

Amy Sillman gave an artist talk at San Francisco Art Institute Monday night and on Tuesday night, her show Amy Sillman: New Etchings, opened at Crown Point Press.

There were ecstatic fans, like Jarrett Arnest, pictured below in his own homemade AMY SILLMAN t-shirt (complete with glitter) who said, "If people show up for Britney Spears in their fan shirts, somebody better do it for Amy Sillman."

Jarrett Arnest at the San Francisco Art Institute Lecture

Between the talk at SFAI and the new work at Crown Point, Sillman has offered San Francisco a well lighted window into her process. In her choice of slides at SFAI (and she did use slides) Sillman showed everything. She was kind of on fire - she offered us extra large helping of her interests and influences. For influences she mentioned David Hammons, Jean Arp, Joan Jonas, Louise Bourgeois, Phillip Guston, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Rachel Harrison, Martin Kippenberger, Jutta Koether --

She said, "You know how sometimes you're at a party and somebody says something that effects you for the rest of your life? Well - this guy said 'At the end of the century things get smooth and fussy and at the beginning everything gets chopped up and rough.' I was like YEAH I wanna be part of that!"

The opening at Crown Point Press on Tuesday was packed, and the visitors were thrilled with the unusual opportunity this show offers to see proofs as well as finished prints.

Visitors: Artist Julie Mehretu and San Francisco Art Institute's Brett Reichman

Linda Geary and Mari Andrews with Amy Sillman's working proofs

Since this is a blog post, I should mention that Sillman was emphatic in her talk that painting must be encountered in person. She said "IT - WON'T - GO- THROUGH - THE - INTERNET." So come out and see her work IN PERSON. The show at Crown Point Press runs through December 29, 2007.

Tom Marioni at Gallery Paule Anglim

2007-10-17T13:11:00.001-07:00

Tom Marioni

Crown Point Press artist Tom Marioni's show, Out-of-Body Free-Hand Circles opened on October 4th at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco.

The colored pencil drawings and one hand colored etching are collections of circular motions made by the artist's extended arm. Some of these produce unruly circles like an armful of hay (#48 Revolution, 2007) and some of them follow neatly together like a tiny wake in a stirred cup of tea. One of the drawings is called #64 Cup of Tea, 2007. Marioni has been concerned with performative drawing for thirty years. His unique thinking about moving and marking produced the effervescent project, Flying With Friends, printed at Crown Point in 1999.

#28 Fire in the Hole, 2007
colored pencil on paper
2 1/4" x 22 1/2"

In her essay in the show’s catalog, Marcia Tanner explains the idea that inspired the work: "Marioni’s project was inspired by Giorgio Vasari’s story of how Pope Benedict XI sent an envoy to Giotto requesting samples of his work. Giotto dipped his brush in red pigment and, using his arm pressed against his side as a compass, with one continuous stroke painted a perfect circle. On seeing it, the pope instantly recognized his genius and hired him."

The opening was full of circle gazers, including gallery assistants Monica la Staiti and Jenna North, who proclaimed 2007 "The Year of the Circle."

Monica la Staiti and Jenna North

In the back gallery, Marioni's good friend Masashi Matsumoto is showing a group of eleven electric blue door paintings, with luminous keyholes which seem very Alice-in-Wonderland-like to this blogger. The doors are basking in the blue light of a neon sign that reads "Gallery B."

Go see it if you haven't already! The show is open until October 27 at:

Gallery Paule Anglim
14 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA
415.433.2710

Summer Workshops: Etching and Gravure

2007-08-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

Master Printer Catherine Brooks and workshop participants

This is the last week of workshops at Crown Point Press. Once a year the studios are opened to all artists to study and experiment with our printers. This year the topics on offer are Etching and Gravure. Spots are awarded by lottery. The workshops are limited to 10-12 people in etching, four in Gravure. One workshopper commented that winners of the lottery must have some psychic ability because the randomly selected printmakers have made such a harmonious working group.

Students from all levels can sign up, from professional printers to people with curiosity about prints and just a little etching or darkroom experience. Everyone works at his or her own speed. The more experienced people cookan get more done, but everyone benefits from observing everyone else’s progress.

John McCaskill takes a moment out from the photogravure workshop with master printer Emily York to talk to me. He’s impressed that the workshop creates an atmosphere where you can learn and get a lot of work done. Some workshops feel like lectures, he says, but here there is space created for people to really concentrate on their own projects as well as listen to the demonstrations. He says he’ll never get over “how involved the photogravure process is – but the final product is so beautiful. I may never get a chance to make another one but now I know.”

Workshop participant John McCaskill

Leslie Andelin is working on a geometric fantasy in the etching workshop. Right now she's printing with a palette of greens and blues. She has been coming here as often as she has been able to get in (through the lottery process) _ since about 2000. She told me she has collected some prints from Crown Point Press: "I have a Chuck Close and some Wayne Thiebaud sketches. It’s wonderful to be able to own works by such important artists.”

I ask Leslie how the printmaking process affects her regular work as a painter. She says, “The printmaking really helps with my painting _ the ability to change colors. I just explore color and then I bring that back into my studio. You have to be able to take risks; you are forced to because of the nature of the reversal process. You just have to let go. I was working on a Venice boat scene, it was all red, yellow, blue, you know, beautiful daylight, and I flipped the colors _ same colors different order _ and suddenly it was a night scene and it was so beautiful! You can’t do that in painting.”

Shari Deboer and Jenny Olsson share a large table in the etching workshop led by master printer Catherine Brooks. I ask Shari how the workshop has been for her so far, and she says,”I thought I had come with an idea of what to do but after the first hour I just threw that aside. She showed us one print and I decided I just want to do THAT technique. You don’t need a plan!”

Jenny Olsson came here from Sweden. This is her first time in the United States. She misses her little son at home, but she is having a fine time experimenting. She has not done etching since college. Her eyes get very wide and she tells me, “I HAVE to try everything that you have here _ just get all of it. I’m using small plates, you see.” She shuffles her copper plates like a lucky poker hand. She’s etching gentle drips and blots on her plates. She says “I love the spit bite! I’ve tried the hard ground and printed that on top. I want to try the soap ground too.” She has three more days to get it all in _ I’m sure she’ll manage.

Workshop participant Wendy Kahle

Charles Stinson is working on a colored pencil sketch. His work area is giving off a beehive-like energy. I ask what he’s up to. He is making some psychedelic botanical images (more Lewis Carroll psychedelic than Pink Floyd) with aggressively primary colors. He calls them his "very weird flowers." I ask what techniques he’s using. He explains, “I’ve never done color separation using soft ground techniques, or rather when I have used soft ground before I’ve had terrific failures. I had to use those plates for other purposes. So this has been a big success for me.”

Carolyn Dodds is cutting up some Bay Area crusty bread for lunch. She tells me, “Irish genes require a lot of starch, and we have terrible bread in Australia !” It is her first time in the States. She is a printmaker who has been mostly relief prints because it didn’t require a studio but she was originally trained in etching. She always wanted to try photogravure. “I’d been fishing for a few years," she says, making inquiries about where she should go to learn. “Because this isn’t something you could just learn anywhere. It’s a lifelong ambition.” Crown Point press was recommended to her and here she is. She tells me that the studio experience here is special because of the design of the studio. “I find that American prints are always technically superb, but working here there a lot of practical things about the way the studio is set up that you constantly find yourself thinking, why didn’t I think of that?”

Paule Kraemer wrote in her post-workshop evaluation from the session last week: “All of my bad habits have been corrected.” We hope so, but just in case some of them persist, there’s always next year. Applications are due in March!

-Kim Bennett

Southern Graphics Council Conference

2007-05-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

We’re Back! Sasha and I were in Kansas City, MO for four days attending the 35th annual Southern Graphics Council Conference.

On Wednesday afternoon we landed outside Kansas City at at the regional airport. The land all around us was mostly flat, with bare trees dotting the occasional hill. As we reached Kansas City proper, our taxi driver drove us past the what seemed to be the old downtown, with small brick buildings, BBQ restaurants, pubs, and churches. The Hyatt Hotel where the conference was being held some 1,000 printmakers including us, were gathered, for the conference. We found our community. It was a welcoming sight to be greeted by groups of artsy people catching up and discussing their conference materials.

We checked in and registered for the conference immediately and after dropping our bags, we hit the swimming pool and hot tub. After our splash, we went back to our rooms to get ready for dinner. Sasha and I each had nice room with a comfy bed and a poster reproduction of the same Diebenkorn painting on the wall; we felt right at home.

