 Thanks for joining us tonight. Thanks for being in person. Thanks everyone who's on the line here. We are the off-campus gallery for MSU Denver here at Center for Visual Art. Diane and Mario are a part of this exhibition that I helped curate or that I curated called Pressing for Change. And I just am here to introduce them and I think almost everyone tall at least knows who they are, but I guess in person. I will share a little info about them and then they will talk about their work. Diane and Mario LaPlante met in graduate school pursuing their MFA at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. And they've been bicoastal collaborators for 30 years. They embrace layering process and distinctive textures and a meditative repetition. And for making has been an essential part of their practice and their work in here. And I have known them both for over 20 years, which I was shocked when I did the math today. I was like, wow, I can't believe I've known you guys for so long. And I'm so grateful that they were willing to participate in this show. You travel together, they find inspiration and dialogue through their process. And Mario LaPlante is the professor of printmaking at San Francisco State University. He regularly exhibits his work in his representative collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York Library, The Tate Gallery, and many others. And Diane is a distinguished professor of printmaking and book arts at State University of Plattsburgh and has exhibited in many important collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, and New York Public Library, Yelling University Art Gallery, and many more. Thank you again for being here. And I hope you all enjoyed this talk. I'm so psyched that they can still join us. And I'm going to turn it over to them and step out of the way for our folks here. Tell me if there's any terrible feedback with this. Right. Yeah. Are you going to mute yourself, Melanie? Yes. Yes, I'm going to mute me now. Thank you. All right. Welcome everyone. Thank you for your interest in Mario's and my work. I'm so pleased to have been included in the exhibition, Pressing for Change at Metropolitan State University of Denver's Center for Visual Arts. Many thanks to the show's curator, gallery manager, Melanie Finlayson, to Cecily Cullen, director of CVA, for her commitment to innovation and professionalism, and to our fellow exhibitors. It is a great honor to share the space with artists who make exquisite and thoughtful work and care about repairing our world. Mario and I are both trained as printmakers and the show focuses on printmakers. Just a few quick slides. Printmaking has been around for millennia. These images are from Lascaux Caves, 20,000 plus years old. And just the definition of printmaking is having a matrix, putting, applying, there's something in between you and the piece of paper or the fabric. So on the right, you see that pigment was applied to someone's hand 20,000 years ago and stamped on the wall. And on the left, you see the hand acting as a stencil as in silk screen hand put on the wall and pigment probably blown through a straw around the hand. There's a quote that I like to bring at this point of Michael Rothenstein. He was a very influential British printmaker, 20th century. And the remark he made is that he, in essence, printing is an embrace. It's one body against another. And here, of course, the printing press, printmaking predates the printing press by millennia. We're seeing two different kinds of presses here on the left, a cylinder press most commonly used now by printmakers. And on the right, a platen press, certainly people still use a platen press. And that's on the right, much the design of Gutenberg's press. He's credited with inventing the printing press in the West, in the middle of the 15th century. There were presses in China predating that by a few hundred years. I know Mario likes this. You've said that we like the way this shows the strength involved, anyone that has made prints. I know teaching. I just love the first time I asked a student to go ahead and crank that press, crank that image through the press. More pressure, more pressure. Right. It's really a very special feeling. This is my letter press, SP 15, a Vander Cook. So in Mario's and my work, we're traditionally trained in both letter press and etching and lithography. And this is a press made primarily, people certainly print relief on this press, print images, but it's made primarily for printing movable type, also an invention in the West credited with up to Gutenberg. And again, predating that in the East. What you're seeing here is a job stick with some text. Everything's always reversed, as those of you have learned either the hard way or the easy way in printmaking. And you're seeing the California job case when you set type. That's where all the letters are. Before this, people were handwriting everything. That job stick will reoccur later on in our talk. It's actually a part of an image that will make a lot of sense about the reversal. Diane and I are collaborators and we've been collaborating for over 30 years. Our teaching career has taken us in opposite our coast. I'm on the West Coast, she's on the East Coast, but that didn't stop the collaboration from remaining constant and growing. And we've had sort of a similar journey in our training as artists, but it began in both our case as graphic designer. We were both interested in the capacity of art to have a language that's a little bit more universal and also learning the love of type. That's something that has always kept constant in my work. So one thing that we also happen is that we both were accepted in the program at UW Madison. And Diane at the end of her stay, we all hoped for teaching position. That's something that we always strive for. And Diane was pulled away from our department and invited to SUNY Platsburg, a university