Why Draw a Live Model?

In the summer of 1997 four artists -- Enrique Chagoya, Fred Dalkey, June Felter and Nathan Oliveira -- spent an afternoon at Crown Point Press drawing from a live model directly onto copper plates. The artists would draw, look at a just-pulled print, make changes, ask for another impression, meanwhile starting other drawings. They always worked on metal, not paper, scratching directly or drawing with a needle through wax, sometimes painting with acid, suagr syrup or liquid soap. Why take this roundabout route and why draw from the model in the first place? This book addresses those questions. This book is illustrated with etchings and drypoints made by the four artists. It contains an essay written by Kathan Brown along with the artists' comments about drawing from a live model.

The prints illustrated were published by Crown Point Press separately from the book in an edition of 20, with 10 sold as a portfolio titled Live Model Group, and 10 sold individually.

Why Draw a Live Model? examines this question from the points of view of artist, model, and commentator. The old tradition of drawing from a model is still being pursued by contemporary artists. The art illustrated was created in the medium of etching, and the book gives insight into the nature of etching processes as well as into the activity of drawing. The processes used are clearly defined in the context of the live model prints illustrated in the book. Because etching slows down the process of drawing, the challenge of using the medium introduced an added dimension to a discussion of live model drawing.

Crown Point Press celebrated its 35th year in 1997. Throughout its history as a fine art print shop and publisher the Press has encouraged people involved in the arts (artists, patrons and students of the arts) to learn about the intaglio process of printmaking. It has aways been the Press's intention to create discourse about the printmaking medium in relation to other art media, and to examine the role printmaking plays in the contemporary art world.

Kathan Brown was born in 1935 in New York City, grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida, and attended Antioch College in Ohio. She spent two years in London in the late 1950s where she pursued the medium of etching at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Brown was fascinated with using old techniques for new art ideas, and she has continued to develop that approach throughout her career. She started Crown Point Press in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1962. Crown Point began as an intaglio print workshop, but started publishing prints in 1965 with etching portfolios by Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. Since then Crown Point has published prints by over 70 artists, including Thiebaud and Diebenkorn, John Cage, Judy Pfaff, Pat Steir, Sol LeWitt, and Francesco Clemente. Critic Susan Tallman in her 1996 book, The Contemporary Print, describes Crown Point as "the most influential American printshop in the revival of etching as a medium of serious art." From 1982 through 1994 Crown Point added Asian woodcut techniques to its etching program, taking artists to Japan, and later China, to work with craftsmen in those countries.

Crown Point Press celebrated its twenty-fifth birthday with an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art,in 1987, and archives of its work are owned by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. An exhibition, 35 Years at Crown Point Press, was jointly sponsored by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the National Gallery and was held at both institutions in 1997.

A catalog, 35 Years at Crown Point Press: Making Prints, Doing Art was published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco with the University of California at Berkeley to accompany the exhibit.

In 1996 Chronicle Books published Brown's 288 page book, titled ink, paper, metal, wood: Painters and Sculptors at Crown Point Press.

In addition to her BA from Antioch College, Kathan Brown holds an MFA and an Honorary Doctorate from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, and an Honorary Doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute.