Jon Cone

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Jon Cone (born 1957 in Miami, Florida) is a collaborative printmaker, pioneer [1] and developer of photographic ink jet technologies, educator, and photographer. Cone is best known for the founding of the world's first digital printmaking studio, Cone Editions Press [2] and developer of quad-black ink jet systems for printing fine black-and-white photographs [3] including the first commercially available method of producing fine art black-and-white prints in the digital darkroom. [4]

Contents

Career

Jon Cone established Cone Editions in 1980 in a two-story loft building at 112 N. Main Street, Port Chester, NY as a collaborative Printmaking atelier. Within 40 minutes of Manhattan, Cone invited artists to make prints with him using a variety of printmaking techniques including Serigraphy, Woodcut, Etching, Monotyping, and Photogravure. Cone developed and offered unique hybrid techniques in direct response to the painting, drawing or sculpture of a specific artist. Artists worked in concentration with these techniques over periods of time; often several years. Cone began to pioneer computer printmaking in 1984 [5] with David Humphrey and Joel Fisher.

In 1982, he began to focus his attention on artists of the Second Generation of the New York School, publishing original prints and multiples of Stanley Boxer, Norman Bluhm, Lester Johnson, and Wolf Kahn.

In 1984, he began to publish prints and multiples of younger generation painters including Emily Cheng, Lydia Dona, Janet Fish, Willy Heeks, David Kapp, Carole Seborovski, and Archie Rand.

In 1987, Cone opened Cone Editions Gallery at 560 Broadway in New York City's SoHo arts district. The gallery featured the offbeat and unusual experimental projects which ranged from large scale Potato Prints to computer generated etchings and silkscreens to large painterly abstractions. The first show was devoted to Poem Prints by painter Norman Bluhm and poet John Yau, a series of eight large-scale prints drawn from life with a nude-model at the Cone Editions print studio. On March 27, 1988, a photograph of one of Archie Rand's large-scale Potato Prints graced the page 1 of the Sunday Edition of the New York Times Art Section in an article by critic Hilton Kramer [6] In 1987, Cone Editions Gallery showed the first computer generated etchings and silkscreens in an Exhibition entitled The Proof.

In 1989, Cone moved his printmaking and publishing operations to the small rural village of East Topsham, Vermont. Erecting a purpose-built three-story post and beam studio dedicated to the advancements of digital printmaking, Cone Editions began to publish computer assisted printmaking projects in screenprint, monoprint, and aquatint gravure. In 1992, Cone began offering direct digital output with IRIS 3047 printers.

Cone's development began to include software and inks for Iris 3047 printers and from 1994 to 1997 was the Development and Marketing Partner of IRIS Graphics [7] for the fine art market. Cone was responsible for selling Iris printers and providing his own methodology of training to more than 40 Giclée studios in the USA including David Adamson Editions, Muse-X Editions, Hunter Editions, Donald SafTech, Jamie Cook, and many others.

In 1995, Cone began development of his quad-black inkjet printing method for producing fine black-and-white photographs. By replacing the four conventional CMYK color inks of the IRIS 3047 printer with his own formulation of four monochromatic shades of black ink and developing software and lookup tables, Cone produced photographs that were replicants of platinum/palladium printing. Cone found that three shades of black were needed to convey continuous tone, and a fourth monochromatic ink could be used for split toning, a process of allowing a photograph to appear warmer through the shadows. Cone called this invention DigitalPlatinum for IRIS. The most notable project produced with this technique was Diana Michener's Solitaire for Peter MacGill in 1997.

Cone developed his first color ink jet formulation ConeTech WGFA inks [8] in order to realize the brighter gamut needs for photographer Richard Avedon. Cone would print the Avedon portfolio In Memory of Mr. & Mrs. Confort: A Fable in 24 Episodes, as well as Gordon Parks color prints for the Corcoran Gallery of Art Parks retrospective: Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks. Cone continued the use of the Iris printer into the next millennium producing Botanica Magnifica [9] in 2007 for the Smithsonian's rare book collection, a double-elephant sized suite of 5 books depicting photographer Jonathan M. Singer's rare botanical photography. In 2009, Cone began collaborating with photographer Zana Briski printing black & white Iris prints of Briski's new insects portraits.