not very far upstate New York. And she went for an interview. They kept her and she's been there since. And what was practical for me and for our collaboration is that she landed in a place that's two and a half hours south of Montreal. My family is in Montreal. So whenever I went to see family, Diane was sort of included in that where I would travel across the border and work with her during the winter and also doing it in the summer. So this biannual collaborative effort that we started was quite easy to maintain. The book that we did the first one is actually that's the second one. And at that time I was very much devoted to lithography as a medium. And we decided to work on a project titled Untattled Book About Stairs. It is basically a piece of paper as you can see in a strange triangular shape that gets to be unfolded. And for many of you who are within my age group, you'll remember those maps that we have to unfold to travel into sort of go places. And that's what that emulates for us. And the bringing them back to its original state is always a struggle and so is with that print. But it opens up from a dark monochromatic side with imagery icons of stairs that Diane and I both work with at the time. And it unveils itself into a quite a beautiful, rich blue surface. And it's a Japanese paper that's printed on both sides. And so Diane will have chosen just sort of when coming to the main part where the poem, which she wrote, it's a poem that Diane wrote. We will read it for you. Yeah, and I just wanted to add right that it's this lovely Japanese paper. And in a way, I mean, one side is earthly and one side is heavenly, I guess, or cosmic or however you want to think about that. We really shifted the colors in that way. And I should just say here that putting together these kinds of presentations, anyone who's done it, you know, Mario and I, we say 30 plus years. That's kind of a lot on the plus side of the 30 years. But we really just learn a lot more by pulling this work together. So we're always noticing things. And this was a favorite piece from some time ago. And, you know, we all had experience that trying to put a map back, fold it back, get it back into the glove compartment of the car. And this book actually can be folded back up a few different ways and still fit back into its triangular enclosure. And the poem, Mario, you're going to start. Yes. St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Patrick's, St. John's the Divine, St. Martin's in the Field, Chartres, Sacré-Cœur, Notre Dame. Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Frisia, Violet, Iris, Rose, Blood, Fire, and Pillars of Smoke, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zepo, Hallelujah. And the text had a lot to do, our human condition of, had a lot to do with the simultaneity of comedy and tragedy and joy and grief. And this was, Mario mentioned that it was our second project together, but it really was an important jumping off point. I believe it was the last project we did before I moved to the East Coast. This is it unfurled, you know, one side of it. The other side of where you find the poem. So, and we're so thrilled to know that Kahuru and Andrew are here. The next bit of work we're going to show you is happened because of Kahuru Otani, who was a student of mine here at the State University of New York in Plattsburg for four years, quite a few years ago. I'm not counting. And one of the best students I ever had the opportunity to work with. And her parents came and visited while she was here, and they extended an invitation for me to come and visit Japan. And they did that more than once when Kahuru moved back with Andrew to Japan. The invitations kept coming and I remember one day saying to myself, like, oh, too bad, I can't go to Japan. And then I happened to have the one and only tarot card reading I ever have had. And in that, the person said that I was going to go on a trip that I didn't think I could go on. And that was obvious then that that place to go was Japan and the Otani's and Kahuru and Andrew hosted us. And we went to Nara and Kyoto and Shizuka where Kahuru was from and Tokyo. And here in Kyoto, Mario and I in general visit cemeteries. I assume that many of you may share that passion. There's so much to be seen both aesthetically, historically. And when we were in Kyoto, we went to, I'm sorry to say, I don't know the name of this. I did at one point know the name of this cemetery. But because these are cremains, it's very dense and this cemetery went up the side of a hill. And we noticed as we walked around where we didn't have the language. This was all unfamiliar to us. But what we noticed was every marker had these beautiful, these recesses here. You can see my cursor, right? Yes. Here. Okay. And, you know, obviously places for flowers, places for offerings. And we saw that down at the bottom of the hill was a trough, a stone trough with a fountain with water running and bamboo ladles and bamboo buckets. And we watched people that were coming to honor the people that their ancestors who had passed would take the bucket of water and then go up and fill these recesses with water. And Mario told me that he recently learned that sometimes people would put sake into that little recess to quench the thirst of people. So this is our understanding of the people on the other side. And so when we were, and obviously, you know, people, I know in the Jewish tradition, we often leave a stone on the grave site and certainly flowers. I've done a lot of photographs of flowers that are weeks old, right? People leave all sorts of offerings at grave sites. So after we were in Japan, we decided to make this book. You can see the scale of it here. I'm holding it on the right and it's in an exhibition on the left. And we used, we photographed when we were there, these recesses. And, you know, not only did people bring different offerings and you