PAULSON FONTAINE PRESS - Key Persons
Print Preparator, Anthony Davi, studied printmaking at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California and received a BFA degree from Sonoma State University. Outside of work, he enjoys making collages, coffee and listening to one song on repeat for an entire day.
Christopher Brown's prints Continental and Flag are depictions of stills from the Zapruder film. Edgar Arceneaux's etching 1968 depicts the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Brown uses cheesecloth on softground plate to create the look of a TV screen, and Arceneaux depicts the Starship Enterprise in the far distance of his image, making both interpretations feel a bit detached from the actual events. Arceneaux's Beyond the Great Eclipse series depicts ephemera from the Watts riots of 1965. All of these tragedies continue to haunt our perceptions of the 1960s.
Printer, Cianna Valley, relocated from Hawaii to the Bay Area to pursue a BFA in printmaking from California College of the Arts. When not at work, she is usually hiking, camping or tending to her garden.
David Huffman grew up in Berkeley, California in an activist household during the 1960s civil rights movement. In 2007, David's first prints with the press worked with stereotypical American racial iconography. He arranged rich compositions that explored identity and socio-political history in a futuristic world of metaphor.
David became known early on for his crew of astronauts he calls "Traumanauts". On their missions they searched for the inward and outward makings of identity, taken from them by their experience of repression on Earth. His iconic character Trauma Eve, an Aunt Jemima space robot, is unforgettable. Toxic air, poisoned water, and the AIDS virus are no match to her strength. She is a symbol of a particular type of rebelliousness that carries the burden of an embattled past and fights against a history of violence and oppression.
Over the last ten years David has distilled his concerns and issues around identity into basketball abstractions, which he considers social abstractions. Basketball has been an enduring trope in African American art, from the conceptual efforts of David Hammons and Mark Bradford to the charged photos and videos of Paul Pfeiffer.
Job Titles:
- 1968", 2005 Courtesy Paulson Bott Press
Edgar Arceneaux's etching "1968" depicts the infamous day. The sketched figures in the foreground point to the sky, where in the distance the USS Starship Enterprise of Star Trek fame enters the picture frame. This juxtaposition humorously alludes to the disparate and sometimes conflicting accounts of King's death. It points to the absurdity of a still unsolved crime. The two elements are demarcated by the title "1968," also the year of the Star Trek episode, Assignment: Earth, in which the Enterprise travels back to earth on a mission to save the planet and its inhabitants. Another side note is that Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, was an integral part of the original series' multicultural crew and one of the first characters of African descent to be featured on an American television series. Nichols had planned to leave Star Trek in 1967 after its first season, but following a conversation with Martin Luther King, Jr., she was persuaded to stay. He helped her realize what an important role model for the black community she would be.
I feel so fortunate to have grown up in a world that has benefited from King's work, and I am forever grateful to the lovers and the thinkers who came before me who made the quality of my life possible. I am also honored to work with artists like Arceneaux who continue to examine the past and the present through a truly creative and contemporary lens.
Edgar Arceneaux is fascinated by language, and by establishing unexpected connections among words, objects, places, and people. His installations may incorporate not only drawing, sculpture, and film, but also music, conceptual art, and science, juxtaposing representative elements of each and opening up newfound associations,unintended connections, interstitial spaces-in his words, "a different way to construct relationships among things."
Arceneaux was born in 1972 in Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work. He currently serves as executive director of the Watts House Project, an "ongoing, collaborative artwork in the shape of a neighborhood redevelopment" across from the historic Watts Towers in Los Angeles; he has been working on the WHP since 1996. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Projects in Los Angeles and Berlin; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Albion Gallery, London; and Galerie Kamm, Berlin. He received a BFA from Art Center College of Design and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.
Edgar Arceneaux is fascinated by language, and by establishing unexpected connections among words, objects, places, and people. His installations may incorporate not only drawing, sculpture, and film, but also music, conceptual art, and science, juxtaposing representative elements of each and opening up newfound associations,unintended connections, interstitial spaces-in his words, "a different way to construct relationships among things."
