Deborah Oropallo at Gallery 16

Deborah Oropallo - Entangled, 2011
"Tale Spin," a new body of mixed-media work by Deborah Oropallo, opens at Gallery 16 in San Francisco this Friday, March 4th from 6 - 9 pm.

The works in "Tale Spin," several of which incorporate elements printed at Magnolia Editions, find Oropallo drawing from traditional fairy tales to explore themes of fear, fantasy, and eroticism.

Check out this blog post for pictures of Oropallo working on a piece from the series at Magnolia earlier this year.

Gallery 16 website

More art by Deborah Oropallo at Magnolia Editions

Rupert Garcia: The Magnolia Editions Projects 1991–2011

Rupert Garcia - Obama from Douglass, 2010
Pigmented inkjet print. 44 x 96 in. sheet; 31 x 90 in. image. Edition: 5
Magnolia Editions is pleased to announce a show of works created by Rupert Garcia at the studio over the last twenty years, to be exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco from February 19 - July 17, 2011.

Magnolia Editions will also publish a catalogue to coincide with the exhibition: the 120 page book includes color reproductions of every project Garcia has worked on at Magnolia, in media ranging from tapestry to silkscreen to works combining hand painted elements with inkjet printing, together with an introduction by curator Karin Breuer and a new essay on Garcia's Magnolia works by poet, critic, and curator John Yau.

The editions by Garcia featured on Magnolia's website are but a fraction of his output at the studio over the last two decades. "Rupert Garcia: The Magnolia Editions Projects 1991–2011" offers an unprecedented chance to experience a selection of experimental, editioned, and unique works by this iconic Bay Area artist.

More art by Rupert Garcia at Magnolia Editions

Guy Diehl painting workshop in Davis, CA

Guy Diehl, who has been creating prints at Magnolia Editions since 1991, will be teaching an acrylic painting workshop at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, CA on Saturday, March 19 from 1-5 pm.

Diehl writes:

I'll be conducting this workshop more like a science class. Where I'll be covering the physical and chemical properties of acrylic paints. How to overcome the nature of a medium that dries so quickly. Working with mediums to enhance your techniques. Also covered will be how to set up your studio for acrylic painting.

For more details and to sign up, please visit the Natsoulas Gallery website.

Art by Guy Diehl at Magnolia Editions

Google Art Project

Michael Wild of Oakland's Bay Wolf restaurant stopped by Magnolia today and tipped us off to Google's new Art Project, an online archive of staggeringly high resolution images of art from top museums all over the world.

So far, the project includes works from the Met and the MoMA in New York; the National Gallery in London; France's Palace of Versailles; the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, to name only a few.

Check it out at googleartproject.com!

Codex International Book Fair in Berkeley, CA

The third biennial Codex International Book Fair and Symposium takes place February 6-9, 2011, on the UC Berkeley campus.

Magnolia Editions will have a table at this "World's Fair of the Artist Book," a truly unique event which features hundreds of exhibitors from all over the globe. Magnolia will be exhibiting artist books and portfolios including:

• John Yau and Norbert Prangenberg's 2010 artist book, A Child's Vi[r]gil;
  
  
• William Wiley's custom leather-bound etching button box set, Kali-fornia Dreamin';
  
  
• Two new artist books by Squeak Carnwath - Philosophy and her 100 Poems collaboration with John Yau;
  
  
• A new laser-cut jigsaw puzzle edition by Mel Ramos;
  
  
• Enrique Chagoya's electronic multiple, One Recession Watchdog (Instant Update);
  
  and more...

The fair is located at the ASUC Pauley Ballroom (Telegraph & Bancroft), UC Berkeley.

Public hours are as follows:
Sunday, Feb. 6 from 12:00 – 4:00;
Monday, Feb. 7 and Tuesday, Feb. 8 from 12:30 – 6:30;
and Wednesday, Feb. 9 from 12:30 – 4:30.

For more information, please check the Codex Foundation website.

Jacquard weaving, computers, and... lace?

Chuck Close inspects experimental proofs of a new tapestry portrait at the mill in Belgium, December, 2010. Close's tapestries are woven on a computerised Jacquard loom using techniques developed at Magnolia Editions. Photo by Donald Farnsworth.
This online review of James Essinger's book Jacquard's Web, which considers the descent of modern computing from the punchcard-driven Jacquard loom, offers several interesting points about the connection between clothing/textiles and technological advancement.

The reviewer also suggests a link between bobbin-lace and the development of Jacquard's punchcards:

I also wonder where Jacquard got the idea for punched cards. [...] I have a theory, actually; bobbin-lace patterns. Bobbin-lace was as expensive and slow to make as brocade, and the patterns changed with fashion much faster than one person could make up a suit of lace. Complicated patterns require pinholes punched into stiff card, which give a skilled lacemaker enough direction to make up the pattern. Middlemen made up many many cards corresponding to small pieces of a fashionable pattern and handed them out to lacemakers as they picked up the finished pieces from the last pattern. It would have been important that the patterns lined up well to be invisibly sewn together, although the threads did not weave from one piece into the next.

I think there must have been a lot of these cards around, especially in a town as devoted to luxury clothing as Lyons was. It's still a big intellectual jump to switch from a human feeling with a pin to know where thread-crossing should go, to a machine that always crosses in the same places feeling a card to decide whether a crossing should happen; but it would explain why sheaves of punched cards 'looked like' information storage.

Read the whole review here; for more on Essinger's book, check out his website.

See more Jacquard tapestries by contemporary artists at Magnolia Editions

UPDATE: Donald Farnsworth points out that Jacquard's punchcard inspirations are actually well documented, as in this video from the "Connections" series by James Burke (begins at the 6:00 mark in the first video):

Artists at Magnolia: Rupert Garcia and Elena Dorfman

Donald Farnsworth and Rupert Garcia with Garcia's Obama From Douglass (2010)
Artists Rupert Garcia and Elena Dorfman worked at Magnolia Editions today...


Dorfman worked on an upcoming edition of photographic prints mounted on aluminum:

Elena Dorfman with new work
Tallulah Terryll and Elena Dorfman
Meanwhile, Garcia and Donald Farnsworth were interviewed for an upcoming Bay Package Productions documentary on Garcia, linked to the artist's show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, "Rupert Garcia: the Magnolia Editions Projects 1991-2011," opening on February 19.



More art by Rupert Garcia from Magnolia Editions

Elena Dorfman - artist's website

Bay Package Productions