sort of, it wasn't the rainy season when we were there. You could tell, right? If a recess was dry, someone hadn't been there recently. The other thing is it was the cherry blossom season and lots of things were blowing around. And so there was a lot of embellishment by nature of these recesses. So we did a lot of photographing of those while we were there. And then when we decided to make this book, probably a year or two after we were there, this book called Offering, we used the text, one of various translations of the Mahayana Buddhist heart sutra. So I'll show you this book entitled Offering. And this is our title. It's about six and a half by 13 and a half by 20. And it's a panel accordion structure. And one of the things that Diane aspired to is always sort of integrate new technology. And at the time it was the capacity to photograph and eventually print those photographs on Japanese paper. And that was sort of something that became very important for any future work that we did. Go ahead. Right. Doing that digitally and then also using letterpress and our press names. Mario, how long have we been? We just really Mario's press name is Gravel Press, which is his grandmother's family's name and my press Moon Cush Press is a American like transliteration into English of the city in Hungary that my from where my grandfather, my mother's father emigrated to the United States in the early part of the 20th century. And it's interesting that, you know, completely serendipitously, we both honored our grandparents in the naming of repressant that press that press name stays with you for your entire career. So here let me share offering with you the epigraph we used here as an excerpt from an African American spiritual. And when it was night, I thought it was day. And again, the translation from the heart sutra, there is no birth and no cessation. There is no impurity and no purity. There is no decrease and no increase. No ignorance. No end of ignorance. No old age and death. No end of old age and death. No suffering. No origin of suffering. No cessation of suffering. No attainment. No non attainment. And we finished with a quote from the Buddha, all things vanish in splendor. All things in themselves are evanescent. And then our colophon page, again, photographically transparent printing of that cemetery in a Kyoto cemetery mourners leave signs of their visit and nature embellishes those signs. And it goes on to talk about the specifics of the book. And you can see that we made 25 copies of that book, which we're happy to have, you know, different collections have that book and we've been able to show the book. It's a great pleasure for us. So being able to print the photographs that were taken that day allowed for an almost seamless relationship of our physical experience of the cemetery and the essence of our emotional journey. And it became clear as we selected different locations for our trip that the outside world, the experience, the visiting basically really came strongly into our working relationship in the studio. Diane and I had a residency at the Dettolo Center for Contemporary Art in Castiglione, Acastoria in the province of Abruzzo, Italy. We had both been to Italy before. In fact, many of us have Melanie and who also were in Venice. But this part of Italy was really all new to us. It's about 90 minutes from Rome in one direction and 30 minutes from Pescara. Now the, it's also located centrally and around the Apennini Mountains. This is an example of the press that was present there, an etching press that we ended up using for a series of drive points. And what was interesting about our visit in the area, not only Abruzzo was peppered with hills and mountain tops, but also villages and inhabited with lots of ruins. And it came to our attention also, as you can tell, beautiful vineyards and olives. Thank you, olives. In fact, there was one place we came to a location where there were 200 year old olive trees just pulled out of the earth and just lined up that were going to be brought into different centers of different villages. It was really an interesting picture. But one thing as we noticed by visiting all the churches that in many cases, the structure had somehow been destroyed. There's an example, for instance, that a church may have been built in 1965 and then rebuilt in 1079 when a earthquake occurred and rebuilt again. And what we saw is the attempt at the village, the villagers who lived in those places to keep those beautiful structures alive by painting them, restoring them as best as possible with earnestness. So as we traveled around different places, we did take notes, we took photographs, and in many cases took details of the architecture of the place. And that was brought into our work that we did, which was quite a dimensional scope. Right, and I just want to add here, Mario, about the earth, because this was a very earthquake prone region. I think, I can't remember, it was before or after we went, there was a serious earthquake. But yeah, that building, you know, every first built in 965, then destroyed by earthquake, then rebuilt. And at some point, just as we're having, I'm thinking I'd love to go see if it was how, what the ratio of years that the building was actually stood to when it was in ruination. You know, but this commitment to rebuilding and rebuilding and rebuilding was really quite moving. And as Mario said, we, that these are, you're going to talk about these constructions that we made related to. That like visual portraits and intentional or otherwise, found at every turn and boards brought together with gouache. And it was really the first time where we investigated the sculptural possibility of paper and hinging. So the first one that we're seeing here, the names actually make reference to the experience as well. They're all called abruzzo by number and then followed by a title. This first one is called dome. And