The first project at the new printmaking facility at Artists For Humanity in South Boston will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre perpetrated in King Street. Three weeks after the March 5th massacre in 1770, Paul Revere engraved and printed from a copper plate an image that has become a lasting legacy of Americas’ freedom from British rule.

After numerous printings of the copper plate, the latest occurring in 2003 by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the engraved image is now retired for posterity, gleaming under glass at the Archive Museum at Columbia Point in Boston. While it is true that the images portrayed in the print served as a rallying cry for the aggrieved colonists, many objects depicted in the scene are considered propaganda. Witness testimony procured through legal documents and diaries refute some of the facts depicted in the original image. Revere’s embellishments throughout areas in the print created a bias designed to initiate rebellion.

One of the most important facts about the incident on King Street is the omission of the image of Crispus Attucks. Attucks, born in 1723, was a former slave from Framingham, Massachusetts who worked as a rope-maker in the shipyards of Boston. Attucks found himself caught up in the melee during the night of March 5th 1770, and became one of the colonists killed by British troops, and the first person of color to die for American Independence.

The Boston Massacre Reboot project at AFH follows the continuum of art traveling through life experiences, the humanist trove. The path of the activist artist can bring awareness to the human condition and elevate social consciousness. Exploration into the printing of the Massacre print, combined with an awareness of the current state of mainstream politics led me to address the strained and unresolved racial component in American history.

At the time of the Boston Massacre in 1770, slavery was firmly embedded in colonial America. Revere’s avoidance of adding Crispus Attucks to the original composition must have been more than just an oversight. The notion that a former slave could lead a major revolt for American independence was impalpable until well into the next century when images sympathetic to abolishment of slavery appeared as primary figures. As printmaker and activist, importing the image of Crispus Attucks into the original Boston massacre print seemed a just compromise and fair representation of the facts, becoming a clear example of the way art can advocate for a cause.

“Pulse 2019” is a video contemplating the human condition. The intertwined evolution of humans in the environment, and the existence of communities both in the physical sense as well as in broader social and political sense. Throughout history, humans have also left their mark in their environment at times remarkable monuments and at times remnants reclaimed by natural elements.

In the words of the artist, “I would hope to encourage self-observation, in the context of broader surroundings and the environment. It takes a good measure of humbleness to fully comprehend one’s state and obligations, in light of corresponding relationships with others. It is pertinent, in my opinion, to exercise sufficient modesty and respect to the environment and society, our critical habitat”.

The video also focuses on the use of varied media combining drawing, woodcut, rubbing, carved wood panels and structures. Woodcuts are spoon printed on large custom-made sheets of paper. Panels of paper are hung adjacent to carved wood panels. A grid of warmer wooden matrices and cooler white prints and rubbing matching materials and their morphology as well as depicted content.

Pulse 2019, is inspired by the recent installation at the Wilfrid Israel Museum including three large works: Aurora, Laver and Doubt.

The USGS had given away and auctioned off nearly 4000 of their copper plates. Since than an abundance of Lore swirls around and needs to be corrected. Opposite of general Statement, these Plates are etched, not engraved, only needed corrections and changes were actually engraved. The issued Maps from these Plates were printed in Stone Litho, these Copper Plates were only used once to create a Print on Albumen Paper which could be transferred to stone and thus printed. The markings for registration on the Copper Plates are specific to Stone Lithography. The sets of Copper Plates don't register within each set at all, they differ up to half an Inch in alignment. As I have a Patron who is an avid Map Collector and acquired quite a number of important Sets, I can show here the FIRST Map printed from the Copper Plates in Register.

*For more information on the original sale - https://www.usgs.gov/news/copper-plates-gone-sort

**Click on external link below for images of the new edition.

This election hit us hard. So many Americans—including the artists here at the Rhode Island School of Design—feel that their voices weren't heard. But, as printmakers, we have the tools and skills to disseminate our own messages of resistance to a wide audience. So, we all hit the print shop to let the world know just what we think about the outcome of this election.

But we also know that political activism is not just about speaking out—it's also about following through with action. We are donating 100% of the profit from these prints to organizations that support our communities. We will only be reimbursing ourselves for the cost of paper and minimal packaging.

Each of us has created a print that responds to the election in our own way, in a limited-edition run of 50. These are just $25 each, and 100% of the profits will be donated to our organizations. Each print is 22" x 15". Together, they also make up an 11-print portfolio that we are offering at a discount.

El Anatsui returned to the Factum Arte studios in early November to create large-scale collages with Factum´s print-makers Michael Ward and Constanza Dessain.

The session with Anatsui was a very successful culmination of a year's work in the intaglio studio, where a series of prints were made from high-resolution scans of Anatsui´s wooden workbenches, once used to create his vast sculptural bottle top works.

Many one off collages were made from printed material and several editioned suites were made from the plates - particularly impressive are the "Eclipse" series of 13 variations.

Some images can be viewed online - http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/artists/anatsui/

17 woodcuts laced with satire & brimming with an intoxicating authenticity, from a life lived in rural PA. If R. Crumb is to Wes Craven then Patierno is to Hitchcock in the measured unsettling of his otherwise wholesome Americana. He's a keen observer and a masterful composer at "the funnel of art history" & this collection is true PATIERNO.

Robert Patierno’s works reside in the collections of the Frans Masereel Centrum Pour Grafiks, Kasterlee, Belgium; the Erie Art Museum; the Lancaster Museum; the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in PA; the US Department of State, Art Bank & those of many universities & private collections.
As a founder of the Pennsylvania College of Art & design, Patierno spent more than 2 decades developing its Fine Arts Department as well as chairing it before leaving in 2003 to focus on his studio practice. He continues to guide young artists in his role as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Gettysburg College.

PATIERNO is Totemic17’s 4th project & our first solo artist project.