Jonas Wood was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and received his MFA from the University of Washington. His work has been shown in galleries in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, as well as in numerous public collections, such as The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Wood recently had a solo exhibition at the Lever House Art Collection, New York, as well as a High Line billboard commission. His public projects include a facade mural at LA><ART in Los Angeles and a Terrazzo floor at the Taschen store in Berlin. Wood lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, and Gagosian Gallery.

French Open, 2012
Four pass letterpress print.
8 x 11 inches
Edition of 20.

Hammer Interior, 2016
19 pass letterpress print.
11.25 x 20.75 inches
Edition of 20.

Photos: David Roy

Brian Sharp is an Ohio born Los Angeles artist. He has recently participated in exhibitions at Wallspace NYC, Laurel Gitlen NYC, Fourteen 30, Portland Oregon, Grice Bench, 356 S. Mission Road, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. In addition, he has had an exhibition at NON-OBEJCTIF SUD, Tulette, France.

Four letterpress prints with a folio hand-printed with potato by the artist.

Untitled (1), 2013
Letterpress two pass print
11 x 15 inches
Edition of 20.

Untitled (2), 2013
Letterpress two pass print
11 x 15 inches
Edition of 20.

Untitled (3), 2013
Letterpress two pass print
11 x 15 inches
Edition of 20.

Untitled (4), 2013
Letterpress two pass print
11 x 15 inches
Edition of 20.

Photos: David Roy

Bart Exposito was born in Amarillo, Texas. He received his BFA from the University of Texas, Austin (1998) and MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA (2000). He has exhibited nationally in galleries and museums including the Nerman Museum, Overland Park, Kansas; Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, California; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles; Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles; Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles; Claremont Graduate University; Galerie Grimm/Rosenfeld, Münich, Germany; and Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, Bremen, Germany. In 2009, Exposito was included in the exhibition Abstract America at the Saatchi Gallery, London (catalogue). Public collections include Bank of America, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, and Saatchi Gallery, London. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Thomas Solomon Gallery in 2014, and Strange Alphabets, at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in 2015. Bart Exposito lives outside of Santa Fe New Mexico and teaches at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Untitled, 2013
Five pass letterpress print
7.75 x 9.75 inches
Edition of 20.

Photos: David Roy

Harsh Patel is an artist and graphic designer living and working in Los Angeles. His 3DX label houses independent work across print ephemera. Black & White is his studio presence, collecting commissioned and collaborative work. He has had his work in exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Young Art, and recently had an exhibition at STL LA in Los Angeles, and Artspace NZ.

"Harsh Patel moves fluidly between media formats, working as both designer and artist. Deeply invested in the specificity of subcultural codes, he deliberately uses design to frustrate legibility and circulation rather than ensure that field’s traditional expectations of effective communication. He often produces books or posters in tiny editions that are only distributed by him personally, if distributed at all. For this exhibition Patel presents two new letterpress prints, Cobra (3DX 43) and Plaza (3DX 44), both 2014, which incorporate, respectively, a quote by Noel Gallagher that addresses cult value and the mainstream, and a surly review of an Oasis album by mononymous ex-Felt singer Lawrence." 

(Michael Ned Holte, 2014, Artspace NZ)

Cobra (3DX 43), 2014
Letterpress three pass print
11 x 17 inches
Edition of 20.

Plaza (3DX 44), 2014
Letterpress three pass print
11 x 17 inches
Edition of 20.

Photos: David Roy

Lecia Dole-Recio was born in San Francisco, California, and received her BFA at Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. She has had solo exhibitions at The Secession, Vienna; Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles; Casey Kaplan, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles; and the Galerie Stephan Adamski, Aachen. Dole-Recio has had work shown extensively in group exhibitions throughout the US and also in Europe, including the Whitney Biennial, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Untitled (1), 2014
Letterpress three pass print
8.5 x 11 inches
Edition of 30.

Untitled (2), 2014
Letterpress two pass print
8.5 x 11 inches
Edition of 30.