it's about 10 by 11 inches. And these are, they're framed in shadow boxes. And they are in like slight relief. Yeah. The next one is more of a festive, please. It's called festival. And our next one is called a lantern on the left. And on the right was definitely an attempt at studying the inside and floor plan of a church. And that one is called floor plan. On the left side is lantern. And on the right side, sorry, it's gate. The one on the right on the left side is gate and the one on the right is called piazza. And the last two on the left is called yellow cross again about nine by eight and Adriatic on the right. Right. And we were not too far. We ran the Apennine Mountains, but when we first we didn't get to the Adriatic that often it was maybe only about an hour away. But there was a very special experience to stick our toes in that water for the first time in it. That is part of the inspiration for this this piece on the right. And the next, you know, we this was this was a residency as we said, and then we started realizing we could make our own residencies. We wound up a couple of years later renting an artist studio in Devon in in England. We were in a place called Honiton and there were among many other wonderful things about that area. There was a lace making tradition. And also we visited many cathedrals churches and cathedrals, not Catholic in this case, but Anglican and so many again, you know, I mean, we would go into a cathedral and then meet, you know, run into each other, go our own separate ways. And at the end of every day, Mario and I talked about this, that we would take photographs, look at the photographs at the end of the day when we were back at the studio. And it was really neat to see like, you know, there were certain things that we both absolutely took photographs of and other things where I oh where was that or he'd say where was that, you know, like just there's so much to see. And in this, you know, the ceilings are amazing. And those decorative objects are referred to are called bosses, B O S S E S. And my understanding is that they they're hiding there for decoration. I don't think but don't quote me on this. I don't think they're structural, but maybe they are. But they hide where the joints come together in these vaults, vaulted ceilings, and you're either lying on the floor or cool like really crooked your neck, or in some places they had these wonderful carts with mirrors that allowed you a more comfortable view of what was going on in the ceiling. And so we made, you know, we in that studio, we brought some pre printed materials, you'll see this what you're seeing as that grid is a lithograph. We brought multicolored these great, you'll see these grids, we used over and over again to make these pieces that we were responding to what we were seeing in Devon, and this first piece is called English garden. You know it's mixed media collage you can see a lot of it is cut away. And it's 12 by 10 inches. This is called garden plan. This is what we were seeing earlier and after the fact to is realizing that the lace that we saw the beauty of the lace really comes through in the work that we did at the time. Right, like I'm not sure if we would have been cutting away as much. Yeah, if we hadn't been seeing that lease. This is called standing stones, we were not far from the Stonehenge we didn't have the good fortune to see other standing stone monuments but the Stonehenge was, as those of you that have gone, really special and actually Mario I just remembered, I know we're not supposed to get off, we need to keep moving along but to remember we saw, there were a lot of people there tourists, and we saw a person who was didn't have sight who was blind, and a person was standing next to her describing Stonehenge. Yeah, it was really beautiful but and at the site you know like she could feel the wind and smell what was anyway was it was quite moving. And another piece from that series, this is called spears, and you can see that pre printed lithograph the grid behind which we had, we worked on top of, and these areas. Mario, I'm sorry, are these cut out or is that collage. The circle the spears work painted individually collage yes right. Okay, so you know sometimes we know. Anyway, hopefully you can relate to revisiting something from a while ago and you're like what now. Okay. We did the math before, but I forgot to write it down, I don't know between three and 400 little paintings one one inch square paintings that we passed back and forth. And one of the things that's always an issue I think for any artist. And certainly when you're working with someone else is knowing when something is complete so there was a lot of passing back and forth. There was a separate station where it's like okay these we agree are finished. And then there's another station where things are in constant progress. And this one one of my favorites from that series is called bosses. Yes I remember when I heard when I saw this person describing the landscape to the person who couldn't see it was really a revelatory to the understand the possibility of description in words it was quite touching. What happens in our collaborative effort is that there is this effort this attempt at organizing the space so work can flow and generally like Diane was just explaining. There is a place where it's common where the work is laid out and it usually goes back in four two or three times I have my space. Diane has her space she produces her own work during that time as well and so do I so there's a two layers of work going on at the same time. Loving cemetery loving the beauty of Japan and certainly British landscape Devon the next body the next body of work that we did was primarily by for the love of water the body of water we sort of at that point. Rented a place in Maine Indian pain Indian point and a lot of the images that you are you're about to see are