Martin Puryear

By Rhea Fontaine

I can remember years ago, when I first interviewed for the position at Paulson Bott, my friend and former colleague, Sherry Apostol encouraged me by stating, “What a great place, Rhea.  You have got to work for them; they work with Martin Puryear!”

Before I had met Martin in person, another colleague compared the experience of his company with that of being in the presence of the Dali Lama.   When I met Martin in 2002, I realized that she was right.  His grace is remarkable.  In his company, one knows they are in the presence of greatness.  Martin is very soft spoken, but when he speaks, people listen. 

Martin Puryear, Reliquary, 1980, Gessoed pine; Martin Puryear, Self, 1978, Stained and painted red cedar and mahogany. Photo Courtesy the New Museum

We also listen to his art-- the vibrations, the emotions released from his sculptures.
They speak of the natural world, the human spirit and world history.  They nod at, bow to and break down our notions of the object.  Like Martin, they are quiet, magical and sublime. 

Martin employs wood, mesh, stone and metal to create forms that resist identification.  They evoke the future and the past, both forging ahead and leaning back.  They excite and provoke and comfort. 

Martin Puryear, North Cove Pylons, 1992-5, Granite and stainless steel

It is my greatest pleasure as Gallery Director at Paulson Bott, to introduce his work to those who have yet to discover it.  I often resist my temptation to scream, “What? You don’t know who Martin Puryear is?!”  “Haven’t you heard, the critic Robert Hughes has only declared him to be ‘America’s Best Artist’!”



Martin Puryear, This Mortal Coil, 1998-99 Red cedar, stainless steel cable, aluminum, and muslin

Martin’s first comprehensive show in the California bay area was in 2001 at the Berkeley Art Museum.  Sadly, it’s opening day was September 11^th and many missed the exhibit for obvious reasons.  Slight redemption took place in the fall of 2008  when his retrospective, Martin Puryear, traveled to the SFMOMA.  It was an exciting chance for the bay to experience his impressive oeuvre.   I remember speaking with a friend who had just seen the show, and she stated, “I’ve always admired the images I’ve seen of his work but standing next to the sculpture in person literally gave me goose bumps.” 

After the opening, the SFMOMA hosted a spectacular dinner at the St. Regis to honor Martin.  Neal Benezra spoke to the group and expressed how fortunate we all were to be sharing such a momentous occasion with an artist of his caliber.   It is indeed our privilege at Paulson Bott Press to engage with an artist that we know will mark our time and leave a lasting legacy in the art world and beyond.

Martin Puryear, Phrygian, 2012 Color Aquatint Etching; Published by Paulson Bott Press

Asking Questions

By Renee Bott

John Cage 1987 surrounded by charts of random numbers.

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.

Marsha Bartholomy works with  John Cage at Crown Point Press 1987  

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.

Tauba Auerbach prints in the Paulson Bott Press studio: Mesh/Morie 1-VI, 2013. Printer Maggie McManus curates prints. 

Kenneth Caldwell aptly describes her relationship to chance and her creative process: “Nothing seems placed by accident, and yet chance continues to play a significant role in the artist’s work. A lot of Auerbach’s art is about the tension between an almost total control over what goes into a process and an absence of control about the result that emerges from that process. She explores her system and process thoroughly, with thought and experimentation, and then when she’s ready, she lets go.”

While making the Mesh/Moire series, Auerbach created seven subtly different softground plates. A visual difference between any of these plates is imperceptible to the eye, and it wasn’t until two of these plates were printed together that a moiré pattern emerged.

Tauba Auerbach, Mesh/Moire IV, 2013

Printing combinations of two of the seven plates together yielded 42 possible permutations. Of those, she found six moirés pleasing. Auerbach’s meticulous adherence to her idea and the chance involved in the making of these plates is what reminded me so much of Cage. Both artists were charming and lovely to work with, and it has been a privilege to have been involved with their process. The strength of these two artists lies in their ability to turn inquiries into stunning visual results.

