The Master Printer, the Artist, and the Publisher: Mullowney Printing and Catharine Clark Gallery Present a Survey Exhibition of Co-Publications Since 2011: Sandow Birk & Elyse Pignolet, Brad Brown & Lytle Shaw, Greg Niemeyer & Roger Antonsen, Alison Saar, Josephine Taylor, Masami Teraoka Open: February 22nd – March 28th, 2020 Opening reception: Saturday, February 22 from 3 - 5pm Viewing Room: FLOOD by Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport BOX BLUR programming: The Broadside in Action. A LIVE Letterpress Experience. Presented by Box Blur every Saturday from February 22 – March 28, 2020 with Wanxin Zhang, Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport, Julia Goodman and Michael Hall, Katherine Vetne, Masha Kachaeva and Julie Heffernan.
San Francisco, CA: Catharine Clark Gallery continues its Spring 2020 program with The Master Printer, the Artist, and
the Publisher, a survey exhibition of publications with Mullowney Printing since 2011, featuring works by Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, Brad Brown and Lytle Shaw, Greg Niemeyer and Roger Antonsen, Alison Saar, Josephine Taylor, and Masami Teraoka. On view from February 22 – March 28, 2020, the exhibition encompasses various media: direct gravure, etching, linocut, lithograph, monotype, and woodcut. Catharine Clark Gallery and Mullowney Printing began their collaborative relationship with the release of Sandow Birk's "Ten Leading Causes of Death in America,” a suite of chine-collé, direct gravure etchings published in 2004. In 2011, Mullowney and Clark began co-publishing Birk's large-scale gravure series titled "Imaginary Monuments.” In 2019 they formalized their partnership and co-publish, release, and promote editions created at Mullowney Printing In conjunction with the exhibition, BOX BLUR* presents The Broadside in Action. A LIVE Letterpress Experience, every Saturday from February 22 – March 28, 2020. Working in collaboration with Mullowney Printing principal and master printer Paul Mullowney, and assisted by master printers Erin McAdams, Harry Schneider, and assistant Wendy Liu, artists will be given the opportunity to interpret the role, function and meaning of the printed single sheet broadside in the 21st century. Viewers will have the opportunity to witness printmaking in action, to learn about technique and possibilities for art making on a letterpress. In preparation for the project, invited artists work with master printers at Mullowney Printing’s letterpress studio at Minnesota Street Project working through ideas, creation of matrices, proofing, and, finally, creating an image for live printing in the gallery. Live printing will take place in a pop-up gallery during the course of the exhibition, with the artists and printers will be editioning broadsides on-site. The schedule of artists is as follows: February 22 at 3pm: Wanxin Zhang February 29 at 1pm: Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport March 7 at 1pm: Julia Goodman and Michael Hall March 14 at 1pm: Katherine Vetne April 11 at 1pm: Masha Kachaeva April 18 at 1pm: Julie Heffernan Each artist’s or collaborative work is $100. Portfolios of all six projects can be reserved at $600. Join us for an opening reception on Saturday, February 22 with artists’ talks and live letterpress printing with Wanxin Zhang at 3pm.
PLEASE NOTE: Live printing demonstrations with Masha Kachaeva and Julie Heffernan have been rescheduled to the dates listed above, due to public closures.
Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet Since graduating in 1988 from Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, Sandow Birk has been concerned with the politics of contemporary life. Invitations to participate in residencies have brought Birk (and his collaborator, Elyse Pignolet) to international destinations: Alila Villas (Soori, Bali, Indonesia); Auckland Print Studio (Auckland, New Zealand); Ballinglen Arts Foundation (County Mayo, Ireland); CitÊ International des Arts (Paris, France); Montalvo Arts Center (Los Gatos, California); Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, New Mexico). These opportunities have shaped and influenced both artists and specifically, Birk's subject matter whether the "American Qur'an", "Dante's Divine Comedy", "Depravities of War" or "Imaginary Monuments" series. Birk has received prestigious awards and honors including an Honorary Fellowship in the Dante Society of America; a Fulbright Fellowship; a Getty Fellowship; a Guggenheim Fellowship; a National Endowment for the Arts Grant; an Artist Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; and in 2014, he was named a United States Artist Knight Fellow. Birk's work is represented in the collections of Art Gallery of Ontario, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Crocker Art Museum, Crystal Bridges, di Rosa, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, J. Paul Getty Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Historical Society, New York Public Library, Norton Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Societa Dantesca, and Stadtisches Kunstmuseum. Monographs on Birk's work have included American Qur'an' published by W.W. Norton (2015), which coincided with a travelling solo exhibition (with Pignolet's ceramics) to Orange County Museum of Art, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Sabeel Center and Texas Tech University; Depravities of War, published by Grand Central Art Center (2007), and Dante's Divine Comedy (with Marcus Sanders), published by Chronicle Books (2004 – 2006), Incarcerated: Visions of California in the 21st Century and In Smog and Thunder: Historical Works from the Great War of the Californias, published by Last Gasp (2001 and 2000). All publications were accompanied by attendant exhibitions. In 2001, Birk began collaborating with Elyse Pignolet. Pignolet is an American with Filipino heritage, who attended California State University, San Francisco, and graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach. Pignolet and Birk have traveled extensively to research their collective and individual projects. When participating in artist residencies outside of the United States they are often accompanied by their two children. They live in southern California. In addition to representing the career of Sandow Birk, the gallery has exhibited projects in which Birk and Pignolet have collaborated. Birk has worked with Mullowney Printing since 2004, and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, since 1994. Catharine Clark Gallery has exhibited collaborative projects by Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet since 2008. Front cover: Alison Saar, High Cotton II, 2018. Two block linocut and woodcut monotype, on Korean Chiri mulberry paper. Printed as a variable edition of 11. Signed and numbered 7/11 on the recto in pencil. Published by Mullowney Printing, San Francisco. Sheet: 25 x 16 1/2 inches; 26 1/2 x 18 inches framed. $3,000 unframed; $3,550 framed
IMAGINARY MONUMENTS Works in "Imaginary Monuments" depict historical texts housed within proposed monuments that honor or enshrine the text's topic. Most of the monuments incorporate multiple documents, conveying in words and images the complex and sometimes conflicting histories and opinions behind subjects such as the judicial system, incarceration, economics, capitalism, trade, immigration, slavery, freedom of speech, treaties, governance, social justice and civil rights. Monument to the Constitution of the United States (2011–12), the first gravure in "Imaginary Monuments", is based on a drawing by the same title (108 x 132 ¼ inches) created while Birk was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow in Washington D.C. (2007) after he saw Albrecht Dürer's Triumphal Arch, then on view at the National Gallery of Art. Birk's seminal monument drawing, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, faithfully reproduces the articles of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and all amendments as of 2012. Birk's visual interpretation of these texts, whether as a drawing or gravure, illuminates the ideas in the articles of the Constitution while also illustrating and exposing how US citizens, the government and the courts have applied and interpreted the texts across time. Birk further shows the Constitution as an evolving document. By representing a building under-construction, Birk leaves space in his rendering for future amendments. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2012), is the second gravure in "Imaginary Monuments". The source text is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted in Paris on December 10, 1948, and considered the "magna carta of human rights." Birk's transcription encircles a leaning and towering column resembling the obelisk in the Place Vendôme, Paris. It is propped up by scaffolding and foregrounds a skyline of skyscrapers and shacks. The original Universal Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It defines, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected. Birk's monument suggests that at this point in history, given the contrast between the lofty buildings (monuments to wealth and power) and putrefying favelas (monuments to poverty and income inequality), human rights may require some support. Excavating the Foundation of the Unfinished Temple of Human Rights (2015), is the third gravure in "Imaginary Monuments". Birk has conceptualized the architecture for this monument as an archaeological site where proposals for women's rights throughout US history are being uncovered. The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (and others), and the Lucretia Mott Amendment were presented at the Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, July 19–20, 1848. Their statements were the first attempts at passing women's equality legislation. The Declaration of Sentiments and eleven other resolutions were adopted readily, but the proposal for women's suffrage was passed only after impassioned speeches by Stanton and former slave Frederick Douglass, who said suffrage "was the right by which all others could be secured." After the 19th Amendment affirming women's right to vote was ratified in 1920, suffragist leader Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923 as the next step in bringing "equal justice under law" to all citizens.
