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.