Hung Liu

By Sam Carr-Prindle

Last September Hung Liu returned to Paulson Bott Press for her fifth project. All of us at the press look forward to her enthusiasm and her wide-ranging humor. The first time I worked with Hung Liu in 2008, I expected her to be stoic and severe, given the heavy content of her work. However, I was surprised and pleased to discover that despite her seriousness, she carries herself with an almost child-like cheerfulness and curiosity. There is a good deal of laughter when Hung is in the studio. She also brings a considerable amount of technical knowledge and confidence to the production of her prints. Intaglio can be a daunting and opaque medium for many artists, but she never seems intimidated by its esoteric challenges and unpredictability. For this project we focused on two large portraits and three small cartoon images based on her Happy & Gay series of paintings. 

Hung Liu: Happy and Gay (Thanks Mom, Kite, Flag), 2012

The Happy & Gay images are based around a series of Chinese Dick and Jane-like cartoons for children. The title comes from a song/school exercise for learning English: “Come boys and girls—let’s sing let’s dance. We are happy and gay. It’s our National Day.” The seemingly benign and bucolic images are both familiar and strange. Like their American counterparts, they’re intended to teach a set of wholesome, normative values such as hard work and pragmatism, with a heavy emphasis on the nuclear family and nationalism. Consequently, the fact that these doppelgangers are in the service of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, the loyal opposition of American exceptionalism, makes them feel, dare I say, queer. Such a contrast brings into focus the puritanical undercurrent in both.  Hung goes on to further push these tensions with soft subversions such as the pink clothing, which also evokes the double entendre of the title. Such flamboyance would be contextually deviant even in their American equivalents. The images and phrases of her youth are resurrected, with an irony and an acknowledgement that they no longer embody the meaning they once did.

Printer Sam Carr-Prindle and Hung Liu in the studio

A former painting teacher of mine once shared a story about a classmate who got in trouble and was ultimately expelled from their academy in the Soviet Union for making an impressionist painting. There was no dissident political content, or satire, just a few fauvist trees, which in an American school would have been at worst derided as quaint or anachronistic. Yet the implied individuality and emphasis on interpretation of feeling were perceived as threatening and subversive to the rigid social order. So in recreating these images in her own hand, and with small expressionistic flares, Hung is slyly breaking the rules that fettered the illustrators and artists forced to work in a state-approved style. In her version, the subjects seem to be tripping the Great Leap Forward.

Hung Liu, Shui-Water and Shan-Mountain, 2012

The two portraits are part of an ongoing series of works that are based on early 20^th-century photographs of prostitutes. Many of the photographs are small and lack clarity and contrast, yet she is able to enhance the amount of information while imbuing them with a greater sense of life and naturalism. In addition to bringing her large collection of portraits, Hung also brought in an enviable collection of books filled with small reproductions of Chinese woodcuts, which she used to create the backgrounds of Shan-Mountain and Shui-Water. Both prints started with a softground drawing of the figure that was then built up with many layers of aquatint, drypoint, reductive plate work, and, most notably, spitbite, in which nitric acid is painted onto the plate and allowed to drip and run, echoing the turpentine streaks of her paintings. Similar to the way Hung mixes humor and seriousness, these images balance crude or visceral elements with elegance. The softground has a rough, heavy and weathered quality in the way the lines and shapes are broken up by optical chatter, yet the draftsmanship is masterful and sensitive. The spitbite drips can feel both chaotic and ominous, as if the women were melting wax figures yet the drips in and of themselves are lyrical and painted with an unfussy playfulness. These contrasting elements lend a fitting uneasiness to their beauty. While the women are poised and graceful, the images belie the grim and misogynistic reality of their original purpose.

Hung Liu’s work is never what you think it might be at first glance.

                                                         Video of Hung Liu at Paulson Bott Press

Collector’s Profile: Martin Maguss and Mari Iki

By Renee Bott


Martin Maguss and Mari Iki / photograph installation by Sean McFarland

Mari Iki and Martin Maguss are San Francisco collectors. They are avid collectors and have amassed an impressive collection with a modest budget.  Over the years, they have purchased works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauchenberg, Keith Haring, Francis Bacon, Nan Goldin, Gary Simmons, Vik Muniz—the list goes on. They have also been great supporters of the many local art galleries.  Pam and I met them in the late 1990s at the first Blackman art fair at Fort Mason where they purchased a small print from us.  At a recent dinner for the artist Gary Simmons, we found out that Martin began collecting art in high school. I wanted to see their collection, and I asked if I could interview them.

Q:                            Martin, when did your passion for collecting art begin?

