A must-have for anyone interested in the art of printmaking, Ink, Paper, Metal, Wood presents the greatest prints to emerge from Crown Point Press, one of the top fine-art presses in the country. Author Kathan Brown, an internationally respected authority on prints, has hosted such world-renowned artists as Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, John Cage, Pat Steir, and Chuck Close at the press she founded -- with amazing results. The fruit of their creative experimentation is clearly visible in Ink, Paper, Metal, Wood. Vibrant with color and image on virtually every page, this handsome volume includes unusually clear explanations of fine-art printmaking techniques and entertaining stories about the artists and their working habits. An engaging consideration of the creative process, Ink, Paper, Metal, Wood is also a comprehensive resource for artists in every medium and an essential work for novice and experienced collectors.
Kathan Brown is an artist, writer, printer, and entrepreneur who founded Crown Point Press, publishers of artists' etchings, in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1962. On the Press's twenty-fifth anniversary, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted an exhibition of its work, and its thirty-fifth anniversary was celebrated by an exhibition at the National Gallery, Washington D. C. Archives of its work are owned by The National Gallery and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Brown's initial publishing program focused on local artists--etchings by Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud were the first two projects she published. Artists began coming to Crown Point from New York in the early 1970s, and by the end of the decade Brown was inviting artists from around the world. The Crown Point artist-list includes Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, John Cage, Shahzia Sikander, Richard Tuttle, Kiki Smith, Peter Doig, Pat Steir, Laura Owens, Fred Wilson, and many others. In the 1980s Brown added Asian woodcut techniques to Crown Point's etching program, and took American artists to Japan and China to work with printers in those countries.
The Press has two active websites (www.crownpoint.com and www.Magical-Secrets.com) and in San Francisco, with a staff of ten, operates a public gallery and two large private etching studios. Each year, five or six invited artists work at the Press for two weeks at a time with the technical assistance of Brown's printers. Kathan Brown is the author of six books, the most recent of which is Magical Secrets About Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life (Crown Point/Prestel 2006). It deals with ideas about creativity that she has learned from working closely over four decades with some of the most influential visual artists of our time.