Arceneaux was born in 1972 in Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work. He currently serves as executive director of the Watts House Project, an "ongoing, collaborative artwork in the shape of a neighborhood redevelopment" across from the historic Watts Towers in Los Angeles; he has been working on the WHP since 1996. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Projects in Los Angeles and Berlin; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Albion Gallery, London; and Galerie Kamm, Berlin. He received a BFA from Art Center College of Design and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.
To read an interview with Edgar Arceneaux click here
Our artist: Gary Simmons featured on the cover of ARTVOICES magazine
When Tauba Auerbach came to work with us at the end of 2012, I found myself thinking often about the composer and artist John Cage. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Cage in the late 1980s at Crown Point Press. Cage used a method of composing using the I Ching to facilitate "chance operations" to make his art. He believed that his responsibility was to ask questions rather than make choices.
Cage would sit down at one of the large artist tables in the studio to compose , pencil in hand, predetermined materials selected, questions queried. During this process, he would consult one of the numerous charts of random numbers that he travelled with. Silence would descend on the studio while he worked, and graceful handwritten lists of lilted numbers written in graphite resulted. His number compositions functioned as a list of instructions. The directives were performed, resulting in a John Cage print. As with Cage, Auerbach's process poses questions, but in her case, it is her intuition that informs her decisions, not the I Ching.
Liam Everett's working method is in some ways similar to the definition of play proposed by the famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens. Huizinga sees play as game-like in that it must to follow a set of rules or a structure. He asserts that play is always free, creates it's own order, and isn't done for utilitarian needs. Despite the rigidity and limitations of Huizinga's definition of play (rules and frameworks are always up for play too), it makes a good argument for the importance of doing things for their own intrinsic value and pleasure. I can't help but feel that there is a political metaphor in Liam's art: setting up scenarios that allow for unpredictable, advantageous surprises to occur, without needing to force conformity to a predetermined ideal.
Job Titles:
- Gallery Manager, Lucy Stark
Gallery Manager, Lucy Stark, received a BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley where she focused on printmaking and installation art. Lucy finds satisfaction in the curation of spaces both in her artwork and in her life. She enjoys taking care of her plants and rearranging the furniture in her home.
Printer, Max Valentine, received his BFA from California State University, Chico in 2015, and has since pursued a printmaking career in the San Francisco Bay Area. Max percolates around the environment of a working studio. He also enjoys drawing, playing pool, and collecting.
Founder and Master Printer, Pam Paulson, came to California to study art, focusing on bay area figurative painting. Pam received her MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1982 where she worked as a teaching assistant for Robert Colescott. Pam has a passion for the NY Times crossword puzzle and likes problem solving in general.
A glimpse inside the printmaking studio at Paulson Fontaine Press with Oakland-based artist David Huffman.
Partner and Gallery Director, Rhea Fontaine, is one of the first African-American women to publish fine art prints by contemporary artists. Dedicated to contributing to the image archive of artists of the African Diaspora, she was a past curatorial board member at Southern Exposure and Vice-President of the board at NIAD. She received a BA in Fine Art from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1998, and a post baccalaureate diploma in museum studies from Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy, in 2000. Rhea loves to spend her spare time with friends and family in the Sierra at her rustic cabin in the woods.
Printer, Rudolph Taylor has been all over the US making prints. Born and raised in Chicago, he received his BFA from Syracuse University and went on to attend Tamarind Institute's printer training program before coming to Berkeley to work for Paulson Fontaine Press. When not at the studio, Rudolph enjoys drawing, foreign films, and being outdoors.
Sarah Pickering, Abduction (Left) Sarah Pcikering, Fuel Air Explosion (Right)
Ross: Sure. This is actually the first piece. (Sarah Pickering: Fuel Air Explosion). It's part of her Explosion series. That's my first real print from a gallery, from Daniel Cooney Fine Art. He's a great gallerist, by the way. This is also Sarah Pickering. (Sarah Pickering: Abduction)
Renee: I love that one.
Ross: It's awesome right? I had that framed at Bark Frameworks since it's so special to me. New York Magazine featured them as the "best" framer in NYC. I didn't know then how dear "best" framing is!