2016: Flatbed Press at 25
Flatbed Press at 25 By Mark Lesly Smith and Katherine Brimberry- A visual feast for connoisseurs of contemporary printmaking, this lavishly produced volume presents a twenty-five-year retrospective of one of America’s premier artists’ print shops and the prominent and emerging artists who have worked there.I am very honored to be a part of the long traditional of artists working at Flatbed Press in Austin, Texas and to be included in a book that chronicles the press's 25 year history. This amazing small press invites artists from all over Texas to come to their studios to make new works and experiment with the printmaking medium.Published by University of Texas Press, 2016 https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/smith-brimberry-flatbed-press-at-25
Although I was already primarily painting on-site, I valued being invited to go into the various print shops in Austin for some intensive experimentation. Each shop had its own speciality and equipment-Flatbed was known for its huge, Texas-sized press that many of us called the "the landing strip". I made a series of Mono-prints with Flatbed Press in the mid-1990's. In a printshop environment (indoors with no views of a landscape), I was essentially working in inverse: starting from seeing nothing to discovering how my process of arbitrary mark-making could lead me to discover an image emerging out of paint...one where the process and tools of the printmaking process were as evident as the illusionist image (of woods) created through the multiple press runs. BELOW is an example of the work I did while there.