We set out on that first balmy night to find authentic Kansas City BBQ and happened to end up in the (supposedly) number one barbeque restaurant in the country, Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbeque. After eating some ribs and burnt bits, cheesy potatoes and cheesy macaroni, we took a taxi four blocks back to the Hyatt for a nightcap. On the 40th floor of our hotel we found the Sky’s Lounge, a bar that rotates 360 degrees, so we were able to sit and slowly spin around, seeing the entire city laid out before us. What we saw from our vantage point were wide, empty streets as far as the eye could see. Sasha remarked that she’d never seen so much parking. There weren’t any cars out on the streets, and not a soul to be seen.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we worked at our booth in the Product Fair, and greeted fans and friends of Crown Point Press. People were excited about my book as well as the other Crown Point titles and products we had for sale. (This conference was the first time that we brought with us printmaking tools, hand creams, and aprons to sell. We are expanding our bookstore to include most items that a printmaker might need in their studio.) I really enjoyed meeting students, teachers, and other printers from around the country. It was fun hanging out with former Crown Point printer, Paul Mullowney who now is the director and master printer at Hui No’eau Press in Maui. The three of us spent each night taking a tour of the local galleries after happy hour!

Surrounding the product fair were performances, games, and portfolio exchanges in addition to workshops and panel discussions. Digital media was a hot topic as was non-toxic printmaking techniques. Despite these new innovations being made in the field, I felt that our old process of etching was still vital, and being surrounded by other printmakers was invigorating. It was great to be part of the printmaking community, representing a great place, making new friends.

-Catherine Brooks

Dena Schuckit goes to London

2007-03-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

Dena Schuckit has been a printer at Crown Point Press since 1995. Since coming to work here she has become Senior Master Printer. Now she is going to London to pursue an MFA at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design. She won’t be out of touch, she is working on a new printmaking advice column for this website, “Ask Dena” which will be up the second week of April. Get your etching questions ready. She is also writing a forthcoming book in the Magical Secrets series, "Magical Secrets About Gravure: Photogravure and Direct Gravure Step By Step".

I asked her to describe some of her favorite experiences working with artists at Crown Point Press over the last 12 years asked her to boil down her experience into a few words and she said, “I guess I’ve just learned so much about making art here, it’s basically a whole different language – each artist comes in with their own language, and I have learned to adapt to working with different languages.”

Her introduction to printing at Crown Point was working with Tom Marioni, who she has worked with many times since. Her first two week project was with Anne Appleby, who has a methodical approach to image making.

Dena said, “She’s just so in tune with nature and her color sense is so complex. I learned so much about color. If we were working towards a red color then we’d start off with a bright green. We had to figure out how to build the colors that she was looking for.”

Anne Appleby
WINTER, 1999
Color Aquatint

Later she worked with David Nash, which was a faster, messier ride. “He was grabbing these new materials, using the tree rosin in big chunks – just wanting to get his hands in everything.” If each artist has a language, Nash’s language seemed to be spoken faster than Appleby’s.

David Nash
SQUARE CIRCLE TRIANGLE: black in light, 1998
Aquatint reversal

Dena worked with Richard Tuttle first on “Mandevilla”, a project from 1988. She said,
“Working with Richard Tuttle was always a search, an exploration that would happen as we were making the plates. He would sit down and start telling me a story that was one really long and circuitous route. I would just do my best to follow it and eventually we would wind up right back where we started. The projects were kind of like that too.”

Richard Tuttle
Mandevilla 5, 1998
Color aquatint

I asked Kathan Brown, founding director of Crown Point what it has been like working with Dena Schuckit, she said, “We’ve relied on Dena for a long time. She’s such a pleasure to be around as a person. The artists all really adore her, and of course there’s nobody better as a printer. We’ve just been lucky to have her.”

Dena is excited to see how these varied experiences helping artists with very different methods and approaches achieve their goals in etching will translate into her own MFA work. We are curious too. We look forward to reading “Ask Dena”, and "Magical Secrets About Gravure: Photogravure and Direct Gravure Step By Step", and wish her well in her English adventure.

Pia Fries at Crown Point Press

2007-03-01T16:39:00.000-08:00

The studio has been busy with activity as we just completed a two-week artist project with Pia Fries. During her stay she created four vibrant etchings. Pia was born in Switzerland but she has made Germany her home ever since attending art school at the Kunstakadedmie in Dusseldorf, where she studied painting with Gerhard Richter. This was Pia’s first time making prints at Crown Point Press as well as her first time making etchings. It was an exciting project for me as the master printer in charge of the project, as it was the first time I lead a project in which the artist was totally fresh to etching.