In 1972, the ERA was finally passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The political tide turned more conservative, however, and in 1980 the Republican Party removed ERA support from its platform. Although pro-ERA activities increased with lobbying, rallies and civil disobedience, the ERA failed to get the final three state ratifications that were needed. The Equal Rights Amendment was reintroduced in Congress on July 14, 1982 and has been before every session of Congress since that time. Later bills imposed no deadline on the ERA ratification process. Yet, success in putting the ERA into the Constitution via this process requires passage by a two-thirds majority in each house of Congress and ratification by 38 states. The country remains unwilling to guarantee women constitutional rights equal to those of men in the form of a ratified amendment. Proposal for a Monument to the Declaration of Independence (and a Pavilion to Frederick Douglass) (2018), is the fourth gravure in the series. The work, like the Douglass speech it references, reflects on how freedom is unequally distributed to people of color. There are two structures represented in the image: one with the Declaration of Independence transcribed on a neo-classical building; the other with excerpts From What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, the popular title given to an untitled speech by Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852, that was delivered to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York, and represented by Birk as text on the surface of a rock-like structure. Douglass's speech suggests that positive statements about American values, such as liberty, citizenship and freedom, were an offense to the enslaved people of the United States, because the slaves were denied such rights. Douglass compares the treatment of slaves to that of American colonists under British rule and urges Americans to help the slaves as they helped themselves during the American Revolution. A third text is depicted on a panel suspended from a chain extending from the building bearing the text of the Declaration of Independence. This additional text was penned by Thomas Jefferson in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. In it he denounces the slave trade as "execrable commerce" and slavery as a "cruel war against nature itself." This passage on slavery, which was redacted in the final version of the Declaration, initiated an intense debate among the delegates gathered in Philadelphia in 1776. Birk reproduces the redacted text on a hanging panel, suspended atop shackles casting a shadow on the monument that bears the final version of the Declaration.
Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, Proposal for a Monument to the Declaration of Independence (and a Pavilion to Frederick Douglass), 2018. Direct gravure etching on two copper plates printed on two sheets of gampi paper, joined and backed with Sekishu Kozo paper. Co-published by Mullowney Printing and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Edition of 25 plus 8 proofs. 44 x 61 inches $15,000 unframed; Framing POR
Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, Excavating the Foundation of the Unfinished Temple of Human Rights, 2015 Direct gravure etching on two copper plates printed on two sheets of gampi paper, joined and backed with Sekishu Kozo paper. Co-published by Mullowney Printing and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Edition of 25 plus 8 proofs. 61 ½ x 44 inches $15,000 unframed; Framing POR
Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 2013. Direct gravure etching on four copper plates printed on four sheets of handmade gampi paper, joined and backed with Sekishu Kozo paper. Co-published by Mullowney Printing and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Edition of 25 plus 8 proofs. 62 ½ x 48 inches $15,000 unframed; Framing POR
Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, Monument to the Constitution of the United States, 2011–2012 Direct gravure etching on nine copper plates printed on nine sheets of handmade gampi paper, joined and backed with Sekishu Kozo paper. Co-published by Mullowney Printing and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Edition of 25 plus 8 proofs. 48 x 63 inches $25,000 unframed; Framing POR
AMERICAN PROCESSION
American Procession (2017), is a monumentally-scaled (48 x 480 inches; 121.92 x 1219.20 centimeters), tripartite woodcut, hand-embellished with gold acrylic, co-authored by Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet. The work depicts figures from American history (pre-colonial to the present) marching toward a central image of a triumphal arch in disrepair and a replica of the US capitol that resembles a stage prop. Birk and Pignolet were inspired to create a woodcut of this scale after seeing the Der Fürstenzug (Procession of Princes) mural on the wall of the Stables Courtyard, Dresden Castle, Germany. The mural, made from Meissen porcelain tiles, is the largest ceramic artwork in the world (331 feet wide; 101 meters). It depicts 25 Saxon royalty of the House of Wetting (1127–1904). Originally conceptualized by Wilhelm Walther between 1871–1876, it was later rendered in porcelain from 1904–1907. Using the scale, palette and composition of Der Fürstenzug as a point of departure for American Procession, Birk and Pignolet replace the royal figures with progressives (left panel) and conservatives (right panel), including many lesser known by the American public. Each group marches toward the central panel depicting an image of a landscape filled with scattered debris: a police car, the Liberty torch, portions of the Hollywood sign, an electric chair, a noose, a rural home and an old tire.
