‘Flatbed Press’
Flatbed Press offers artists opportunities to create limited-edition prints and compelling memories.
Fri., July 8, 2005
Flatbed Press
Flatbed World Headquarters, ongoing
My mind, filled with a catalog of images drawn from a myriad of sources, can vividly or vaguely imagine an image. Flatbed Press has contributed heavily to this database for the past 10 years. While Mark Smith, co-owner of Flatbed, and I discuss the current exhibition, "Carlos F. Torralba Ibarra: New Editions," and the changes in printmaking, I am suddenly reminded of a work with the image of an Asian child. Wai Kee – Cultural Passage, a photopolymer etching on color laser copy created by Sandria Hu from Houston, was the first print created by Flatbed that incorporated digital processes with traditional Renaissance printmaking techniques. Consequently, it was Sandria Hu who spearheaded the workshop exchange program offered by Flatbed Press and Coronado Studios to students in the printmaking program at Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico, directed by Torralba Ibarra, the current exhibiting artist.
In addition to the gallery space, Flatbed offers artists opportunities to create limited-edition prints in its spacious studio. Collaborating with a master printmaker, painters and sculptors with little prior experience in printmaking can also create single images, such as Untitled (scissors), a monoprint by Sydney Yeager. This impression is printed from a reusable matrix (ink holding surface) such as an etched plate or woodblock. By incorporating hand coloring or other not easily repeatable steps, her monoprint is created in such a way that only one of its kind exists. The advantage of a reprintable matrix allows the artist to further explore her image and to take risks.
Other Flatbed artists have put their energies toward producing editions of images. Linked thematically and stylistically, Jack Hanley's Prince, Plague Doctor, and Shaman deliver the unique beauty of intaglio. The matrix made for intaglio printing is etched into a copper plate, leaving incisions that are then filled with ink. The printer places damp paper onto the plate and runs both under the press, forcing the paper into the depressed areas, and thus transferring the image.
Flatbed is now offering their first-editioned multiple object. Brooklyn artist Lamar Peterson's Nothin' but Blue Skies consists of two paper-sack lithograph puppets ready for adventure in their cloud-filled magnetic backdrop. The small edition of 24 echoes the artist's larger professional works stylistically. Each impression is equal to every other, and each is a multiple original.
When I visit Flatbed, I cannot stay in any given area for very long. While Mark and I move from one part of the space to another, he teaches me about printmaking. We discuss the artists who have influenced our work, the images we dream about, and good books to read. The images created through Flatbed Press and those found in the adjacent studios and galleries are compelling. The space is quiet. It listens for the images to hum.