kind of a coming to an understanding of the implication of the seascape the rocks. It was quite a beautiful location. The first one that you see here is about 610 by 16 very direct on board of watercolor collage and graphite and this one's called deluge and the one on the left is calming calming and outcropping. Right and you can and you can see stamping and push war those of you that are familiar with that and then on the right that I know is Mario the all those circles are a separate piece of you know again almost lace you know what a cut out piece that is then collaged. Yeah. This one is called the one on the left is allure and one on the right is high tide and it's interesting in the process of working where things stopped. I would say like I think it's finished on and I don't think it needs any more than she takes it and puts it into a different sphere and it actually very often finds the exact answer that it needs. So this back and forth is an interesting understanding of our own limitation but also our own aesthetic choice and how we make your own work and how it can be applied to someone else's vision. Right and also that I'm sorry Mario that you had knowing when something's finished and and also having you know because we would take three or four weeks for these sort of residencies is really being able to put something aside for a while you know everyone that that is listening that's an artist is you know you need to come back to it to see oh yes it is done or it's not done right you need to it seems to me at least in my experience there definitely needs to be some time to make that decision. Some walking away from it this is another one from this is that other one was high tide this one is low tide. And we decided to also go to a different location in this case we went to Newfoundland a few times where other pieces were done and of course very much the reflection of the landscape to those are quite small, including collage and direct painting. The one on the left is called drift and broom broom or fog on the right. What I love about this, any kind of digital presentation it does make the color very vibrant so that's really beautiful to see here it's on the left side it's called trio and on the right is resilience. In the preparation to our working together we generally decide on what to bring and what's interesting is I we ship a box, at least I do from the West Coast. And then what I realized by looking at the content of box is what's I'm going to be working with and it's limitation and the preparation for that is something that has quite an impact on the collaboration that we do and it's going to come up later on as well. The one here the upper left corner is called flotsam to its right is great island. At the bottom left, it's called fathom and the mechanism piece on the lower right is called harbor. Like I was saying earlier one of the things that I collect a lot of paper, both prints and also found paper that's manufactured and I had this wonderful set of old screen printed wallpaper and most of the paper that's used in in general. Large scale work it's usually wood pulp and it's generally just ages and foxes and gets yellow very quickly and I had this beautiful collection but I generally love the back of it a lot more than the front so. Not wanting to deal with the acidity I took this the piece and then scan them and printed them on Japanese paper send them to Indian point and put them aside knowing that. Diane and I will at one point do something with it and I remember they were they were we were working on many different things. And these sat there for quite some time like we were there for three weeks I feel like we didn't pick these up maybe until the third week. Oh yeah. Yeah, right and I think what happened is one day I just noticed those and we're not constantly talking narrating to each other about what we're doing so. I picked those up that Mario had brought and I made these drawings and then later that day he discovered that will show you the series in a moment. The group is called schema. When he looked I said oh by the way I worked on those those Japanese paper wallpaper, you know, prints that you digital prints that you brought. So he took a look at them and he said oh I think they're finished like he I think it's the only time I can remember where he looked at something and and sit you know like it. Like maybe I hadn't left any room for him you know I mean you weren't saying it you weren't saying it angrily or anything like that you were just like I think they're kind of nice as they are. And I was like really well give it give it some more time you know look and spend some time with them and then I mean these are very special to both of us because they did see seem finished and then Mario these are all just called schema 123 and so on. Mario's embellishments are like this push war here of that star right I had drawn these forms. I believe you drew these can't always not always able to do that. I think in this group, it's a little easier to see but but they so the point is they weren't finished. I know that this is something that Mario added these sort of striations. There is this one quote that Albrecht tour says that I noted here it says one man may sketch something with his pen on half a sheet of paper in one day. And it turns out to be better than and more artistic than any other great works of art. Which is which it's author labored with alt most diligence for an entire year. The gift is a miracle sometimes you really work hard on a piece and it develops quite well and sometimes it just takes a few a few hours and that's what's really a miracle in some ways in art making is that you just have to stop at the right moment. And this came about so fast and so right. Yeah, yeah, right and and they just feel sweet and soft and this is the last one in that maybe this is the last one. Or, nope. This is the last one. And it's called