Above: Detail, left panel of American Procession, depicting progressives marching to the right. 36 x 204 inches Below: Detail, right panel of American Procession, depicting conservatives marching to the left. 36 x 204 inches
Above: Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet. American Procession, 2017. Woodcut from twenty carved plywood blocks. Hand-embellished with gold acrylic. Printed on gampi paper using a Dufa flatbed offset press. Sheets are joined and backed twice with Sekishu Kozo paper. Printed and published by Mullowney Printing, San Francisco. Three panels: edition of 6 plus 5 proofs; central panel: edition of 12 plus 8 proofs. Overall: 48 x 480 inchesEach side panel: 36 x 204 inches. Central panel: 48 x 72 inches
Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, American Procession, 2017. Woodcut from twenty carved plywood blocks. Hand-embellished with gold acrylic. Printed on gampi paper using a Dufa flatbed offset press. Sheets are joined and backed twice with Sekishu Kozo paper. Printed and published by Mullowney Printing, San Francisco. Three panels: edition of 6 plus 5 proofs; central panel: edition of 12 plus 8 proofs. Overall: 48 x 480 inches. Each side panel: 36 x 204 inches. Central panel: 48 x 72 inches; Three woodcuts: $45,000 Central woodcut: $8,000
BRAD BROWN AND LYTLE SHAW Mash Notes is a series of mash notes from poetry to painting and back, from the present of pluralism to the fifties of high abstraction, and from Brad Brown and Lytle Shaw to Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara, whose 1958 collaboration, Stones, operates as organizing structure. Though produced at the height of New York School abstraction, Stones cultivated a discredited language of figuration, a visual vocabulary that seemed to many at the time ahistorical. Brown’s abstract monoprints thus pair with Rivers in an odd form of symmetry, pressing on abstraction when most viewers are uncomfortable with it, seeing abstraction as a “historical” language of art making. Shaw’s poems, in response, recombine O’Hara’s actual words from Stones in ways that allow reflection on Brown’s monotypes as well as the nature of poet/artist relations Brad Brown is an artist working primarily on paintings and drawings on paper. His projects tend to be large, open-ended series that can remain unfinished for years. His largest project to date, The Look Stains, began in 1987 and consists of tens of thousands of works on paper that are continually worked on, torn up, re-drawn, and re-contextualized. Brown has produced etchings, lithographs, and artists books with Crown Point Press, Shark’s Ink, Dieu Donne Studio, Hui Press, Flying Horse Press, and DeMerritt/Pauwels Editions. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery, Palace of Legion of Honor, Arkansas Museum of Art, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Art Bank Program, US Department of State, Asheville Art Museum, The Columbus Museum, CU Art Museum, University of Colorado, Williams College Museum of Art, Knoxville Museum of Art, and the Boise Art Museum, among others. He currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA. Lytle Shaw is a New York-based writer. A contributing editor to Cabinet magazine, and a Professor of English at NYU, his books of poetry and fiction include Cable Factory 20, The Lobe, The Clifford Chadwick Collection, and The Moiré Effect. The Mollino Set is forthcoming in 2020. Shaw has collaborated extensively with artists on books and print series: with Emilie Clark, his projects include Flexagon, The Rough Voice, and Overcook; and with Jimbo Blachly,his projects include The Chadwick Family Papers: A Brief Public Glimpse, Selected Shipwrecks, Foreground Floor Debris, and Brouwer Vision. This is Shaw’s first collaboration with Brad Brown.