Untitled (3), 2014
Letterpress two pass print
8.5 x 11 inches
Edition of 30.

Untitled (4), 2014
Letterpress two pass print
8.5 x 11 inches
Edition of 30.

Untitled (5), 2014
Letterpress two pass print
8.5 x 11 inches
Edition of 30.

Photos: David Roy

Alison Saar creates artworks that frequently transform found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion.

Saar credits her mother, acclaimed collagist and assemblage artist Betye Saar, with exposing her to metaphysical and spiritual traditions. Assisting her father, Richard Saar, a painter and art conservator, in his restoration shop inspired her learning and curiosity about other cultures.

Saar studied studio art and art history at Scripps College in Claremont, California, receiving a BA in art history in 1978. In 1981 she earned her MFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. In 1983, Saar became an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, incorporating found objects from the city environment. Saar completed another residency in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1985, which augmented her urban style with Southwest Native American and Mexican influences.

Saar’s style encompasses a multitude of personal, artistic, and cultural references that reflect the plurality of her own experiences. Her sculptures, installations, and prints incorporate found objects including rough-hewn wood, old tin ceiling panels, nails, shards of pottery, glass, and urban detritus. The resulting figures and objects become powerful totems exploring issues of gender, race, heritage, and history. Saar’s art is included in museums and private collections across the U.S.

Evie Shockley has published multiple books of poetry, including "the new black" (Wesleyan, 2011), winner of the Black Caucus of ALA’s Literary Award for Poetry, and "a half-red sea" (Carolina Wren Press, 2006), in addition to two chapbooks. Her newest title "semiautomatic," was published in September 2017 from Wesleyan. She also has a book of criticism, "Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry" (Iowa, 2011). Shockley has had essays and reviews published in such journals as Callaloo, African American Review, and Indiana Review. Her poetry has appeared in MELUS, Harvard Review, Columbia Poetry Review, and in the anthology "Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry," among many other publications. Shockley has sat on a number of panels and given many presentations at a variety of conferences including MLA, the American Studies Association Conference, and the American Literature Association. She has read at the Vermont Studio Center, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Barnard College, University of New Mexico, and at a number of other universities and literary venues. Shockley received the 2012 Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes National Poetry Prize, awarded to "a single poet of special merit" by the faculty of Princeton University’s creative writing program. Shockley was The 2018 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Poetry .

Shockley received her BA in English from Northwestern University, followed by a JD from University of Michigan Law School, before earning her MA and PhD from Duke University. She is assistant professor in the English department at Rutgers University.

Bibliography

semiautomatic (Wesleyan University Press, 2017)
the new black (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)
31 words * prose poems (Belladonna* Books, 2007)
a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006)

For Shockley’s recent collection of poems, “semiautomatic,” Saar contributed a series of drawings for the chapter “the topsy suite” with writings based on the character of Topsy from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” That collaborative energy led to this print, which features imagery by Saar, and words by Shockley.

Evie’s poem on the broadside from semiautomatic (Wesleyan University Press, 2017):

stop : meet with me here, weapons at rest,
on this stage of reciprocal dreaming : you
imagine you hear my desperate breathing : 
and i, your eardrum, a small heart, beating

Alison and Evie Broadside, 2018
Alison Saar & Evie Shockley with Wavelength Press
3 pass linoleum and letterpress on French Paper
16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm)
Edition of 60 / Signed and numbered

Rise, 2020.
Alison Saar with Wavelength Press.
2-pass letterpress printed from linocuts.
Edition of 100.

Special edition letterpress print with Alison Saar and LA Louvre. Full sales proceeds for each print donated by Alison Saar, Leslie Ross-Robertson and L.A. Louver to local Los Angeles community organizations Dignity and Power Now (DPN), Summaeverythang Community Center and Crenshaw Dairy Mart.

Courtesy of LA Louvre: Rise

Steve Roden is a visual and sound artist from los angeles, living in pasadena. his work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, text and performance.

