Showing posts with label Donald Farnsworth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Farnsworth. Show all posts
Friday, April 22, 2022
Enrique Chagoya & Don Farnsworth - "A Conversation on Books, Censorship, and Collaboration"
The YouTube video below includes a presentation by Enrique Chagoya about his artist's books and codices, followed by comments by Magnolia director Don Farnsworth and a Q&A session with both. Recorded on February 26, 2022 at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA.
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
In Memory of Mel Ramos
We are sad to report that longtime friend of the studio and Pop Art pioneer Mel Ramos passed away this weekend at the age of 83.
Born in Sacramento on July 24, 1935, Ramos studied art and art history at Sacramento State College. He taught at local high schools and held a teaching position at CSU Hayward from 1966-1997, continuing as an emeritus professor while teaching intermittently at CCAC (now California College of the Arts).
All the while Ramos maintained a highly prolific studio practice which, in addition to his signature oil paintings on canvas, encompassed a variety of printmaking techniques including silkscreen, etching, woodcut, and more.
woodcut with acrylic
image: 37 x 26.75 in. paper: 44 x 30 in.
Edition of 30
Ramos's work was exhibited and appreciated worldwide; in later years, he enjoyed great acclaim particularly in Germany, where it seemed there was a nearly continuous demand for his colorful, instantly recognizable Pop Art style.
In 2010, Villa Stuck in München, Germany mounted a major solo exhibition, "Mel Ramos: 50 Years of Pop Art," comprising five decades worth of work by Ramos including paintings, drawings, watercolors, and sculptures. Another major exhibition of his work was held at the Albertina in Vienna, Austria in 2011.
German galleries and collectors figured prominently in the enthusiastic response to the editions Ramos published with Magnolia over the last several decades.
These projects included woodcut images of classic superheroes; tapestry versions of some of his most iconic paintings; a limited edition, laser-cut jigsaw puzzle featuring Ramos's take on comic book hero Captain Midnight; and the Albrecht Durer tribute Leta on Durer's Rhino, an etching with UV-cured acrylic ink on paper, executed at Magnolia with the help of master printers Tallulah Terryll and Nicholas Price and additional assistance from artist Guy Diehl.
woodcut with acrylic
image: 37 x 26.75 in. paper: 44 x 30 in.
Edition of 30
"Mel Ramos: 50 Years of Superheroes, Nudes, and Other Pop Delights," a retrospective of over 50 years of Ramos's work was exhibited at the Crocker Art Museum in his hometown of Sacramento in 2012.
Mel often visited Magnolia with his wife Leta and daughter/studio manager Rochelle Leininger. Below please find a gallery of memories from some of his recent visits.
More art by Mel Ramos from Magnolia Editions
Saturday, April 18, 2015
'Magnifying Magnolia and Mildred,' April 19th in Richmond
Pigmented inkjet and acrylic on Awagami Japanese paper, 30 x 22 in. Edition varié of 10
On Sunday April 19th, 2015, join Magnolia director Donald Farnsworth and artist Mildred Howard from 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm at the Richmond Art Center for a special conversation: "Magnifying Magnolia and Mildred."
Presented as Howard's terrific exhibition "Spirit and Matter" hangs in the gallery, this discussion will touch on the ideas and techniques that Howard and Farnsworth have drawn upon in developing print editions like Howard's 2014 The Other Side of the Coin series.
Even poker-faced San Francisco Chronicle critic Kenneth Baker was moved by the powerful and elegantly curated body of work on view at Richmond Art Center.
In today's review of "Spirit and Matter," Baker muses: "Racial politics and Dadaist feminism filtered through modern art legend in a key of worldly-wise humor — who but Howard could do that?"
Thoughtful and urgently topical, Baker's review of Howard's show is well worth reading in full.
Also keep an eye open for Howard's new permanent installation at SF General Hospital's Urgent Care Center, a monumental, layered landscape printed on glass through the wizardry of Magnolia Editions and the glass experts at Lenehan Architectural Glass (pictures below courtesy of Dorothy Lenehan):
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
"Collaborating with Bruce Conner" at SJICA, Thursday Feb. 26
Archival pigmented inkjet on Rives BFK white
17.75 x 23.5 in. Edition of 10
This Thursday evening in San Jose, Magnolia director Donald Farnsworth and Arion Press director Andrew Hoyem will participate in a public discussion of the brilliant and iconoclastic Bruce Conner, moderated by Conner Family Trust director Bob Conway.
The discussion, "Collaborating with Bruce Conner," will take place from 7 pm - 9 pm at the San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art. Tickets are $5 for ICA members, $10 for Non-members and free for students.
SJICA describes the concurrent show, "Bruce Conner: Somebody Else’s Prints" as follows:
A fixture in the San Francisco Beat-era art scene in the 1950s and 1960s, Conner was renowned for his groundbreaking work in assemblage, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and experimental film. The Wichita, Kansas native never worked with one medium for long, and infamously shifted personas, often attributing his artwork to celebrities, such as actor and friend Dennis Hopper, and fake personas alike.