Above: Brad Brown and Lytle Shaw, Mash Notes, 2019. Portfolio of twelve variable monotype images by Brad Brown with text by Lytle Shaw. Printed on Somerset satin white 300 gram paper by Erin McAdams, Wendy Liu, Harry Schneider, and Max Valentine in an edition of 10 + 6 AP. Portfolio by John DeMerritt Bookbinding, Emeryville, CA. Signed and numbered AP1 on the colophon recto. Published by Mullowney Printing, San Francisco. Sheet: 12 x 22 inches. $5,000
GREG NIEMEYER AND ROGER ANTONSEN Produced in 2019 and in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Internet, the Network Paradox Scroll presents a data visualization in analogue form; and through the unexpected use of the 19th century process of gravure etching, the Network Paradox Scroll encourages viewers to consider how, throughout time, technology continuously offers us tools for finding meaning and connection through visual storytelling. The graphic shapes and lines in Niemeyer’s and Antonsen’s composition evoke the logograms of non-Western writing systems, such as hieroglyphics or cuneiform, which use images and symbols to convey narrative. The scroll itself encourages interpretation and debate. Niemeyer notes that “the mystery of the scroll lies in the tension between a bold, iconic rendering of turning points in the history of the Internet layered with billowing clouds of network formations that could alternatively represent the desires which drive technological development, the drama of total quantification, or the energies of generational change.” In rendering this history of the Internet, Niemeyer and Antonsen eschew any, one totalizing narrative and instead opt for broader, more generous visual poetics where viewers can consider “the way we form communities” that define our futures. Greg Niemeyer is a data artist who seeks to represent the human element in the database. Since 2001, Niemeyer has been a professor of New Media at UC Berkeley in the Department of Art Practice. Niemeyer’s work has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Cooper Union, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Zentrum fur Kunst und Medien, and at many international art biennials including La Villette Numerique, National Art Museum of China; Centro de Cultura Digital, and the 55 th edition of the Venice Biennale. His work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Intel Technology Innovation Grants. Roger Antonsen is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo in Norway. With a PhD in mathematical logic and proof theory, he is considered a logician, mathematician, computer scientist, public speaker, author, and artist. Through his numerous projects, he creatively combines mathematics and computer science with entertainment, philosophy, and engaging visualizations. Antonsen is also an award-winning science communicator, whose 2015 TED talk, “Math is the hidden secret to understanding the world,” is one of the most popular TED talks on mathematics. The Network Paradox, presented at Catharine Clark Gallery in 2019, was Antonsen’s first major, gallery-based project.