He is currently represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. In 2013, Roden's work was featured in a two-person exhibition with Jenny Perlin at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH and in a solo exhibition at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles, CA. In 2010, a mid-career survey of Roden's work was presented at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, curated by Howard Fox. Solo exhibitions include the Creative Media Center, City University of Hong Kong; the Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; the Chinati Foundation, Marfa; the Henry Art Museum, Seattle; the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens; the San Francisco Art Institute; the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science; the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena; the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs; and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, among others.

His work has been included in exhibitions at the Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the San Francisco State University, Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco; the Las Vegas Art Museum, Las Vegas; the Mercosur Biennial in Porto Allegre, Brazil; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Serpentine Gallery, London; the Drawing Room, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla; the Sculpture Center, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou Museum, Paris; the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles & Miami MOCA, Miami, the Drawing Center, New York. Steve Roden was also a recent recipient of the 2011 Artist Grant of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and recently of a California Community Foundation Getty Fellowship Grant.

This print is from the 2016 exhibition: “A Year Without Painting” Susanne Vielmeter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles. "the streets are made of pistachio", 2015, Letterpress, ink, collage, sumi ink, watercolor, pencil, and crayons, 23.25" H x 29.25"W framed, Photo Credit: Jeff McLane.

The Beatles, Letterpress print, and debossed album cover.

The names of each of the Beatles, with each letter in each name part of a rotating color scheme, comprised an experiment that caught the eye of a visitor, as if the rotating colors evoked the Beatles. I showed it to Leslie and she made a print of it, which we studied. I remembered The White Album as entirely white with the words “The Beatles” embossed white on white on the jacket. I wondered if the print deserved an old-fashioned LP-sized jacket with “The Beatles” on the cover—the pristine white over the joyous explosion of their last phase. —Aram Saroyan,2 022

Five-Pass Letterpress Print with Letterpress debossed album cover. 2021.

12 x 12 in. (30.48 cm x 30.48 cm)
Edition of 20/signed and numbered.

the print is 100% cotton paper and soy inks.

Also, 2020

One pass letterpress print, printed on Crane’s Lettra cotton paper,
19 x 26 in. (48.26 cm. x 66.04 cm.)
Edition of 20/ Signed and numbered.

PRESS RELEASE:
NEW DRAWINGS ARAM SAROYAN
Organized by Michael Ned Holte

as-is.la
1133 Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90015
January 5 – February 22, 2020

For those who know Aram Saroyan’s minimal poems, these recent drawings may arrive as a complete surprise. But in fact they represent a late flowering of a lifelong exploration of line released from the constrictions of the typewriter. In these new drawings, the early minimalist poems give way to something wordless: In an artistic lineage that ranges from Paul Klee to Bradley Walker Tomlin to Brice Marden, the new works, like the iconic minimalist poems, bristle with Saroyan’s signature sense of exuberant discovery.

Saroyan’s work has appeared in numerous recent exhibitions, including “Whorled Explorations,” the 2014 Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kochi, India; “Three Day Weekend: Three Way Weekend” (2015) organized by Dave Muller at Blum and Poe, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only” (for which he provided the subtitle); and “And Per Se And” (2016), organized by Michael Ned Holte at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles.

Michael Ned Holte is a writer and independent curator based in Los Angeles, and a member of the faculty in the Program in Art at CalArts. His exhibitions include “Routine Pleasures” at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, “Made in L.A. 2014” (with Connie Butler) at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and “how we are in time and space: Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Barbara T. Smith” Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, 2022.

Nancy Buchanan

Lincoln Fay’s Journal (2023)
Two-pass letterpress print.
8.5 x 11 in.
Edition of 20.

Wavelength Press is pleased to announce a new letterpress edition made in collaboration with Nancy Buchanan. Lincoln Fay’s Journal (2023) is closely tied to the artist’s family history as are her book works, Fallout from the Nuclear Family (1980) and Mother (1975), both in the Getty Research Institute collections. Buchanan’s great-great-grandfather was Lincoln Fay, an abolitionist who built a house in Portland, New York in 1860, with three cellars used as Underground Railroad stations. Fay also left a journal, written in 1830-1831, which primarily documented the brooms he made and included entries written in a simple code. A partial translation of text in code on this page reads, “O Lord I beg of thee to answer my prayers.”