Martin:                   My dad instilled the values—you save up, then you can buy what you want. Growing up in Canada, I was excited about American culture. In high school, Lichtenstein and Warhol were on my radar. I had a part-time job and saved enough to buy my first piece.

Q:                            The Lichtenstein was the first piece you purchased?

Martin:                   Yes. I showed it to my dad, and said, “I bought this artwork by an American artist who I absolutely admire, Roy Lichtenstein.” My dad asked me how much I paid for it, and when I told him, he was livid. I said, “Wait a minute. You told me to save, and if I saved enough money, I could buy whatever I wanted. So this is a win for everybody. Now I want to go to New York and meet Andy.” My dad said, “Andy who?” I told him, "I want to meet Andy Warhol."

Roy Lichtenstein, Hand and Foot, 1964 Color Silk Screen Print

Q:                            How did you know about these artists?

Martin:                   I was attracted to pop culture. While in high school, I’d also spend my free time in the National Gallery of Canada looking at Claes Oldenburg’s Bedroom Suite and the work of James Rosenquist. Expo 67 was also a big influence, because the American pavilion exhibited all the Pop artists. I travelled to Montreal to see it!

In university, I majored in graphic design and photography. I spent a great deal of time with close friends, having wonderful dialogues about the current artists—Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, and others in the early 1980s.

Q:                            Did you get to meet Andy Warhol?

Dining Room

Martin:                   Yes. I got on a Greyhound bus and went to New York. It was a different time, you could just do it. I’d met him a couple of times in Toronto as well. Meeting him really did change my perspective on art.

Q:                            So when you and Mari met, your relationship revolved around art?

Martin:                   We were talking, obviously, a lot about art. She took me to the Berkeley Art Museum to see this painting that she just loved.

Mari:                      I said, “Oh, you have to see this museum, because it’s just great.” I would go there all the time. I showed him my favorite piece—a painting by Francis Bacon.

Q:                            Mari, was there a conscious moment when you decided to start collecting?

Mari:                      For as far back as I can remember, whenever I travelled with my family, I went to museums. I stood in line to attend the Avedon retrospective that David Ross curated at the Berkeley Art Museum. I had all these posters of amazing shows that I’d been to. Later, after Martin and I met, we went to the Fraenkel Gallery.

Martin:                   That was October 1984.

Mari:                      Martin asked Jeffrey Fraenkel to show us the Mapplethorpe still lifes. They were gorgeous black and white images of orchids. I forget how much they were—$500, $700—but I just said, “Wow...that’s so much for a black and white multiple.” Martin told me, “You spend money on posters, you should think of getting the real thing. Like these photographs, they’re beautiful.” We never got one!

                                Before I met Martin, I used to go into the Stephen Wirtz Gallery, always looking at Raymond Saunders’s work. Later, I went in with Martin and looked at a Raymond Saunders print maybe ten times. Finally, with guidance from Stephen Wirtz, the Saunders print was the first piece that I purchased.

Nan Goldin's photograph: Skyline from My Window - NYC, 1999 anchors the entry way wall.

Q:                            But did you have to agree on this, or was this your own endeavor?

Mari:                      That was my first contemporary art “acquisition,” but we do tend to agree.

Martin:                   The amazing thing about our relationship is if Mari and I see an exhibition, we will usually independently pick out the exact same piece. We have to work within a budget—we don’t have a lot of “disposable income”—we both have regular jobs.

Mari:                      Frankly, when we’re interviewed about collecting, it’s to show that anybody can collect.

Q:                            There must have been a point at which you realized...

Mari:                      We saw a segment on 60 Minutes in 1995.

Q:                            It’s not about the Vogels is it?

Mari:                      Yes—Herb and Dorothy!

Martin:                   We had an epiphany. They were such an influence to us! They didn’t have a fancy New York City lifestyle, and they had a comparable budget to work with. We thought, “Here are people who think in a similar way.”

Mari:                      They have some of the same priorities! It’s okay to not want to get a new sofa or something, but to purchase art. Most of our decisions revolve around looking at or purchasing art. Our friends thought we were crazy.



Vik Muniz's ceramic plate Medusa, 1999 rests on the dining room table.

 Q:                            I want to focus for a moment on the idea of curating a collection. Do you have an overarching idea for your collection, or is it based on a gut reaction?