vain the any. No, no, no, these are all just called schema. Oh, sorry. Okay. Right. I did. Yeah, but we can but Yeah, I'm trying to see here. Right. I think this is you Mario, but anyway, sorry to get into the minutia. Yeah, this series this this one is I start this is from a group of work that we call shadow and light. And it's as simple as we have many you know we're showing you like samplings from a series. And these started as these are 13 by 13 inches this one is called circus, but they started with just photographs kind of snapshots that I was taking of shadow and light you know this, you know, very attractive to me right that we all are aware of and embrace and the we started I think we said this already but we got in the habit of bringing sort of the first layer of things along with us this I know we made these and main at one point we went to main a few times to the same place and this for example this piece is called pageant and you know Mario had asked me when we were putting this together if I had done any manipulation and Photoshop for these and I didn't this pink and that blue was what the light was doing at like five or six o'clock in the morning on the wall of the place we were in in and then of course the rest of those those are digital prints and then we worked on top of those here's some others from that series this one is called tunnel mixed media and collage again these are all 13 by 13 inches. This one is called plumb like with a bee at the end, like plumbing the depths of something. Concurrence currency this this got its title from this this part here, we collaged we both had currency from pre euro Europe. So Drachma's and Lyra and Frank's and that's how that title. That's what this part of the collage is currency. This one is called hearth and vein as in a wind vein V A N E north south east west you can see the directions. One I'm not sure when those the following ones were created but I remember I at the time I was visiting a dear friend of mine. Artist Bay Area artist named Emily Payne Emily Payne at the was in the habit of getting a lot of books old books covers would usually use the fabric from the cover and work from them and she still does and would accumulate lots of book boards. And very often she'd say Mario I'm overwhelmed by all these would you mind taking them and I would leave her studio with a stack. So I brought these with me to Diane's for a work session and we decided to create these sort of diptych. Definitely diptych that would emulate the book is in essence there's so many parts of it that actually make reference to the end sheets colors are printed. So we went right like this here. This was on an end sheet. Yeah, from right that we didn't draw this was found. The other things are added. Yeah. So this is called Exodus. And they're about six by eight very dimensional. So you could hold them like they were a book and the center sort of emulates a centering the gutter of a book as well. This is called amulet. And they're presented in shadow boxes also because they're pretty dimensional. And this adoration. Next one is chapter inverses. Listen and learn that's a very direct myth pastiche and in. Oh, pending. Yes. Yeah. And in Persia. And the last one is serenade. Yes. And I got Susan Diane to come to California, which was a great event. So landed. We had figure. I mean, she's great at locating the place to go. She does incredible research finds the place. And she found this house in Gualala about, I would say, you know, three hours north of San Francisco, like going up winding highway one. It was beautiful sunset. In fact, in fact, what we see right now is Phoenix Nest is sort of jet peninsula that goes into the ocean and that you can see a partial beach where I'm pronounced to us. They were going to be a colony of seals leaving their living there for the duration of our stay, which became quite cacophonist. And at that point, also a lot of materials were sent and such beautiful images that you created Diane and we'll talk about how they came to be. Yeah. Let me see. Oh, yeah. Okay. So these are those. These are linoleum cuts brought those with us. You'll see how those find their way into other pieces. And the so, so, oh, I know that that they're the difference here. So right, we've been using digital underprintings. And what was new about this body of work was that the I was scanning objects rather than taking photographs. So you'll see this one we did a series of four pieces using these urns. This one is called elixir and using the same background. This is called libation. And, you know, partly I don't want to share what the background is, but it's also fun to, I'll tell you, this is called potion. And, you know, the urn is treated differently. The background is treated differently for each of these. This last one is called brew. So push war and stamping. And what I scanned here was a beautiful felt trivet from Tibet or India that was given to me as a gift from my friend Catherine Clark. And this is Diane actually attempting at one of the final touches of a series that we did at the time to very square. We noticed that a lot of the work that we do is square. And that's the series is called cash and cash has definitely double meaning for us, you know, referring to stored somewhere to a place where it is hidden. But it's also meets short term computer memory where information is stored for easy retrieval. Diane has an extensive collection of small bowls. And she went through, I think really revelatory process of just scanning her bowl by placing them face down onto a scanner. And that's what you see here. And these are titled no special titles just cash number one cash number two and so on. And here there is more manipulation with like there is some things happen in Photoshop before we then took them to California and did the analog work. So this is from that series called cash. It totally changed the perspective