“Lincoln Fay’s journal is a family heirloom,” notes Buchanan. “He was my grandmother’s grandfather. Many entries are related to Lincoln’s making and selling or trading brooms, for which he raised his own broomcorn” (a type of sorghum.)

Some pages are written in part or whole in a simple code, which is the alphabet backward. About his journal, Lincoln said:

Looking at the waste of past time and considering it a duty to improve my time whilst heaven lends me the blessing of health it always gives my life pleasure at night to look back on a profitable good day’s labour. Therefore, I conclude in old age it will be pleasant for me to see what I have been about since I commenced business in life for myself. Accordingly, I now [on] the 25th of Nov. commence a day book.

In the 1830s, broom-making was a significant industry in upstate New York, providing jobs for many families. The process of making brooms was labor-intensive and required skill. Brooms made from broomcorn were popular and of good quality. This industry was important to the local economy, especially in rural areas where farming was the primary occupation, and it helped farmers earn income during the slower winter months.

Buchanan drew a handmade broom and the page from the journal was recreated into a photopolymer plate and printed on a Vandercook SP20 Proof Press. The letterpress print, Lincoln Fay’s Journal, is offered as an edition of 20 and printed on Rives BFK cotton paper and soy inks, available through Wavelength Press and Charlie James Gallery.

Nancy Buchanan is represented by Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Centre Pompidou, the Getty Research Institute, and was included in four of the Getty-sponsored Pacific Standard Time exhibitions. Recent exhibitions include: Is it morning for you yet? 58th Carnegie International, 2023 and how we are in time and space: Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Barbara T. Smith, 2022 and The Youngest Day, Carlier/Gebauer, Berlin, 2021.She was the subject of a solo screening of her videotapes at REDCAT in 2013, and her videos have been included in group exhibitions including Agitprop at the Brooklyn Museum; RE-ACTION, a traveling exhibition originating in Spain; and Jonny at Insitu, Berlin. Buchanan is the recipient of four National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist grants, a COLA grant, and a Rockefeller Fellowship in New Media. In 2016, she organized It’s Your Party, a durational performance at UC Irvine’s xMPL Theater as the second event in The Art of Performance. Beginning with her participation as a founding member of F Space Gallery in Costa Mesa, Buchanan has been involved in numerous artists’ groups including The Los Angeles Woman’s Building and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); she has also acted as curator for several exhibitions and projects. From 1988-2012, she taught in the Film/School at CalArts; she worked with community activist Michael Zinzun on his cable access show Message to the Grassroots for ten years and as a member of Zinzun’s LA 435 Committee; and she traveled to Namibia to produce a documentary about that country’s transition to independence from the Republic of South Africa. Buchanan lives and works in Los Angeles.

The Planetary Series
by Leslie Ross-Robertson
This series will include Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, & Pluto.

Printed on 100% cotton paper, and soy inks.
Purchase: https://www.etsy.com/shop/modernoptic

Moon, 2019
Eight pass letterpress print.
12 x 16 inches
Edition of 100.

Mars, 2019
Nine pass letterpress print
12 x 16 inches
Edition of 100.

Venus ( with cloud cover ), 2019
Nine pass letterpress print.
12 x 16 inches
Edition of 100.

Earth, 2020 Fifteen pass letterpress print.
12 x 16 inches
Edition of 100.

Mercury, 2020
Ten pass letterpress print.
12 x 16 inches
Edition of 100.

Pluto, 2021
Twenty-seven pass letterpress print
12 X 16 inches
Edition of 100.

Neptune, 2022
Twenty-three pass letterpress
12 x 16 inches
Edition of 100.

Uranus, 2023
Ten-pass letterpress print
12 x 16 inches
Edition of 100.

Jupiter, 2024
Twenty-six pass letterpress print
12 x 16 inches
Edition of 100.