Studio Visit in Cleveland with Jerry Birchfield
As we were beginning to start printing our recent edition with artist Jerry Birchfield, we were lucky enough to make it through to Cleveland for a studio visit. We were really thrilled to see some of the photographic and sculptural work that Jerry was making around the same time we were conceiving of our own collaboration together.
Throughout the studio are brilliant examples of how Jerry can set up a circumscribed system within which he can then experiment with the most unpredictable of materials and their physical behaviors. Plaster responds to the glossy surface of silver gelatin photo prints and the process is repeated over and over until a whole gridded display table is covered in variations on this procedural theme. These sculptural pieces are displayed alongside boxes crammed full of photogram prints, each offering a glimpse at an artist who appears desperate to grab at whatever means of documentation available to him. It often feels as if Jerry is trying to capture the un-namable, unknowable conditions or moments in time.
Jerry is always interested in materials doing what they do best rather than being shoehorned into a project or piece that could be better served by an alternative method of working. For our silkscreen prints, we knew that we wanted to be sure the edition let silkscreen do what it does best. So we pushed out to the edges of the paper with full-bleed imagery, we used multiple layers of iridescent metallic inks and also worked with black paper stock for one of the pieces as it provided the right ground for then building out Jerry’s gorgeous graphic textures.