Above: Greg Niemeyer and Roger Antonsen, Network Paradox Scroll, 2019. Direct gravure etching from 26 copper plates printed on gampi paper, seamed and backed with Sekishu Kozo paper. Printed by Mullowney Printing, San Francisco as an edition of 6 plus 4 artist proofs. Signed and numbered on the verso. Co-published by Catharine Clark Gallery and Mullowney Printing, San Francisco. Image: 16 x 212 3/4 inches (each plate); Sheet: 19 1/2 x 216 1/4 inches. $18,000
ALISON SAAR Alison Saar was born in 1956 in Los Angeles, California. She grew up in an artistic environment with her mother, the artist Betye Saar, and her father, who was an illustrator and art conservationist. Through her sculptures, drawings, and prints, Saar explores the subjects of racism, sexism, ageism, and the challenges of being bi-racial in America. Saar studied studio art and art history at Scripps College in Claremont, California, receiving a BA in art history in 1978. In 1981 she earned an MFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. In 1983, Saar became an artistin-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, incorporating found objects from the city environment into her practice. Saar completed another residency in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1985, which augmented her urban style with Southwest Native American and Mexican influences. Saar’s approach encompasses a multitude of personal, artistic, and cultural references that reflect the plurality of her own experiences and background. Her artworks incorporate found objects and materials such as roughhewn wood, antique, tin ceiling panels, nails, shards of pottery, glass, and urban detritus. The resulting figures and objects become powerful totems that reflect on gender, race, heritage, and history. First published in 2019, Copacetic is a suite of eight multi-block linocuts on handmade Hamada Kozo, backed with Sekishu Kozo, based on images created by Saar in 2018 for the 125th Street subway station in New York City. Saar expanded her original project, Hear the Lone Whistle Moan, and created Copacetic, a panoramic scene of imagined dancers, singers, musicians, and patrons from the historic 1930s and 40s Harlem Renaissance. Saar notes that her work is inspired by “the many great African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance that had active printmaking practices, such as Elizabeth Catlett, Hale Woodruff, and Aaron Douglas.” Saar has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and two National Endowment Fellowships. She has exhibited at many galleries and museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work is included in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other institutions. She currently resides in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by LA Louver.
Above: Alison Saar, Copacetic, 2019, Suite of eight multi-block linocuts on handmade Japanese Hamada Kozo paper, inked by hand and editioned on Mullowney Printing's Dufa Manual Offset Lithography Press. Portfolio design and construction by Erin McAdams. The eight linocuts come in a linen portfolio, signed and editioned on a colophon page. An interior page bears a quote by Langston Hughes. Printed by Erin McAdams, Harry Schneider, Max Valentine, and assisted by Wendy Liu in an edition of 20, plus 5 artist proofs. Signed and numbered 6/20 on the colophon page in pencil. Published by Mullowney Printing, San Francisco. Portfolio size: 20 1/2 x 18 3/4 inches. Each print: 19 1/2 x 18 inches unframed. $15,000
Above: Alison Saar, Torch Song in the series “Copacetic,� 2019. Multi-block linocut on handmade Japanese Hamada Kozo paper, inked by hand and editioned on Mullowney Printing's Dufa Manual Offset Lithography Press. Printed by Erin McAdams, Harry Schneider, Max Valentine, and assisted by Wendy Liu in an edition of 20, plus 5 artist proofs. Signed and numbered on the recto in pencil. Published by Mullowney Printing, San Francisco. Sheet: 19 1/2 x 18 inches unframed; 21 x 19 1/2 inches framed. $2,000 unframed; $2,500 framed
Above: Alison Saar, Hooch n’ Haight, in the series “Copacetic,” 2019.
Above: Alison Saar, Jitterbug, in the series “Copacetic,” 2019. Below: Alison Saar, Hepcat, in the series “Copacetic,” 2019.
Above: Alison Saar, Paradiddle, in the series “Copacetic,” 2019. Below: Alison Saar, Shebop, in the series “Copacetic,” 2019.
Above: Alison Saar, Syncopatin, in the series “Copacetic,� 2019.
Below: Alison Saar, Table for Two, in the series “Copacetic,” 2019.
JOSEPHINE TAYLOR Josephine Taylor creates narrative images on paper—drawing, print, collage—and video. Her work often examines the emotional and psychological remnants of memory, human connection and adolescence. Her subject matter is personal, rendered with a tender fragility and often at the scale of the people she is portraying. Taylor earned a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies with an emphasis in East Indian languages from the University of Colorado – Boulder before pursuing a graduate degree in Fine Art at the San Francisco Art Institute. She was a recipient of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SECA Award in 2004, and was included in the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art that same year. Also, in 2004, she was awarded an Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts. In 2017, Taylor was awarded an Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation. Taylor’s work is included in the permanent collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her work was featured in OFF-SPRING: New Generations, a group exhibition at 21c Museum Hotels that premiered at the Cincinnati campus in 2013, and most recently traveled to the museum’s Oklahoma City campus in 2018. Also, in 2018, Taylor’s work was featured in Care and Feeding: The Art of Parenthood at the Palo Alto Art Center. Her most recent solo exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery, Beside Me, included a video collaboration, with interdisciplinary artist, Jon Bernson. In 2017, Taylor began collaborating with Mullowney Printing, San Francisco, resulting in a suite of monotypes. In Spring 2019, Taylor will debut a new series of photogravures published by Mullowney Printing at Gallery 16 in the group exhibition, Epoch. In 2019, Taylor’s work, BAD, was acquired by the San Jose Museum of Art. Taylor teaches at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. She lives and works in San Francisco and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2003.
