Desert Triangle Print Carpeta: Fusion

Desert Triangle Print Carpeta

DesertTriangle.blogspot.com /p/the-prints.html

An art agitator wandered through -- Tucson, Albuquerque and El Paso -- poking, annoying and commissioning local talent to create large prints, and found gold in our desert. The artists delivered those kinds of prints "that want to get out of the studio" and be shared, such as Cimi Alvarado's vivid "Esto es un Rio," depicting six men crossing the Rio Grande on a raft. Martin Quintanilla's "El Ultimo Taco" jolts us with 13 individuals disguised in Mexican wrestling masks, dining in a familiar scene. Nani Chacon entices with a beautiful young woman in front of Navajo motifs in her piece titled with symbols "+++." All 30 prints will shine on the ground floor of the El Paso Museum of Art, from January 31st to May 22nd. Almost half of the prints (14) come from artists in the El Paso area, including those working in two collectives in Ciudad Juarez.

This carpeta (print portfolio in Spanish) blossomed from the annual Chalk the Block celebrations in downtown El Paso, where printmakers have been showing in pop-up galleries for several years, like those run by DOArt and the Maintain Collective. In 2013, Tucson crashed the festival, when Krrrl the agitator brought random prints in from Arizona, showing as the "YayBig Southwest" pop-up gallery. The next year YayBig copied the Horned Toad Print Exchange (of El Paso), and both print exchanges exhibited the small framed works together in a CTB pop-up gallery. Aching to crank it up a couple of notches, Krrrl approached the Maintain pop-up, and proposed making a carpeta of large, colorful works, with the impact of psychedelic posters and Chicano prints. Prints that could be seen and appreciated from across the room, as if they were paintings.

Just after conception, the carpeta project followed in the wake of the "Estampas de la Raza -- Contemporary Mexican American Prints from the Romo Collection" exhibition. Harriett and Ricardo Romo collected many prints from Self-Help Graphics and Modern Multiples of Los Angeles, and the Serie Project of Austin. Self-Help and Serie make co-editions of 50 prints, splitting them evenly with the artists, so the Desert Triangle offered the same deal; and paid for the production costs, at a studio suitable to each artist. There was no theme (though abstract images were discouraged), and artists were paid an extra fee, to sweeten the deal.

While Proper Printshop of El Paso pulled many of the prints, over a third of the prints were produced in Mexico. Taller 75 Grados in Mexico City silk screened 10 editions -- and they will come for a live print demonstration during the reception, on April 14th. Manny Guerra traveled to La Ceiba Grafica near Xalapa, Veracruz, to produce his lithographic masterpiece. Francisco Delgado went to Oaxaca, currently a printmaking paradise, to create his relief print edition at Taller Libre. The rest of the prints were produced at various studios in the Southwest, such New Grounds Print Workshop in Albuquerque, and the Tucson Community Printshop and the Gloo Factory in Tucson.

The prints of Zeke Pena and Krrrl have been enhanced with augmented reality, by "Augment El Paso," to bring the media into the 21st century. When a visitor passes his or her cell phone in front of the print, new elements show up on the screen, interacting with the printed image (after downloading the appropriate app, of course).

Hopefully this exhibition will encourage artists to make and show more prints, keeping the momentum going in the Southwest. As a stretch goal, Krrrl will agitate for 30 more prints before the exhibition closes on May 22nd. Artists ambitions do not have to get lost in our desert.

Print is not dead!

--Karl Whitaker, aka Krrrl the art agitator, who included one of his works in the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta

yaybigsouthwest.blogspot.com /p/prints.html

yaybigprintexchange.blogspot.com /p/delivered-prints.html

Printmakers:

Tucson cluster:

Pavel Acevedo (Riverside, CA)
Cristina Cardenas
Mark Christian
Michael Contreras
Gonzalo Espinosa
Rudy Flores
Joe Marshall
Lauren Moran
Ruben Urrea Moreno
Martin Quintanilla
Tanya Rich
Rogo
Mykl Well

Albuquerque cluster:

Nani Chacon
Krrrl
Henry Morales

El Paso cluster:

Jesus "Cimi" Alvarado

Chris Bardey (Las Cruces)

Francisco Delgado

Manuel Guerra

Jellyfish Colectivo (Ciudad Juarez)

Los Dos

Raul Monarrez

Victor Muheddine

Tino Ortega

Zeke Pena

Matthew Poe

Tim Razo
Federico Villalba