In Conversation | Sandow Birk, Paul Mullowney, & Catharine Clark
Friday, March 19 | 1-2 pm PST
Join us for a special Zoom conversation with artist Sandow Birk, master printer Paul Mullowney, and gallery founder Catharine Clark as they discuss their collaborative work on Imaginary Monuments (2007 – ongoing), a series of drawings and etchings authored by Birk.
Imaginary Monuments depicts historical texts housed within proposed monuments that honor or enshrine the text’s topic. Most of the monuments incorporate multiple documents, conveying in words and images the complex and sometime conflicting histories and opinions behind subjects such as the judicial system, incarceration, economics, capitalism, trade, immigration, slavery, freedom of speech, treaties, governance, social justice, and civil rights.
Imaginary Monuments is on view on the 2nd floor of the Minnesota Street Project Atrium through March 27, 2021.
Catharine Clark Gallery & Mullowney Printing
Catharine Clark Gallery and Mullowney Printing began their collaboration with the release of Sandow Birk’s “Ten Leading Causes of Death in America” (2004), a suite of chine-collé, direct gravure etchings. In 2018, Mullowney Printing and Catharine Clark Gallery entered a formal partnership, the latter of which serves as the distributor for projects through the press with gallery and non-represented artists, including Alison Saar, Masami Teraoka, and Sandow Birk. In 2020, the gallery launches a new series of print projects through its BOXBLUR initiative, with recent and forthcoming releases by Stephanie Syjuco and Nina Katchadourian.
Sandow Brik
Artist
Since graduating in 1988 from Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, Sandow Birk has been concerned with the politics of contemporary life. Birk’s work is represented in the collections of Art Gallery of Ontario, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Crocker Art Museum, Crystal Bridges, di Rosa, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, J. Paul Getty Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Historical Society, New York Public Library, Norton Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Societa Dantesca, and Stadtisches Kunstmuseum. Monographs on Birk’s work have included American Qur’an’ published by W.W. Norton (2015), which coincided with a travelling solo exhibition (with Pignolet’s ceramics) to Orange County Museum of Art, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Sabeel Center and Texas Tech University; Depravities of War, published by Grand Central Art Center (2007), and Dante’s Divine Comedy (with Marcus Sanders), published by Chronicle Books (2004–2006), Incarcerated: Visions of California in the 21st Century and In Smog and Thunder: Historical Works from the Great War of the Californias, published by Last Gasp (2001 and 2000). All publications were accompanied by attendant exhibitions. Birk has worked with Mullowney Printing since 2004, and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, since 1994.
Paul Mullowney
Founding Partner of Mullowney Printing
Paul Mullowney is the Founding Partner of Mullowney Printing, a master print shop in Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California, with a special satellite studio at Minnesota Street Project. After becoming a Master Printer at Crown Point Press in San Francisco, Mullowney founded and managed studios in Ouda, Japan and on Maui, Hawaii. He has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art and San Francisco Art Institute, as well as delivered numerous printmaking workshops in the United States and Japan. Named after his grandfather’s commercial print studio founded in the early 1900’s in Minneapolis, Mullowney Printing was founded in San Francisco in 2011.
Catharine Clark
Founding Director of Catharine Clark Gallery
Clark is the Founding Director of Catharine Clark Gallery and BOXBLUR. Clark studied the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania prior to founding Catharine Clark Gallery, representing work across medium with an emphasis on print making and education around original multiples. Among other publications, Clark edited Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an published by W.W. Norton in 2015. In 2007, she authored the “Politics of Landscape” for Sandow Birk: The Depravities of War, published by Grand Central Press. Catharine Clark Gallery has collaborated with Paul Mullowney since 2004 and has represented Sandow Birk’s work since 1994.