When Pia arrived Monday morning we began by looking at our current Winter Group Show in the gallery so that she could get a sense of the possibilities of intaglio printing. For anyone who is a printmaker or who has tried etching you know how daunting and complex some of the processes can often seem. It was my job, as the master printer, to make the processes as accessible and easy to understand as possible so that Pia could find an approach to etching that felt natural and akin to her way of working in her own studio.

Prior to Pia’s arrival we had been in contact about including photographic elements in her prints. For her paintings, she photographs sculptures she makes with such materials as thick paint and paper, and then she silk-screens these images onto the canvas. Her work is well known for the way in which she incorporates these sculptural photographic images into the larger composition made of layer upon layer of thick, visceral oil paint. The week before Pia arrived I made photogravure plates of the photographic motifs she wanted to work with while she was in our studio. (Photogravure is a way etching a photographic image into a copper plate.) With the photogravure plate as the framework for each print, Pia built up the image using just about every technique we had to offer her.

When we began work in the studio Pia was happy to get her hands dirty and really see what each process was about. When Pia works on her paintings she uses many tools that are conventionally not intended for painting, or printmaking for that matter! It was so much fun to work with her to find ways of working with these tools in etching. She and I both had to be rather inventive in our approaches to the medium and open to trying something new. In the four prints she created you can instantly see the joy and spontaneity that went into their making.

Crown Point Press at CAA

2007-02-18T07:56:00.000-08:00

Greetings from New York City! We just made it before a great winter storm hit; we landed in the snow and sleet, and the airplane skidded on the runway as we touched down!

Now we are here, warm and dry, at the CAA Conference in the Hilton Hotel on 6^th Avenue at 54^th Street. The CAA (College Art Association) holds its annual conference in a different city every year, and what luck that this year it is in the Big Apple. In addition to academics (and artists) giving keynote speeches, there are seminars and a job fair as well as a book and trade exhibition where (book) publishers and art material suppliers sell their wares. This year is the first time Crown Point has attended the fair, and we have a table set up, displaying our books, and we are hard at work promoting the Press and our Magical-Secrets book series and website.

We have received many accolades about the new books, and people are impressed with our other publications. Visitors to the table have been printmakers, curators, artists, teachers and students. Some know who we are; others don’t but everyone is excited to see the new Lines book, and to meet Catherine. Many are already familiar with Kathan’s Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life, since its release last year. It is particularly wonderful to be able to say that the two of us with Kathan and Javier have produced these books all on our own.

We are having a great time in the Big Apple. Tonight Sasha is going to a Broadway musical, the first time she has been to a Broadway show since she was nine! Thursday evening Catherine went to the opening of the show, “High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975” at the National Academy Museum. It was a surprise to run into both Pat Steir and Mary Heilmann; their paintings were included in the show along with Richard Tuttle’s.

There are some art luminaries at the CAA; Faith Ringgold has a book signing, Betty Woodman gave a keynote address, and June Wayne is also here to promote her catalog raisonee, We are working on having the public address system announce a book signing at the Crown Point booth, on Saturday morning, from 10-12. Just have to convince the organizers to use their powers with the broad announcement medium.

Review of Magical Secrets in the Mid America Print Council

2007-01-16T14:38:00.000-08:00

In the Journal of the Mid-America Print Council this issue there is a lovely review of Magical Secrets by Deborah Kelley-Galin of the Pueblo Community College Southwest Center in Mancos, Colorado. I've copied and pasted it below. Take a look!

It had been saved by a group of artists during World War II, and though it was never melted down, it sat for years - dismantled and abandoned - in the yard of a Scottish boarding house. When it was offered to Kathan Brown, an art student studying the British Arts and Crafts movement, she accepted. And though the press's first owners hoped it would see better times, none could have imagined that a determined young woman would take it on a two-month trip by freighter through the Panama Canal to California. From there, Brown launched another phase of the machine's epic journey, one that would scure both a place in the annals of American art history. Inspired by historic photos documenting the collaborative efforts of Crown Point Gold Mine employees, Brown's new workshop bore the name Crown Point Press.

Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life is a continuation of Brown's interest in collaboration, this time reaching beyond the physical confines of the Press's San Francisco facilities to meet the artistic community at large. Magical Secrets, its associated DVD, website and online blog condense forty-four years of experience into 13 "Secrets," each highlighting elemental turning points that enabled artists, assisted by Crown Point staff, to bring their artistic aspirations to fruition.

