GLENN LOWRY: These prints by Carroll Dunham were the result of a collaboration with Bill Goldston, Director of Universal Limited Art Editions.
BILL GOLDSTON: The drawings were created by taking a felt-tipped pen and drawing on a piece of 5 x 7 notebook paper.
The gesture of your hand making a small drawing is completely different than the drawing when it’s enlarged to a different size. You would not be able to re-enact that energy with your hand on a 5’ x 6’ wall.
It was a wonderful kind of challenge because digital printing, scanning, and all that was just coming into its being when we began to work on this piece.
You had this ability to do this drawing on a small piece of paper enlarge it to any size you chose. All the energy that you put into the pencil line or the felt-tipped line comes out in the larger size.
We then colored it with the computers. And then printed it out and then made it a hand work by separating all the colors and mixing the colors by hand to match the computer-chosen colors rather than the other way around.
So the whole adventure became this kind of wonderful trip where we [Laughs] we were using this new ultramodern technology for those days but we were using in a way which it was a creative tool for our end, which was going to be a hand lithograph.
GLENN LOWRY: Even though Dunham’s Female Portraits were ultimately printed as traditional lithographs, digital printing played a key role in the process. To hear Goldston discuss the balance between traditional techniques and new technology, please press 6-6-5-0 and the play button.