Highpoint Editions

Upcoming Projects:

Willie Cole was back at Highpoint in February to work on what turned into an impressive body of work. His current HP editions project includes a series of ironing boards inked and printed intaglio style. Each poignantly bears the name of a woman from his family. This project led to an eye-popping series of screenprinted color and studies based on the imprint of an iron. The collaboration culminated in the development of an impressively scaled woodcut relief print. Stay tuned for more info!

We are also excited to present four new prints by Carter developed in collaboration with Highpoint Editions over the past year. Using screenprinting, lithography, pochoir, hand cutting and stitching, these prints are a fascinating mash up of photographic source materials, delicate line drawings, diagrams, and a subtle play of color and line, layering and framing. It is aesthetically and conceptually rich work.

Clarence Morgan’s newest works comprise two suites, three prints in each. They play with color, line and more atmospheric surface qualities more than his last HP Editions work. These prints emphasize surface over form and are an unusually delicate presentation.

Aaron Spangler was here in March to start his first project with Highpoint Editions. Spangler, a native Minnesotan living in Park Rapids, is best known for his large, intricate sculptures carved out of slabs of basswood, and large crayon on canvas rubbings depicting darkly comic visions of post-apocalyptic ruin. While here he developed the beginnings of several woodcuts of monumental scale.

Todd Norsten’s most recent print with HP Editions is a return to his trompe l'oeil rendition of masking tape. Norsten’s carefully constructed composition spells out a phrase that creates tensions between what we think we see and know: the beauty of the intersecting words create new shapes and threaten to dissolve into abstraction.

Latest Editions:

Todd Norsten

Known for his unique use and exploration of text in his recent prints and paintings, Norsten just completed the prints Something Real, Authentic, True and JFK in “64”at HP Editions this summer.

The print references an image of a campaign poster captured in No Direction Home, the Bob Dylan documentary by Martin Scorsese. Norsten found the poster in the footage to be a subtle yet poignant reminder of the loss of American innocence after JFK’s assassination in 1963; the artist noted “the phrase JFK in ‘64 made me think about how history was abruptly interrupted and about what could have been had things gone differently.”

The political poster image is a key part of the lexicon of the 1960’s. Its straightforward yet potent message has become a powerful iconic touchstone of that time, one that still resonates with fascination, portent and longing. To stay true to the concept, the print has been produced on 2-ply museum board with seven layers of gloss and one layer of green ink to echo the look and feel of a poster printed at that time.

Carter

HP Editions has been collaborating with the artist Carter over the past year on the creation of three new print editions.

Carter, a 2006 Whitney Biennial Fellow, works in varied mediums including painting, drawing, film, photography, sculpture and video. In his drawings, paintings and sculptures, Carter collages and overlaps images of body parts and facial features to create what he calls “anonymous portraits.” The artist is interested in challenging notions of self by making work that acts as a stand-in for an idea of someone. The three new prints are layered with emotional and psychological complexity and reflect the artist’s interest in perception. They will be released this Fall 2011. Contact HP for more information and pricing. Also a filmmaker, Carter’s most recent film Maladies, starring James Franco, Catherine Keener and David Strathairn will be released this Fall 2011.

David Rathman

David Rathman returned to Highpoint Editions during summer 2011 and finished up work on a spectacular large-scale diptych of a demolition derby car and truck. The images are lithographs in black and are hand water- colored by the artist. Both vehicles are tiled into multiple prints, emphasizing their quirky, deconstructed/reconstructed quality and the scale reflects the physicality of their subjects. (These pieces are sold out).

Those familiar with Highpoint Editions will remember Rathman’s Five New Etchings (sold out) from 2002; a suite of intaglio prints featuring Western scenes and darkly humorous bits of text. More recent prints created in 2009 at HP include etchings: “It seldom matters, the words you say” and “The way we get by.” A limited number of these prints are still available; contact HP for current availability and pricing.