Mari:                      It is an informed gut reaction. I once asked a friend why a museum director had spent extra time with us. He said, “Because I explained to him that you have a collection.” I said, “But we don’t have a collection. We just collect.”

Q:                            Is that how you still think of it today? Or now that you have all this work, do you feel a sense of responsibility?

Mari:                      We do feel a certain responsibility. What happens to it when we’re not here? We haven’t really come up with...

Q:                            The perfect plan?

Martin:                   Yes. The one thing we’re consistent about…for any work in our collection, we will always loan for educational purposes. It’s for the betterment of the artist’s career; it’s not about us, it’s for them.

Q:                            What about your relationship to the artists who make the work? Is it important to meet the artist? Or does that change the relationship?

Mari:                      When we can meet them, it’s wonderful. For example, Sean McFarland, who shows at Eli Ridgway Gallery, is an emerging photographer, and we’ve learned a lot about his work by getting to know him.

Martin:                   I’ve always said to Mari, if there’s an opportunity to meet an artist, we should. I remember when Mari met Diebenkorn and Thiebaud; I met Warhol, Haring, and others. If you can hear them talking about their work, that’s the best!

Deborah Oropallo's painting High Heat (Respirators), 2002 in spotlight

Q:                            There’s no substitute for that.        

Martin:                   You’ve worked with Martin Puryear, Caio Fonseca, Radcliffe Bailey, Gary Simmons, and other artists that we admire. Artists that are continuing the line of creativity. Whether they work with paint, wood or other media—when they come into your studio and address another medium, the creativity is all the same! For us, there’s little distinction between painting, drawing, and works on paper.

Q:                            What is your advice to the novice collector?

Mari:                      Look everywhere, read a lot, and then remember to look at the new and emerging artists and galleries.

Martin:                   Mari and I spend an inordinate amount of time not only looking at work, but also talking about work. We’re always looking, even when we know we won’t be purchasing. We never buy for investment.

                                There are always opportunities for young collectors. Someone might not have the budget for a Kerry James Marshall painting, but they could consider one of his amazing prints.

Squeak Carnwath

By Samuel Carr-Prindle

It was a treat to have Squeak Carnwath return to our studio this past February. She came in with a sense of comfort and confidence as if she were simply picking up where she had left off. Though Squeak is a self-described “painting chauvinist,” she is also a highly adept and creative printmaker. The revelry and material play that characterizes her paintings is also evident in her prints. Like several of her Bay Area peers (Chris Brown and Hung Liu for example), Squeak fully embraces the physicality of the intaglio process, with its drawing-like potential to continually add and subtract information. Her prints employ a wide variety of processes and means of mark-making. During this project, the plate-making involved hardground, softground, scraping, burnishing, sanding, sugar lift, aquatint and some playful chine-collé. Her heavily layered approach to building printed images yields an ink density and visual richness that parallels the sensuous, satin surfaces of her paintings.

Pam Paulson proofing in the Paulson Bott Studio, 2011

Squeak Carnwath in the Paulson Bott Press Studio, 2011

One of Squeak’s greatest strengths is her ability to share her inner emotional world in a way that is remarkably generous and relatable to others. She has consistently managed to touch on themes and issues that affect most people with a specificity that lends them significant weight and resonance. The work serves as a record of her fears, desires, musings and the ongoing self-knowledge she’s gained through the bittersweet solitude of the painting studio. Though her work has an overt stream-of-consciousness style, I was surprised by just how diaristic it really is.

One afternoon towards the end of the project Squeak said that she felt envious of some of her fellow artists who had additional activities and passions outside of their art studios, whether it was making music, playing sports, writing, or dancing. Who hasn’t wondered at sometime what their life might be like if they had made different choices, made different priorities, pursued other interests, and worked at different things. From this discussion she came up with the phrase she included in the print Light: “I wish I did something else (in addition to what I do) but I don’t.” This musing, however, wasn’t an expression of regret so much as an acknowledgement of the decades of focused dedication she’s given to painting.



Squeak Carnwath, I Wish, 2011, Color Aquatint Etching, Published by Paulson Bott Press 



Squeak Carnwath, Medicine (detail), 2011, Color Aquatint Etching, Published by Paulson Bott Press 

Squeak was also preparing to undergo major foot surgery and was lamenting the nuisances of aging when she casually turned to me and informed me that she’d be purchasing a gun to give to me, so that I could shoot her like a lame horse when she became too frail or senile to live with the degree of dignity she desired. After a short silence she burst out laughing at my slack-jawed expression before adding, "But seriously, do it.”  This mix of existential dread and humor spills over into the work in a mixture that is simultaneously serious and amusing.

