I am so pleased to announce my appearance in the pantheon of printmakers featured on Ann Shafer’s Platemark podcast. We had an engaging conversation discussing my etchings and some of the sources that led to their realization, and I hope that you will find it entertaining and informative. Her podcasts on the printmaking ecosystem have featured several well known printmakers as well as in depth discussions of historical figures and movements in the print world. I highly recommend that you explore some of the other podcasts as well as mine if you are interested in the doings of artists currently working in the print medium.
In other news, the purchase of four of my etchings by the Library of Congress was at last finalized in May, as well as three pieces purchased by Georgetown University. After the Deluge is currently being exhibited in Rome along with 27 other select printmakers, and will be shown in four more venues in Italy throughout the coming year.
I hope that you will get a chance to view the podcast, and would be interested in any reactions you might have.
I have recently had the honor of having one of my prints, MENDACIA RIDICULA (The Wheel of Ixion) selected from a body of work by the Boston Printmakers by Janette Brossard, president of the Association of Cuban Printmakers, to be exhibited at the Boston Printmakers/Cuban Exchange Exhibition this spring. The Exhibition, titled CONEXIONES/CONNECTIONS will be shown in Cuba at the Taller Experimental de Grafica de La Habana from April 15- May 15. Only 41 prints were selected, so I am very happy to have been included, especially that that particular etching was picked.
My work is also being featured in the online literary publication Verdad (click on the cover to access the magazine), and is accompanied by a very nice commentary by the art editor, Jack Miller. They have also created marginalia for each poem and story, made up of strips of some of the etchings. I like marginalia.
I would like to take this opportunity to announce
the completion of my most recent etching, The
Frailty of Realization, which was begun last December. The title of this
work is derived from the writings of Bruno Schulz, who wondered if the
substance of what we call reality could really be substantial enough to support
the immensity of ideas whose integrity demands the resistance to incarnation. I
began to think of this as a kind of summation of my work up until the present,
and you may find quotations here and there from earlier pieces, as well as
references to various outside influences and some goings on of late.
The stage is set with this excerpt, a prelude to The Age of Genius, from The Book by Bruno Schulz:
“…There are things that can never occur
with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in
mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground
of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to lose their
integrity in the frailty of realization. And if they break into their capital,
lose a thing or two in these attempts at incarnation, then soon, jealously,
they retrieve their possessions, call them in, reintegrate: as a result, white
spots appear in our biography—scented stigmata, the faded silvery imprints of
the bare feet of angels, scattered footmarks on our nights and days—while the
fullness of life waxes, incessantly supplements itself, and towers over us in
wonder after wonder.
And yet, in a certain sense, the
fullness is contained wholly and integrally in each of its crippled and
fragmentary incarnations. This is the phenomenon of imagination and vicarious
being. An event may be small and insignificant in its origin, and yet, when
drawn close to one’s eye, it may open in its center an infinite and radiant
perspective because a higher order of being is trying to express itself in it
and irradiates it violently.”
The Frailty of Realization will be printed on two different papers in edition of 40. Numbers 1 to 20 will be printed on Zerkall Copperplate Cream, and numbers 21 to 40 will be printed on Zerkall Copperplate Warm White. The image size is 9” x 13”, with a curved top border, and the paper size is 14 ½” x 18”. The prepublication price will be $725.00 until October 24th, at which time the price will be $775.00.