Josephine Taylor Direct gravures on gampi Edition of 10 + 3AP 15 x 11 ½ inches framed each Published by Mullowney Printing, San Francisco
$6,000 for set of 8 unframed $750 each unframed $1,000 framed each
Sonic Youth: “Bull In the Heather,” 2019
Bowie “China Girl,” 2019
April Wine: “Rock Myself to Sleep,” 2019
Suicidal Tendencies “Institutionalized,” 2019
Erasure “Love to Hate You,” 2019
The Cult: “Coming Down,” 2019
Josephine Taylor Photogravure printed chine collé gampi on Somerset Edition of 10 + 3AP 19 ½ x 15 inches framed each Published by Mullowney Printing
$1,200 framed
Song for Love – Extreme, 2019
Punk Rock Girl - The Dead Milkmen, 2019
Gone Daddy Gone - The Violent Femmes, 2019
Sometimes Always - The Jesus and Mary Chain, 2019
Take On Me – a-ha, 2019
MASAMI TERAOKA Masami Teraoka was born in 1936 in Onomichi, Hiroshima, Japan. He graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts in Aesthetics from Kwansei Gakuin University, Hyogo, Japan. After moving to Lose Angeles, Teraoka continued his education in the United States, earning a Bachelor of Art (1964) and a Master of Arts (1968) from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California. Masami Teraoka’s new gravure with Mullowney Printing, Geisha and Madonna (2020), depicts a geisha and the Madonna in a sexually frank, pieta-like pose. The image articulates a relationship between sexual freedom and individual liberty in contrast to the Catholic Church’s dogma against non-procreative physical intimacy. Geisha and Madonna is also a stylistic hybrid of Teraoka’s signature ukiyo-e style with his ongoing Renaissance-inspired painting. Combining motifs from both traditions, Teraoka’s newest print epitomizes the artist’s interest in art historical and cultural mash ups. Teraoka’s work is represented in more than 50 public collections worldwide, including the Tate Modern; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Crocker Art Museum; the Walker Art Center; the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; the Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon; and the National Gallery of Victoria, among others. In 2016, Teraoka was awarded an honorary doctorate from Otis College of Art and Design. His work has been featured in multiple publications, including Ascending Chaos: The Art of Masami Teraoka 1966 – 2006, published by Chronicle Books in 2006 and Floating Realities: The Art of Masami Teraoka, published by CSU Fullerton in 2018. In 2020/2021, Teraoka’s work will be the subject of a major touring retrospective, organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Teraoka lives and works in Waimanalo, Oahu, Hawaii, and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 1998.
