Goddess of Print
6-color reduction cut
24" x 32"
Rives BFK paper
Edition Size: 5
APs: 5
$300
Artist Statement:
This reduction print is based on the Hindu legend of the Goddess Durga:
A long time ago, the world was in great peril. War and famine were widespread, and demons ruled the earth. The great demon Mahisasura, who took the form of a bull, was their leader. Despite all their efforts, none of the male gods could defeat the demon. The gods retreated from battle and summoned a goddess, for it was foretold that only a woman could save the world from such destruction. Out of a supernova of their collective energies appeared the Goddess Durga with 10 arms riding a tiger. She defeated Mahisasura and his army. Peace was restored and the earth was healed. Although the people of earth begged her to stay and rule them, she refused. "That is not my way," she said, "but if ever you need me again, just think of me, and I will come."
I have recreated this image of the Goddess Durga and replaced her weapons with tools used in printmaking. She represents the creative, emotional, compassionate and powerful aspects of the divine feminine. Durga is the destroyer of ignorance and represents determination and will power, fierce compassion and patience. I believe that only through these qualities can we bring about peace on earth and to all of its creatures. My hope is that through my art I can cultivate these aspects of the divine feminine and inspire others to do the same, whether they be male or female,
"Fat Cat"
Serigraph on Stonehenge Paper
Size: 15" x 22"
Edition # 40
Price: $100 + Shipping and Handling
Signed and numbered by Peter Kuper
Artist Statement:
As the wise old cat was heard to say:
"If life is a bowl of cherries, can I have a second bowl?"
Peter Kuper and Buddha Cat Press are releasing a limited edition print and t-shirt!
Phoenix Cat design by Peter Kuper.
The Artists:
• William Wegman was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1943. He graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, in 1965 with a BFA in painting, then enrolled in the Masters painting and printmaking program at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, receiving an MFA in 1967. After teaching at various universities, Wegman’s interests in areas beyond painting ultimately led him to photography and the infant medium of video.
His most recent exhibitions have gone to Japan, Sweden, and the Orange County Museum of Art in California. Wegman lives in New York and Maine.
• Robbie Conal grew up on the upper west side of Manhattan--his parents were both union organizers who considered the major art museums to be day care centers for him. He attended the High School of Music and Art in New York, got his BFA at San Francisco State University and his Masters of Fine Arts degree at Stanford University.
He developed an irregular guerrilla army of volunteers and put his posters up in the streets of major cities around the country. He has made more than 50 posters satirizing politicians from both parties, televangelists and global capitalists. He also takes on issues of censorship, the Supreme Court's ruling against women's freedom of choice, and environmental issues.
• Sue Coe is one of the most important politically oriented artists living in the U.S. today. From the outset of her career working as an illustrator for such publications as the New York Times and Time Magazine, Coe was committed to reaching a broad audience through the print media.
Widely written about and exhibited, Coe has appeared on the cover of Art News and been the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Her work is in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
• Despite her much sought after work as an illustrator and later as a painter, gee vaucher is perhaps best known for the extensive body of work she created during the late seventies and early eighties. quite apart from her now famous collages, as designer with the renowned punk band ‘crass’, she concentrated her highly developed painting skills on ‘photorealism’, creating some of the most disturbing and acclaimed images of the time. Her work is generally accepted as having been seminal to the iconography of the ‘punk generation’.
Most of her work since then has in some way been connected with the human form, intimately exploring the psychological diversities of social inter-relationships. she has been exhibited extensively both solo and in group shows throughtout the world.
• Yuri Shimojo is drawn to the world of indigenous cultures, which has led her studying universal shamanism as an energy worker. Yuri has published several books in Japan, including: “Makkana Mangetsu~Crimson Full Moon”(1995), which showcase her earlier illustration works, “Vagabonds” (2001), a journal work from her trip in Central America and Mexico, and “Chiisana Rakugaki~Tiny Scribble” (1997), an autobiography of her unique childhood, which has republished in 2007.
Now, living the nomadic bohemian lifestyle, Yuri explores the planet from the heart of metropolis to the outposts all over the world being guided by her own intuition, hopping between her home base and studio in Brooklyn to her tropical “boonie” hideaway in Hawaii. These extreme opposites from jungle to urban life balances her creative & spiritual yin and yang always bringing new sources of inspiration.
• Emek graduated with a Major in Art, and a Minor in Unemployment. His first poster commission was done immediately after the L.A. riots/uprising of 1992, for a unity rally and concert held on Martin Luther King Day. The poster was a success and from then on, Emek was hooked on the art form.