Those who may be intimidated by Crown Point Press's astonishing success will be surprised by the author's honest and open writing style. Brown began printing the works of artists who attended her regular figure drawing sessions; the later iconic success of Crown Point Press was due in part to the influence of New York's Parasol Press Ltd. While preparing his Parasol Press portfolio Seven Still Lives and a Rabbit in 1970, artist and long-time friend Wayne Thiebaud convinced owner Robert Feldman to include Crown Point Press etchings. Although Feldman considered etching to be a passe art form, he acquiesced to Thiebaud's wishes. Brown and Thiebaud did indeed produce colored, multi-plate etchings for Parasol; Crown Point Press and New York's Parasol Press subsequently joined forces for a number of years.

Although they were at the height of their careers, many of the artists invited to work at Crown Point Press had little or no knowledge of printmaking. Brown and staff were first presented with each artist's final goal: "Collaboration" was often the process of problem-solving - guiding each artist toward this goal while initiating him/her into the methods and techniques that could facilitate success. Part of the book's charm is the author's willingness to share uncomfortable moments when artists and staff encounter frustration, mirroring the struggles we all, as artists, confront in our work. Brown stops short of revealing any major catastrophes, however the atmosphere would surely have been fertile grounds for amusing disasters.

Magical Secrets is also interesting for its art historical value. Artists and their work are defined within their contemporary "art world" context. Secret #4, for example, "Have an Idea: Thinking about what you are doing," provides a broad-scope view of the meaning and motivations behind conceptual artists and the pieces they create. When choosing artists to invite to the Press, each one needed to fit Brown's criteria: How important will this work be in the next century? Quoting John Cage, "The way you could have enjoyed life in, say, 1200 is different from the way you enjoy it now. And that accounts for the changes in art." Brown initially chose artists whom she believed were "in the forefront of those changes." Although the first artist she worked with, Richard Diebenkorn, forewarned, "The marvelous possibilities of painting seem to me to be more complex than thought..." Brown found a substantial foundation in "The conceptual artist's... idea to try for something bigger to begin with, to reflect the scientific universe, the natural world, or human nature." Additionally, Brown found that her conceptual collaborators usually fell into three categories: those who use language, systems, or action to attain their goals. Secret #4 guides us through the works of Tom Marioni and Sol LeWitt, paying particular attention to Marioni's color drypoint Flying With Friends and his approach to soft ground etching.

Equal thought, however, is given to representational artists and the evolution of realism. Consideration is given to image sources in Secret #9, "Use Every Source: Using sources of images and ideas as if they were tools." The merits of anonymous historical works and modern art are given equal respect here. The cover of Magical Secrets displays a soft bite and soap ground aquatint with soft ground etching by Laura Owens. Untitled (LO270), 2004 features an elegantly colored chicken precariously spanning a gnarled tree branch. Its subject matter and style are based on a "two-hundred-year-old brocade of uncertain origin, probably Japanese." Another Owens work, Untitled (LO273), is a rendition of a nineteenth-century scrimshaw piece - primitive drypoint ships and whales float beneath a stormy, aquatinted sky. Several of Owens's other pieces were derived from early American needlework. Brown admits that she likes "thinking about an anonymous needleworker long ago choosing the subject to work on for a long time, probably in her home."

Although Magical Secrets was written to appeal to a broad range of creative thinkers, printmakers will be the primary beneficiaries. Each will undoubtedly find a chapter whose "secret" and examples resonate on a personal level. The book also includes biographies of all of the associated artists and a comprehensive glossary of printmaking terminology. For strictly visual learners, there is also a DVD included inside the book that includes artist interviews and views of the studio settings. The DVD is excellent material for anyone teaching a college level printmaking course, giving students the opportunity to see artists accomplish their individual visions through a variety of techniques and in doing so, a bit of the Crown Point spirit of camaraderie rubs onto them. The Press has also set up a new Magical Secrets website geared towards developing a 'real time' dimension to the project. This is the place to go if you want to register for your regular food-for-thought, the "3-Minute Egg."

Magical Secrets is the small embodiment of a huge effort. Once engaged, you may have a major revelation, or you may just solve a nagging mystery. Even the hopelessly 'blocked,' or those otherwise immune to inspiration, can learn much from Kathan Brown's problem-solving sorties.

- Deborah Kelley-Galin