like a very shallow perspective, which I think makes the work interesting. Right, especially since they were now that you mentioned it, you know that they were both you know they were dimensional objects right and yet I agree there's a flatness to them. This was I know this basket was a gift from my sister Janet. And I confess I'm pretty sure that they the the basket was from Africa and she can fill me in later if I'm correct about that. She's brought me so many different gifts from so many different places. And this these times of Diana and I spent together are generally very private and Janet was able to speak with us for about a week and witness our work together which from a perspective was really refreshing to see. It was lovely to have her she was actually right working on a book at the time. Right. Well the other thing this just reminded me of Mario Mario takes longer to make decisions I would say that there's so much I'm like okay let's let's glue that down. Let's glue that baby down and he won't he won't do it yet you know he won't because things have to key you know and then an hour later I see that he's moved some of these see these rings are individual pieces. So then you know that neutral space where everything is pending and potentially finished. We visit together and then we discuss you know right can be done what cannot be done and final decisions are reached. But for sure he's a much more patient person than I have because I'm always like let's glue those babies down and he's like no let's let's spend some more time with them. This is that last one in that series and even though I feel like in some of the earlier work we're definitely referring very specifically to the area that we're in. That's not always the case I think in these previous pieces right it doesn't matter that we're on the coast of California but this one seems you know this this one did speak to that it seems to me. It did. Ah, and so then Melanie blessed Melanie Finlayson invited us to be in this exhibition, the purpose of this talk, and kind of like lost track of my papers but I know here to This is some of you may be familiar with this. This is the Zvalbard global seed bank in Norway. This seed vault safeguards duplicates of more than a million seed samples from almost every country in the world with room for millions more. This is probably a northern as you can tell Norway that's built underground. Its purpose is to backup. It's a backup gene bank collections to secure the foundation of our future food supply, sometimes referred to when I'd be reading about it. And this is not this is by far the largest and most comprehensive seed bank but there are seed banks all over the world. This is sometimes referred to as the doomsday vault. And, you know, the environmental you know Melanie asked us as part of this her curatorial vision was to think about environmental concerns and Mario and I started thinking and researching a bit about diversity of seeds and plant diversity and the loss of that diversity and what that means. And you'll see the work in the show, which we're about to get to reflects that was inspired by those concerns. And I did a little there's I think in the gallery there's a there's a graphic that we used that, for example, in terms of diversity in 1903. There were 544 different kinds of cabbage being grown on this earth. In 1983, there were only 28 different kinds of cabbage being grown in 1903 there were 497 different kinds of lettuce. And in 1983, only 36 different kinds of lettuce. So, by the way, this is a neat shot of inside the vault. And here this is a hopeful slide, you know, in, as you all have heard, you know about heirloom vegetables right and trying to reclaim some of this diversity the image on the right is from a agricultural fair in Belgium that was celebrating the tomato and its variations and on the left, various squashes. After reading about the thinning of diversity, it was a pleasure to see images like this. And also in your reading to the the concept of food desert as well were not only is it not diversity but actually food scarcity or it's not fresh food is not accessible. I did some preparation for the work where I wanted to investigate and work with a different tooled laser cutter and we found an image a beautiful image of seeds varieties of seeds in the out they do show in the work later on. But these are examples of seeds that I cut at different size. And I must say I want to thank Melanie for inviting us because up till that point Melanie we were sort of pretty much working directly collage and on different location but that caused us to go back to the print shop the printmaking lab together to actually investigate approaches and it's been very fruitful in the jump that we did in our love for printmaking. I'm really pleased. And as you can see here there was some extension of what we did what Diane did with the bulls is that we continued on by in this case scanning plates so the plates were brought to the scanner face down and what you see on the left are images that we taken over different trips some of them are from Britain cut and then also put around the plate so that both the plate and the prints would be scanned at the same time. Right so we created these masks anyway really really you know just like in any medium right you develop your methods and you know you try something and have these wonderful surprises. This is right we did let a press again chose to do let a press in certain situations and that led to this piece. The all four pieces that are in the show these four triptychs I mean we have there's other pieces in the show but these were made specifically for the show what's their size again Mario. They're 18 inch high by 48 inches. 