In Emek’s posters, psychedelic ‘60s imagery collides with ‘90s post-industrial iconography. To this collision of the organic vs. the mechanical worlds he adds humor, social commentary and fantasy. Even in the smallest details there are messages. All of Emek’s artwork is originally hand-drawn and then hand- silkscreened for each actual concert or event, usually in limited editions of around 300.
• Peter Kuper co-founded of the political zine World War 3 Illustrated and has remained on its editorial board for 30 years. His illustrations and comics have appeared in Time, The New York Times and MAD where he has illustrated SPY vs. SPY every month since 1997. He has written and illustrated over twenty books including The System and Stop Forgetting To Remember.
Peter has also adapted Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and many of Franz Kafka’s works into comics including an award winning version of The Metamorphosis. His graphic novel, Sticks and Stones, won the Society of Illustrators gold medal Peter lived in Oaxaca, Mexico from July 2006-2008 and his work from that time can be seen in can be seen in his latest book Diario de Oaxaca.
• Cole Gerst is a graphic artist and painter in Los Angeles, California. Originally from the deep south of Albany, Georgia, he grew up surrounded by many outsider and folk artists, including his grandfather, a respected local craftsman. As a kid, Cole enjoyed many of these artists’ fantastical stories about faraway lands, or conversations with Higher Powers. He was inspired by their ability to create art that revealed the world as only they saw it.
He now heads up the firm, option-g, which is a multidisciplinary design firm which provides illustration, graphic design, art commisions and animation to the music and entertainment industry. Option-G also includes a t-shirt company, option-g apparel, that releases a new line twice a year.
• Karen Fiorito is a political artist and curator residing in Los Angeles, California. She has been exhibited in over 50 exhibitions and has had 5 solo shows. Her art continues to be exhibited nationally and internationally and has appeared in such publications as Art in America, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Hustler Magazine, the LA Weekly, URB Magazine and the Huffington Post.
Karen Fiorito's Buddha Cat Press enjoyed a small survey show at the Urban Sanctuary gallery in Boyle Heights. BCP has published and produced screen print editions for an impressive panoply of artists. A print from many of these editions was on display along with a large sampling of Karen's own politically charged work.
Robbie Conal's Dalai Lama portrait includes a layer of gold leafing
Any small screen-printing publisher would have bragging rights for publishing or co-producing an edition by just one of the many big names that Buddha Cat Press had in this exhibit. In the show, L.A.'s original street artist Robbie Conal had two triptychs published under Karen's supervision in the past few years, each featuring an iconic portrait (Dalai Lama, Hendrix, etc.) with a slogan underneath which comprise a larger theme and summarize the works of these men.
Winston Smith's arresting critique of organized religion is familiar to any aficionado of punk rock
If Conal is too hippie for you, Fiorito has co-published work by Britain's Gee Vaucher, the artist who worked with Crass, as well as Winston Smith, responsible for adding the most arresting images to Dead Kennedys albums. In fact, Smith's image of Christ on a cross of money under a barcoded 666 (the cover of the DK's 1981 "In God We Trust Incorporated" EP) was published (in conjunction with Paperworks Laboratories) last September on black background titled simply "Idol".
Street art roots translate seamlessly into fine art, here in a collaboration between El MAc and Retna for Buddha Cat Press
While Conal, Vaucher and Smith establish a punk backbone and political seriousness to the small publisher, Buddha Cat Press has street credibility too. Urban Sanctuary Gallery had BCP editions from well-known graffiti calligraphists Chaz, El Mac and Retna on display along with a print edition on paper of photographer Estevan Oriol.
Amidst these icons, all represented with quality images, expertly presented and hung unframed, backroom style with paper clips, there were fine art prints that extolled themes of beauty and composition. They were without the benefit of an established name; they were, however, exquisite enough that politics were not needed to deliver their message of a search for that tranquil moment of transformation to which all great art aspires.
Buddha Cat Press has not printed itself into a corner with one approach to aesthetics or one type of street slogan. It is the epitome of interesting Los Angeles art to draw from more schools of influence than pizza toppings available at a restaurant; BCP epitomizes the making of a melody by embracing the complete cacophony of L.A. that the best art of our time seems to return to again and again.
There was no theme to be derived from the wide variety of images in this show save for the possibilities that arise when the personal and the political are curatorially interwoven, when the calligraphic and the organic coexist on the same wall space, and all of it under the precise printing skills of Karen Fiorito.
Karen Fiorito at Urban Sanctuary Gallery in Boyle Heights
"Pretty Revolutionary" - a print by Karen Fiorito