In 1999, Cone introduced a commercial monochromatic black-and-white printing system of inks and ICC profiles for the Epson 3000 printer that allowed photographers to produce a wide range of monochromatic tones from warm to cool using archival color inks and ICC profiles for Somerset Velvet paper. This was the first inexpensive quad-black system to be released by ConeTech. From 2002 until 2008, Cone would develop and introduce higher standards of monochromatic ink jet products for Epson printers including PiezoTone (2002), PiezographyBW ICC (2004), Piezography iQuads (2005), Piezography K7 (2006), Piezography MPS (2008).

In 2006, Cone introduced a new concept in ink formulation by developing an ink set for Epson printers that was "color-managed" during formulation by matching the color gamut produced by the OEM's printer driver, rather than attempting to imitate single ink positions that would later be controlled by ICC profiles. ConeColor inks are compatible with Epson Ultrachrome ink sets, being designed for use with the OEM driver, OEM workflow and OEM ICC profiles.

Cone often traveled to New York City from 2006 to 2008 to collaborate with photographer/filmmaker Gregory Colbert and Mark Sobczak, Colbert's master printer, along with his studio assistants to refine a process that was used primarily to produce original works for Colbert's Ashes and Snow Nomadic Museum. Cone developed a part of the process, which was a system of 11 monochromatic Piezography inks and software developed by Cone in his East Topsham, Vermont studio and transposed to Roland DG AJ-1000 110-inch printers to produce triple split-tone black&white photographs on 2.4m × 5.7m sheets of Japanese handmade paper produced by Awagami [10] for the Ashes and Snow Nomadic Museum exhibitions in Tokyo and in Mexico City which attracted more than 8.5 million visitors, making it the most attended exhibition by a living artist in history. [11]

Educator

Cone has taught traditional and digital printmaking as a visiting professor at SUNY Purchase, NY, University of Arizona, The Royal College of Art, London, Vermont College of Fine Arts and at Goddard College.

In 1993, Cone established the Cone Editions Digital Workshops [12] in East Topsham, Vermont as a hands-on approach to teaching digital printmaking. Attendees were introduced to the concepts of a complete digital workflow in practice rather than in theory. Cone introduced his direct ink jet transfer technique at a workshop he taught, organized by Dorothy Krause called "Beyond The Digital Print" at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design to a group which included the five artists who would later become the "Unique Editions".

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Printer (computing)</span> Computer peripheral that prints text or graphics

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyan</span> Color visible between blue and green; subtractive (CMY) primary color

Cyan is the color between green and blue on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 490 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithography</span> Printing technique

Lithography is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German author and actor Alois Senefelder and was initially used mostly for musical scores and maps. Lithography can be used to print text or images onto paper or other suitable material. A lithograph is something printed by lithography, but this term is only used for fine art prints and some other, mostly older, types of printed matter, not for those made by modern commercial lithography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Printmaking</span> Process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper

Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph. Except in the case of monotyping, all printmaking processes have the capacity to produce identical multiples of the same artwork, which is called a print. Each print produced is considered an "original" work of art, and is correctly referred to as an "impression", not a "copy". However, impressions can vary considerably, whether intentionally or not. Master printmakers are technicians who are capable of printing identical "impressions" by hand. Historically, many printed images were created as a preparatory study, such as a drawing. A print that copies another work of art, especially a painting, is known as a "reproductive print".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CMYK color model</span> Subtractive color model, used in color printing

The CMYK color model is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation CMYK refers to the four ink plates used: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black).

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inkjet printing</span> Type of computer printing

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dye-sublimation printing</span> Digital printing technology with wide color range

Dye-Sublimation Printing is a digital computer printing technique that uses heat to transfer dye onto materials such as plastic, card, paper, or fabric. The sublimation name was first applied because the dye was considered to make the transition between the solid and gas states without going through a liquid stage. This understanding of the process was later shown to be incorrect, as there is some liquefying of the dye. Since then, the proper name for the process has become known as dye-diffusion, though this technically correct term has not supplanted the original name. Many consumer and professional dye-sublimation printers are designed and used for producing photographic prints, ID cards, clothing, and more.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giclée</span> Fine art ink jet prints produced from digital files or artwork.

Giclée is a neologism, ultimately derived from the French word gicleur, coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne for fine art digital prints made using inkjet printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on a modified Iris printer in a process invented in the late 1980s. It has since been used widely to mean any fine-art printing, usually archival, printed by inkjet. It is often used by artists, galleries, and print shops for their high quality printing, but is also used generically for art printing of any quality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital printing</span> Method of printing

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Photogravure</span> Photographic printing technique

Photogravure is a process for printing photographs, also sometimes used for reproductive intaglio printmaking. It is a photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained and then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio plate that can reproduce detailed continuous tones of a photograph.

