SIGNS OF A SERIES: ED RUSCHA
IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair / Spring 2021 Online Edition

  "I think of working in a series as hiccups being on top of echoes." —Ed Ruscha   

In this online edition of the IFPDA Spring 2021 Fair, Crown Point Press presents new and earlier etchings by Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha. The theme of the presentation is road signs, a subject Ruscha has pursued for over 45 years. The motifs are inspired by the artist's road trips traveling across America between his original hometown in Oklahoma to his home of many years in Los Angeles. Four earlier prints from 2006 and a direct gravure with aquatint from 2019 join three new direct gravures completed in 2021.   

Crown Point Press, which turned 57 in 2021, publishes etchings created in our San Francisco studio by artists with technical assistance from our printers. In 2019, Ruscha, who has worked regularly at Crown Point since 1982, made Lonely Highway. In 2020, I said to him that I thought Lonely Highway was very lonely, and I asked (because of the pandemic) if we could try a similar work, by remote control. He agreed.     

Our printers used a technique called direct gravure in which the image is drawn by the artist on film and then transferred to the printing plate through a light-sensitive ground. The resulting images (now a series), Sign in a Sandstorm and Sign in a Rainstorm, are sharp and straightforward, similar to Lonely Highway. Ruscha worked closely with Crown Point's master printers Courtney Sennish and Emily York to produce those prints. A final print in the series, Sign in a Mudstorm, is planned. At Crown Point Press, we are grateful to Ed Ruscha for finding a way forward during this time of the pandemic.   

 --Valerie Wade, Director, Crown Point Press, May, 2021