Printmaking is one medium that spans Conner's entire career. "Bruce Conner: Somebody Else’s Prints" will feature around 100 works, from the first etchings and lithographs the artist made while still a young student in Kansas in 1944 to his last prints made at Magnolia Editions, Oakland, California, in 2003.
All of his important series of prints will be featured: the work with Tamarind Lithography Workshop in the mid-1960s; a selection from his disorienting series of maze-like lithographs; and all three volumes of “The Dennis Hopper One Man Show,” a series of etchings based on engraving collages.
In addition, the exhibition will feature rare ephemera from the archives of the Conner Family Trust. For example, photographic slides (strikingly similar to the black and white lithographs that he started making in the 1960s) that Conner used when he was part of a group that performed experimental light shows for bands like Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead.
For more information, please visit the SJICA website. We hope to see you there!
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
New Chuck Close edition: Phil (Spiral)
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Magnolia Editions’ latest edition from Chuck Close is a tour de force of contemporary printmaking, but its origins lie in a masterpiece of engraving created almost three hundred years ago. Phil (Spiral), a portrait of Close’s friend and longtime subject, the modern composer Philip Glass, was inspired by the 17th-century French painter and engraver Claude Mellan’s print The Sudarium or Veil of St Veronica, which owes its fame to Mellan’s remarkable use of a single line to engrave a realistic human face.
Photo by John R. Glembin.
As an artist who has created groundbreaking etchings for more than thirty years, Chuck Close was naturally touched by the singular achievement of Mellan’s Sudarium, even acquiring his own copy of the famous print. During a recent visit to Close’s New York studio, the artist proposed a challenge to Donald Farnsworth: could the contemporary printmaking wizardry of Magnolia Editions convincingly recreate the famed and reputedly “inimitable” technique of one of the great French engravers?
Naturally, the route to a successful Phil (Spiral) etching was an indirect one, with many twists and turns: at first, Close and Farnsworth used a combination of digital engraving tools and algorithms to generate a series of largely unsatisfactory tests and to roughly identify areas of light and dark where the line would need to change shape. Ultimately, the single line making up the print had to be manipulated and adjusted entirely by hand over a period of several months.
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“The existing algorithms and programs can turn your image into a series of concentric circles,” explains Farnsworth, “but they give you none of the depth that makes Mellan’s print so impressive. To achieve that kind of dimensionality, the line has to traverse the topography of the face at angles that demand a radical departure from the spiral. Even the smallest single hair on Phil’s head required a corresponding, minute undulation in the line.”
Printed at Magnolia Editions by master printer Nicholas Price in an edition of 50 and signed and numbered by the artist, Phil (Spiral) reflects an ongoing dialogue between printmaking’s past and future, into which Chuck Close and Magnolia Editions continue to introduce unexpected and exciting possibilities.
For more information and detail views of both Close and Mellan's prints, please see this press release:
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More artwork by Chuck Close from Magnolia Editions
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Stanford University workshop at Magnolia
Undergraduates from Stanford University's SIMILE program, an intensive program in which students explore the history of science and technology, visited Magnolia Editions this weekend for an intensive three-part workshop.
Photos of the event below were taken by Era Farnsworth, who coordinated the workshops with SIMILE assistant director Kristen Haring.
After a quick tour of the studio's latest mixed-media innovations and print techniques, workshop participants learned to use raw materials to fabricate their own handmade ink, pens, and paper under the guidance of Magnolia's own Donald Farnsworth, Tallulah Terryll, Nicholas Price, and Heather Pratt, with additional demonstrations by artist Guy Diehl, book binder extraordinaire John DeMerritt, book artist Clifton Meador, and expert calligrapher Georgiana Greenwood.
Haring, together with Stanford professors Paula Findlen and Reviel Netz and SIMILE program lecturers Marcelo Aranda and Katherine McDonough, brought the group of more than fifty students to the studio in late October, just before Halloween. Appropriately, participants had the chance to grind their own inks from charred pig bones and oak gall, giving everyone an opportunity to get into the spirit of the season.
Meanwhile, John DeMerritt and visiting photographer/book guru Clifton Meador supervised a demonstration of basic book binding and stitching techniques in Magnolia's front workroom.
In the back room where Magnolia's framing and wood working usually take place, Guy Diehl helped the students create their own handmade ink pens out of bamboo, while Georgiana Greenwood used the newly fabricated pens to demonstrate some calligraphy techniques.
And in Magnolia's handmade paper studio, Donald Farnsworth discussed the science of handmade paper and led a workshop in creating paper from raw pulp.
Magnolia Editions would like to thank Kristen Haring and all at SIMILE for identifying Magnolia as a destination for students of scientific innovation, providing yet more evidence that science and the arts are simply two sides of the same coin. Haring tells us that the students will use the materials they made at Magnolia to produce their own medieval-style codices as a means to consider how scientific knowledge was transmitted over the centuries.
Thanks also go to the terrific group from Stanford for their enthusiastic participation!
To be notified of upcoming events and workshops, stay tuned to this blog and be sure to sign up for Magnolia Editions's mailing list here.
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