Above: Masami Teraoka, Geisha and Madonna, 2020. Three plate, three color direct gravure etching on handmade Hamada Kozo printed chine collĂŠ backed with Somerset satin white 300 gram paper, trimmed bleed. Printed by Erin McAdams, Wendy Liu, and Harry Schneider in an edition of 35 plus 10 proofs. Signed and numbered on the verso in pencil. Co-published by Catharine Clark Gallery and Mullowney Printing, San Francisco. Publication date January 2020. Sheet and image: 11 3/4 x 17 inches. Pre-publication price: $3,800
Media Room: Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport | FLOOD
FLOOD (2019) is a multi-channel video installation by Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport, one in a series of works that explores the global impacts of climate change. Composed of hundreds of images sourced from news and media outlets, the video is a collage of layered stills animated to a pulsing score. 2.3 billion people worldwide were affected by floods between 1995 and 2015, more than double the number affected by any other form of climate catastrophe. Mainstream journalism, however diminished the cumulative impact of these natural disasters by focusing on isolated events that flattened the scope and scale of global climate change. In response, FLOOD recontextualizes photo reportage on floods into a proliferating audio-visual narrative that forces viewers to consider the global trauma of climate change, as well as the impact on populations fighting for their survival amidst perilous conditions. As the images accumulate onscreen, crowds of people amass in frame while the flood waters continue to rise. The video installation was originally conceptualized for the exhibition Digital Nature 2019 at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden in Pasadena, CA. For this presentation, the video was presented as a three-channel projection on a structure erected in the arboretum’s reflecting pool. The video was subsequently presented in a related exhibition titled Natural Discourse at Sagehen Creek Field Station in Truckee, CA. In January 2020, the gallery re-presented the video at UNTITLED, ART San Francisco in a site-specific context near the entrance of Pier 35 with sightlines of the San Francisco Bay that created an arresting juxtaposition between the video’s imagery of natural disaster and the waters outside. Above: Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport, Installation view for Digital Nature 2019: FLOOD, 2019. Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Gardens.
DEBORAH OROPALLO (American, born in Hackensack, New Jersey, 1954) received an MA/MFA from the University of California at Berkeley and a BFA from Alfred University. Originally trained as a painter, Oropallo incorporates mixed media techniques, including photomontage, video, computer editing, printmaking, and painting into her practice. Whether still or moving images, the resulting works bear traces of the distortions that evolve or remain from the image manipulation. Her composite works layer visual sources producing dense interplay between time, place, form, and content. She has collaborated on video works with Andy Rappaport since 2017. Oropallo’s exhibition history includes monographic exhibits at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California; the Boise Art Museum, Idaho; Montalvo Art Center, Saratoga, California; the San Jose Museum of Art, California; and work in exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art (Whitney Biennial), New York, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; The Corcoran Gallery of Art (Corcoran Biennial), Washington DC; The Jewish Museum, New York, New York; and 21c Museum Hotels, Louisville, Kentucky. Oropallo’s work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; and the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, California. Oropallo’s work is the subject of two monographs: POMP (2009) published by Gallery 16, and How To, published by the San Jose Museum of Art. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Engelhard Award, and a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Oropallo lives in West Marin, California and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2013. ANDY RAPPAPORT (American, born in New York, New York, 1957) has had a nearly 50-year long involvement with music and sound and his experience ranges from fronting rock-and-roll bands, to performing as a singer-songwriter, to designing and building recording studios and equipment. Rappaport’s collaboration with Deborah Oropallo on the video works for Dark Landscapes for a White House marked his first foray into music for moving images since scoring student films in the 1970s and draws on his experiences at that time with some of the earliest commercially available music synthesizers. Rappaport is the co-founder, with his wife, Deborah Rappaport, of Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, CA. He is also a photographer. Rappaport’s collaborative work with Oropallo is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery. The artistic partnership between Oropallo and Rappaport is on-going and their collaborative work constitutes more than eight video projects. Their installations have been included in Digital Nature II at the Los Angeles Arboretum and Botanical Garden, Pasadena, California; Natural Discourse at the Sagehen Creek Field Station, near Lake Tahoe, California; and FLIGHT at The Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, California. FLIGHT will be exhibited in 2020 at the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University, Ashland. Oropallo’s video projects debuted in 2017, with a suite of works including Smoke Stacked, which was acquired by the Nevada Museum of Art for its permanent collection. Oropallo and Rappaport began their collaboration that same year, when Rappaport contributed additional sound editing for Going Ballistic (2017), which was acquired by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in December 2019. Their nine-channel video installation FLIGHT debuted at UNTITLED, ART Miami Beach in December 2019, and was acquired by 21c Museum Hotels for their permanent collection.
Above: Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport, still from FLOOD, 2019.