Color printing or colour printing is the reproduction of an image or text in color. Any natural scene or color photograph can be optically and physiologically dissected into three primary colors, red, green and blue, roughly equal amounts of which give rise to the perception of white, and different proportions of which give rise to the visual sensations of all other colors. The additive combination of any two primary colors in roughly equal proportion gives rise to the perception of a secondary color. For example, red and green yields yellow, red and blue yields magenta, and green and blue yield cyan. Only yellow is counter-intuitive. Yellow, cyan and magenta are merely the "basic" secondary colors: unequal mixtures of the primaries give rise to perception of many other colors all of which may be co

Print permanence refers to the longevity of printed material, especially photographs, and preservation issues. Over time, the optical density, color balance, lustre, and other qualities of a print will degrade. The rate at which deterioration occurs depends primarily on two main factors: the print itself, that is, the colorants used to form the image and the medium on which image resides, and the type of environment the print is exposed to.

An Iris printer is a large-format color inkjet printer introduced in 1985 by Iris Graphics, originally of Stoneham, Massachusetts and currently manufactured by the Graphic Communications Group of Eastman Kodak, designed for prepress proofing. It is also used in the fine art reproduction market as a final output digital printing press, as in Giclée.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ink cartridge</span> Inkjet printer component

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A chromogenic print, also known as a C-print or C-type print, a silver halide print, or a dye coupler print, is a photographic print made from a color negative, transparency or digital image, and developed using a chromogenic process. They are composed of three layers of gelatin, each containing an emulsion of silver halide, which is used as a light-sensitive material, and a different dye coupler of subtractive color which together, when developed, form a full-color image.

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Inkjet paper is a special fine paper designed for inkjet printers, typically classified by its weight, brightness and smoothness, and sometimes by its opacity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vitreography</span> Glass art printmaking technique

Vitreography is a fine art printmaking technique that uses a 38-inch-thick (9.5 mm) float glass matrix instead of the traditional matrices of metal, wood or stone. A print created using the technique is called a vitreograph. Unlike a monotype, in which ink is painted onto a smooth glass plate and transferred to paper to produce a unique work, the vitreograph technique involves fixing the imagery in, or on, the glass plate. This allows the production of an edition of prints.

The digital negative is the collective name for methods used by photographers to create negatives on transparency film for the contact printing of alternative photographic techniques. The negatives can also be enlarged using traditional gelatin silver processes, though this is usually reserved for negatives of 4x5" or larger due to quality limitations imposed by printer technology. This set of techniques is separate from the Digital negative (DNG) file format, although this format may be used to create digital negative transparencies.

References

  1. Fritsch, Eileen: Meet the DaVinci of Digital Printmaking Jon Cone: Mastering the Fine Art of Digital Printmaking Screenprinting, July 1996.
  2. Johnson, Harald: Mastering Digital Printing, Second Edition, page 3. Course Technology PTR, 2004.
  3. Madlin, Nancy: Photo District News, Special Report: Innovators February 1999.
  4. Diallo, Amadou: Mastering Digital Black and White: A Photographer's Guide to High Quality Black-and-White Imaging and Printing, page 105. Course Technology PTR.
  5. Silvergate, Kat Jon Cone: The Five-Tool Player of Digital Output Rangefinder Magazine, pp 90–93, Jan 2007.
  6. Kramer, Hilton: ART VIEW; The Case Against Price Tags on Art NY Times, March 27, 1988, Art Section, pg 1.
  7. LiPetri, Joe: Vermont-Based Fine Art Printmaker Builds Better Mousetraps Micro-Publishing News, Dec, 1999.
  8. Wilhelm, Henry: The Intimate Relationship of Inks and Papers: You Can't Talk About the Permanence of One Without Considering the Other Oct 29, 1999.
  9. Shipley, Jonathan: The Botanist's Desire Fine Books and Collections Magazine, July/August, 2008
  10. "Awagami News: Our new project for a work of Gregory Colbert Archived 2010-01-20 at the Wayback Machine
  11. "El Mañana: Acaba Museo Nómada su peregrinar (April 28,2008)" Archived 2008-06-18 at the Wayback Machine .
  12. "Rosenbluhm, Steve: Review: Cone Editions Press Complete Digital Workflow Workshop March 28, 2004