Kathan Brown | |
---|---|
Born | 1935 (age 88–89) New York City, New York, U.S. |
Education | Antioch College |
Occupation(s) | master printmaker, writer, lecturer, entrepreneur. |
Known for | Printmaking |
Spouse(s) | Jeryl Parker (m. 1960–1963; divorce), Tom Marioni (m. 1983–present) |
Children | 1 |
Kathan Brown (born 1935) is an American master printmaker, writer, lecturer, and entrepreneur. In 1962, Brown founded Crown Point Press, a fine art print shop specializing in etching, and has owned and directed the shop since then. [1] Crown Point Press is widely credited with sparking the revival of etching as a viable art medium. [2] Some of the most important artists of our time, including John Cage, Chuck Close, Anish Kapoor, Ed Ruscha, Kiki Smith and Pat Steir, have worked there.
Brown was born in New York City and grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. [3] She received a B.A. from Antioch College and an M.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts. [3] In addition, she holds Honorary Doctorate degrees from California College of the Arts (CCA) and the San Francisco Art Institute. [3]
In 1956, Brown left Antioch College in Ohio for one year to attend the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. There, she began to study etching. After graduating from Antioch College in 1958, [4] Brown returned to the Central School for another year to fine-tune her technique. In addition, she participated in the Print Workshop at 28 Charlotte Street, run by Birgit Skiöld. [5]
In the summer of 1959, while on a holiday trip to Edinburgh, Brown noticed an old etching press in the backyard of her rooming house. The landlady offered the press to Brown, saying it had been there since World War II. With the etching press in tow, Brown booked passage on a freighter going to San Francisco from Glasgow via the Panama Canal.
In 1962, Brown started Crown Point Press in a storefront space in Richmond, California. The following year she bought a house in Berkeley and ran the printmaking workshop out of her basement. In 1965, Brown began publishing the etching portfolios of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. The Press moved into a vacant hat factory on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland in 1971 and then to Folsom Street in San Francisco in 1986. Unfortunately, the Folsom Street space was lost in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. In 1990, Crown Point moved to 20 Hawthorne Street in San Francisco where it resides today.
In recent years, Brown has shifted much of her focus to writing and left the day-to-day operations of the press to director Valerie Wade who is a partner in the business. In 2006, Crown Point began publishing a series of books about printmaking, the Magical Secrets series. Brown wrote the first book in the series, Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life, which highlights various creative processes artists have embraced while working in the Crown Point studio. Art on Paper magazine reviewed Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively saying, “Brown combines printmaking, art history, memoir and how-to inspirational literature to address the creative process. She’s wise, forthcoming and down-to-earth”. [6] In 2004, Brown wrote The North Pole, a book detailing her trip to the North Pole through photographs and interviews with travelers, scientists, and a polar archivist. Brown is also the author of a monthly video segment, The Three Minute Egg, where she discusses the creative process.
Over the years, Crown Point's roster has grown to include over 100 artists from all around the world. Crown Point's archives have been held at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since 1991. A smaller archive is owned by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Crown Point Press celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and its thirty-fifth with a retrospective jointly organized by and shown at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. [7] and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Today, Crown Point Press publishes the work of five artists a year, hosts printmaking workshops and publishes a series of books about printmaking. The Press will be fifty years old in 2012.
Brown married Jeryl Parker in 1960 and had a son, Kevin Powis Parker, in 1961. [8] Parker and Brown amicably separated in 1963 and later divorced.
In 1983, she married conceptual artist Tom Marioni. [9] They make their home in San Francisco.
Richard Diebenkorn was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he began his extensive series of geometric, lyrical abstract paintings. Known as the Ocean Park paintings, these paintings were instrumental to his achievement of worldwide acclaim. Art critic Michael Kimmelman described Diebenkorn as "one of the premier American painters of the postwar era, whose deeply lyrical abstractions evoked the shimmering light and wide-open spaces of California, where he spent virtually his entire life."
