1990, 10x13, 8 6x8 copper engravings in a hand-silkscreened folio
Edition of 20.
“Packaged Views”, published by See Through Books with a grant from The Lower East Side Printshop, is a series of engravings depicting situations of Lower Manhattan light and space in 1990. The images juxtapose historical and contemporary urban practices. The intensity of the mixed-use location is captured in eight views. The prints are 6x8 inch copper engravings in black on 10x13” Rives BFK paper.
Each title page is a unique silk-screened monotype on which Future and Bodoni typefaces mix to reiterate the interaction of old and new.
The flaps of a hand silk-screened envelope are cut into silhouettes of actual buildings from the neighborhood which appear in the prints. These “buildings” open up to reveal the views and narrative about the education of the artist by the place. The envelope is silk=screened in a pattern reproducing the eight engravings.
The whole presentation consists of layers of dense imagery evocative of the rich, varied texture of the actual Lower Manhattan environment.
- “Saint Paul’s Chapel Against the World Trade Center (North Tower)”, The copper plates were engraved with a burin on location. This one engraved while sitting on a traffic triangle at the corner of Broadway, Park Row and Vesey Streets in the Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan. They have the spontaneous-ness of drypoint, though less fugitive.
- “Civic Center”, drawn from the offices of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission offices in the Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway.
- “The Battery”, (Statue of Liberty across NY harbor.)
- “Cedar Street – Chase Plaza with DuBuffet’s Ironic Totem”, Lower Broadway/Liberty Street.
- “City Hall Park – looking down from Landmarks Preservation Commission Offices”, Park Place/Broadway; American flag planting.
- “Fire Escape 9 Murray Street – The Franklin Building, 1897”, Neoclassical copper cornice and cast-iron railing, looking west to the Hudson (North) River.
- “South Street Seaport surrounded”, looking landward from Pier 17 in the East River.
- “Night View Tribeca from the Clocktower Gallery – old New York Life Building”, a mezzotint, using a rocker tool with engraved emphases. Done on location, Leonard Street & the “Broad Way”.
