Happy New Year!

Joan Brown - The Lion at Arlington Park

Magnolia Editions wishes you a roaring good time on New Year's Eve and all the best for 2009.

Artists at Magnolia in December: Chagoya, Carnwath, Oropallo, Stock

Mark Stock works on a monotype.




Deborah Oropallo and Tallulah Terryl survey some test prints for Deborah's new Wild Wild West series.





Enrique Chagoya works on a new print/mixed media edition, Atlas and the Arugulas. The image depicts Barack Obama as Atlas, flanked by Joe Biden and Michelle Obama; Hillary Clinton sits atop the globe in Obama's hands.




Gary Knecht and Squeak Carnwath at Squeak's studio with her tapestry, Good Medicine.

New tapestry proofs

Proofs of potential tapestry editions by Chuck Close, including some familiar faces...

Sylvia White Gallery

Check out this interactive panoramic view of the recent Magnolia Editions tapestry show at Sylvia White Gallery in Ventura, CA.


The show included tapestries by Chuck Close, Deborah Oropallo, Guy Diehl, April Gornik, Squeak Carnwath, and more. (Panorama link courtesy of Sylvia White Gallery)

Mildred Howard

Mildred Howard works at Magnolia on a recent public art commission.

Bruce Conner: an imagined exhibition

Today is Bruce Conner's birthday and Steven Fama honors the late artist in an excellent blog post, The 21st Century BC, walking the reader through an imagined exhibition of Conner's work from the 21st century. Several of the works referenced were published by Magnolia Editions.

BOMBHEAD (1989/2002)

Deborah Oropallo

Deborah Oropallo was at Magnolia today, using the large-scale UV pigment printer to print onto powder-coated aluminum.

Detail from one of Oropallo's new prints.

Hung Liu opening at Walter Maciel Gallery

Magnolia Editions was there as Hung Liu celebrated the opening of Rat Years at Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles. The show features self-portraits from years designated “Year of the Rat” in the Chinese zodiac, beginning with the artist’s birth year and continuing through 2008. Rat Years opened November 1st and continues through December 20, 2008.

Review: Chuck Close tapestries at Barbara Davis Gallery

Douglas Britt offers a glowing review of Chuck Close's tapestry portraits at Barbara Davis Gallery in the Houston Chronicle:

The combination of scale and texture, along with the image's mix of crisply detailed and blurry areas, gives Kate a palpability that stops you in your tracks. Once you've caught your breath and moved closer, you get lost in the subtleties of woven light and shadow.

[...]

The tapestry floats like a classic Mark Rothko painting, but it's grown out of Close's decades of transposing photographic portraits to paintings, using grids to take images apart and then reconstruct them.

The fact that this time the reconstruction happened by digital methods rather than by hand doesn't leave the viewer cold — just the opposite.

Read the whole review here: Artist's portrait of Kate Moss dazzles.

Chuck Close test weaves

One of my favorite phenomena at Magnolia is the test weave, where swatches from various pieces and/or color palettes are combined into one tapestry so that multiple versions or ideas can be proofed side by side. Here is one such test -- portraits by Chuck Close.

Hung Liu panel project: the home stretch

An ambitious print project by Hung Liu neared completion today. Tallulah Terryll worked late into the night yesterday and today to finish seven panels, each of which will comprise half of a diptych with printed/painted works on linen. As they say in Japan: Otsukaresamadeshita!

Combat paper project

Today, volunteer coordinator Pam DeLuco and veterans Angela Knowles and Ehren Tool brought in their uniforms and made paper pulp from them as part of the Combat Paper Project. 

Cooking up pieces of Knowles's dress uniform.

Ehren Tool chats with David Kimball. Tool is a ceramicist and Master's candidate at UC Berkeley. He was kind enough to spontaneously clean a bunch of stubborn paint off of the beater at Magnolia's papermaking facilities!

Knowles, a UC Berkeley undergrad, with pulp.

Pieces of uniform awaiting transformation.

Knowles.

Volunteer coordinator Pam DeLuco tells me about the Combat Paper Project as Tool cleans the beater. Thanks, Ehren!!

Farnsworth portfolio

Brian Caraway and Andy Rottner working on an editioned portfolio of Origin:Specimens prints by Donald Farnsworth.

Hung Liu panel project, Chagoya for Obama

Today at Magnolia, panels were gessoed and painted for a project by Hung Liu. Enrique Chagoya also stopped by to make some Obama stickers for a benefit at Catharine Clark Gallery.

John Demerritt, Hung Liu, Gary Blum

A few moments from 2007:


Bookbinder extraordinaire John Demerritt tries out the Gunnar 3001 automated cutting machine at Magnolia.


Era Farnsworth, Brian Caraway, Sam Bennett, Tallulah Terryll and Hung Liu with a completed Daughters of China portfolio.


Sam pulls prints with artist Gary Blum.

Magnolia employees

Tallulah Terryll hems and serges a test weave of a possible new Chuck Close tapestry.


Brian Caraway de-lints Chuck Close's tapestry portrait of Rene Fleming.


Andy Rottner works his book-box making magic.


Sam Bennett cuts a Chuck Close tapestry portrait of Cindy Sherman down to size.


Nick Stone removes dust from lithographs by June Felter.

Bruce Conner

The late Bruce Conner at Magnolia Editions in the early 00's.