Robert Alan Bechtle was an American painter, printmaker, and educator. He lived nearly all his life in the San Francisco Bay Area and whose art was centered on scenes from everyday local life. His paintings are in a Photorealist style and often depict automobiles.
The California Society of Printmakers (CSP) is the oldest continuously operating association of printmakers and friends of printmakers in the United States. CSP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization with an international membership of print artists and supporters of the art of fine printmaking. CSP promotes professional development and opportunity for printmakers, and educates artists and the public about printmaking. New members are admitted by portfolio review. Friends, Institutional and Business members are admitted by fee. CSP is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
Robert H. Hudson is an American visual artist. He is known for his funk art assemblage of metal sculptures, but he has also worked in painting and printmaking.
Magnolia Editions, also known as Magnolia Tapestry Project and Magnolia Press, was founded in 1981 and is a fine art studio and printshop, located in Oakland, California. Magnolia Editions publishes fine art projects, including unique and editions works on paper, artist books, and public art.
Crown Point Press is a long-established printmaking workshop, primarily creating and publishing etched, intaglio prints. Located in San Francisco since 1986, Crown Point Press was first established in 1962 in Richmond California by Kathan Brown. Crown Point Press works with artists by invitation-only and has published prints by over 100 artists including Anne Appleby, John Baldessari, Robert Bechtle, Chuck Close, John Cage, Elaine de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Alex Katz, Ed Ruscha, and Pat Stier.
Tom Marioni is an American artist and educator, known for his conceptual artwork. Marioni was active in the emergence of Conceptual Art movement in the 1960s. He founded the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA) in San Francisco from 1970 until 1984.
Donald Sheridan Farnsworth is an American artist and inventor. He is the director of Magnolia Editions, a fine art studio and printshop in Oakland, California.
Beth Van Hoesen, sometimes known as Beth Van Hoesen Adams, was an American artist who was best known for her prints and drawings of animals and botanical subjects.
Birgit Skiöld was a Swedish master printmaker and modernist artist who ran the highly successful Print Workshop in the basement of 28 Charlotte Street, London from 1958 to the late 1970s. She was a noted member of the London art scene during that period, and her life is commemorated by an eponymous award for innovation in printmaking.
Brian R. Shure is an American printmaker, painter, author and educator. He is best known for his mastery of printing techniques, knowledge of lesser known art techniques and has published multiple books about the art of chine-collé.
Alice Geneva "Gene" Kloss was an American artist known today primarily for her many prints of the Western landscape and ceremonies of the Pueblo people she drew entirely from memory.
Jacqueline Morreau was an American artist.
Laurie Reid is an American artist living in Berkeley, California.
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June Felter, was an American painter and illustrator from the Bay Area. Her paintings are in museum collections including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Oakland Museum of California, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, National Gallery of Art, and the Berkeley Art Museum.
Augusta Payne Briggs Rathbone was an American painter, etcher and printmaker. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley and in Paris. She depicted people and locations from San Francisco, the Sierra, New York City, the West Coast of Canada, the Canadian Rockies, and France. In 1938, she published a book of aquatints of French Riviera Villages with photographs by Juliet Thompson and text by Virginia Thompson. Her work appeared internationally in group and solo exhibitions, and continues to appear in retrospectives of American printmaking.
Elizabeth Sawyer Norton (1887–1985) was an American artist, known for her bronze sculptures, paintings, and printmaking. The subject of her work often featured animals, landscapes and/or portraits. She lived in Palo Alto, California, from 1919 until her death in 1985.
Master printmakers or master printers are specialized technicians who hand-print editions of works of an artist in printmaking. Master printmakers often own and/or operate their own printmaking studio or print shop. Business activities of a Master printshop may include: publishing and printing services, educational workshops or classes, mentorship of artists, and artist residencies.
Lynton Richards Kistler (1897–1993) was an American master printmaker, small book publisher, and author. He became known as the best stone lithographer in the United States, at the peak of his career in 1950s. He owned and operated the lithography press, Kistler of Los Angeles.
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