These paradoxes within her work help foil one-dimensional readings of her art. The sweetness of her pastel palette and the child-like imagery frequently belie the gravity of her themes and ideas. The candelabra, while a symbol of creation and a source of illumination, also serves as a memento mori. It resembles some of her older motifs, such as the vinyl LP, in which there is an anticipated end. Yet her attitude towards fleeting beauty and our temporality is not as fatalistic as it may seem. In Not Known, she encourages the viewer to “thrive in the unknown and unknowable.”  This simple statement nicely encapsulates what it means to be an artist; to live in a perpetual state of uncertainty, doubt, and near-limitless choice. Despite the black humor and occasional morbidity, there is an underlying optimism about our capacity to flourish in a world of constant unpredictability.

Slow Art

by Pam Paulson

Berkeley is considered by many to be a bastion of the Slow Food movement. Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and other local stars have challenged our need for speed. At Paulson Bott Press, we can relate. Making etchings is a methodical endeavor. The process demands tenacity. We often sow the seeds for projects years in advance. Once the artist is in the studio, we carefully tend the task of making the prints.  Sometimes the idea emerges right away and we refine, and other times it’s more trial and error. It’s Slow Art.

Kerry James Marshall, "Better Homes, Better Gardens",  1994 Courtesy Denver Art Museum



Our experience with the artist Kerry James Marshall is a case in point. When I first heard him speak, I was amazed. ( If you ever get a chance to hear him, do!) Renee and I had just begun to publish prints when we flew down to San Diego in 1997 to meet Kerry and invite him to work with us. I remember my enthusiasm for his painting and for the visionary path he intended to carve through art history. I also recall my dismay when he didn’t immediately agree to come to our studio that fall. We kept at it.




Kerry James Marshall, "Visable Means of Support: Monticello and Mount Vernon", 2009 Courtesy SF MOMA

 Last year, 13 years after that initial invitation, while the dust was still settling in our new shop, Kerry finally came to Paulson Bott Press. Kerry was working on the installation of two murals, “Visible Means of Support: Monticello” and “Visible Means of Support: Mount Vernon ” in the atrium of SFMOMA, and we had the chance to collaborate. 



 We began with a very ambitious large image. As a young man, Kerry had tried etching. He had in mind a myriad of intaglio techniques that he would use to create the print. We started with a softground drawing of the basic image, then added successive plates (with aquatints, spitbites, sugarlift, and drypoint) to flesh out the color, value, and density. “Vignette (Wishing Well)” relies on a smorgasbord of techniques, including chine collé and hand painting, and it is a testament to patience. The print comprises six plates made over a two-week period.




Kerry James Marshall, "Vignette (Wishing Well)", 2010; Color Etching; Published by Paulson Bott Press

 During the first week, we were working towards a brightly colored image. Kerry introduced the idea of shaped plates to reinforce the structural components in the print. We all had fun wielding the metal nippers to cut the pieces of copper that were needed.  While we were proofing, the color direction changed, and some plates were abandoned.

Unused plates

Kerry in the Paulson Bott Studio

The multiple tinted greys required the plates to be inked "a la poupée" (several different colors inked on each individual plate). Four printers work 2.5 hours to ink and print a single print, and it takes an additional 1.5 hours to print hearts, chine collé them, and hand paint the prints before they are ready to be signed.

A single plate can go into the acid numerous times before reaching a final state. This is true of each plate making up the larger print as well as the single plate prints. “Untitled Woman” was rolled with hardground drawn on and etched nine times before we pulled the OKTP.



Nine working proofs of "Untitled (Woman)", 2010; Hardground Etching; Published by Paulson Bott Press

Slow Art is an apt description of what goes on at the press. Even when we are running around in a frenzy, we cannot go faster than the process's inherent physicality, we cannot rush the steps and stages and the resonance of the image and our understanding of what the artist wants. It took awhile for this project to take root, and once it began to grow, it flourished. I hope you will be able to take a moment and spend some time with Kerry James Marshall’s exceptional work.