48 inches right. And this one is called mortal coil. I mean and we're you know again not to get into the technical too much but that's we made knots with wires and and scanned that that's what's on the left and in the middle is the uncoiling of those knots. This one is called seed bank. This one is called stead fast and in this case so the green or actual a discovery that we both did and using those cutouts and create calligraph and relieve them it was playful and a good discovery for us. Yeah and also the scanning making a decision to scan a plate like the plates in this which we found in some second hand store through a piece of tracing paper. So there's there's this loss of detail that we were you know found aesthetically really beautiful. And this one is one of that whose title is most I think special at least to me and it's called we are hungry and you feed us and Diane is a wonderful. Wonderful quick and I'm looking at the time though I want to just be careful but I would like to tell you this one story if I were there I'd see whether you were not in your heads or not but where this title came from. And Mario and I are we're almost too young to remember the automatic I remember the automatic a little bit. So those of you that this was I just learned I had no idea that it only these machines only took nickels the first one was in Philadelphia. But they were throughout the country and was this although there were people behind those but it was this automation and you can see how it was set up. And they were large spaces and at least in the north what I read was I mean I don't know why am I going off on the tangent about the automatic except that it's so interesting. But there were there was a lot of people all people were welcome different you know people from different socio economic strata and race. You know there wasn't like everybody went because it was such a phenomenon I guess so anyway the story where that title came from. We are hungry and you feed us is from a story that Patty Smith tells in the book she wrote that I hope many of you have read or will read called just kids. Which is about her young life in New York with Robert maple Thorpe in the early 70s late 60s early 70s I think and they were they were broke and struggling and they were both artists. She of course also became a musician and living sometimes on the street sometimes like in the Chelsea hotel. And she's you know money was really scarce and she said she was hungry all the time and she saved there was a sandwich that she really wanted which was a cheese and lettuce sandwich. And it was 35 cents so seven nickels my dear math right. And so she saved up her seven nickels and she went to the automatic and the price had gone up to 40 cents. And she was standing there you know look a staring and someone came up to her and said you know do you need some help and she turned around and it was Alan Ginsburg the great poet who she certainly recognized he had no idea who she was. She was younger and unknown at the time and he said oh I'd be happy to you know we spotted her the extra nickel and he also bought her a cup of coffee. And then he asked her to join him and they sat down so again she's just sort of like overwhelmed with the fact that this person whose work she loves you know she's making these connections and she realizes after they sit there and chat for a little while. That he you know as you know Ginsburg was gay and he it takes him a little while to realize that Patty Smith is a woman and when he does you know he politely excuses himself is not interested in this particular date. So that happened and years later when Patty Smith was well known and she had occasion to to meet and then come to know Alan Ginsburg. He remembered that incident and he said to her that he was embarrassed. He said I'm so sorry about the first time we met and you know what those circumstances were or whatever and I left you at that table and she just said to him. My memory of that moment was I was hungry and you fed me. So that's where that title comes from. I love that story, Diane. Thank you. Well, we have some left or images here of or we did gather last time and created these gifts package of seeds. And there to be had I believe they're in the gallery so whoever's there can take them if they want. Right and Melanie is going to because again we were supposed to be there in person but we shifted gears. Thank you for everyone's patients where that's concerned. So Melanie I believe is going to leave these in in the gallery that the bush beans that we chose are drought resistance and resistant and good at high altitude so seemed appropriate for Denver. And we just want to thank you and leave you with this quote by Wendell Berry and let you know ask you if you have any questions for us and thank you again for coming. Thank you for the opportunity. Melanie you're going to jump back in or there's Melanie like out having dinner somewhere. Here I'm here. I don't know how you want it if they're the mechanism for asking questions is in the chat or you know how do you want to go about that. Yes people are welcome to unmute themselves or if there's anyone in the audience. Any questions. Has any there's only a handful of people here but if anyone has questions you're welcome to ask will take a few minutes. Lots of claps. Thank you. Diane Mario that was so great. I I have a question if no one else does. Okay. Your collaboration. I loved how you talked about working together and your choices all of that. What what is next. Oh thank you for asking that. And we didn't even did we didn't ask you to ask that did we. No no you didn't ask me to. Okay because my I said and we've done this you know if there aren't we certainly sometimes there are questions sometimes there aren't but I will go ahead and show you this is something we've been working on for a while and it's very much in progress and we're working on it's going to be a rather large book. Called Inventory and one of our we have been making these small pieces. Triangles squares. I'm just going to quickly run through it. Yeah they reminded me of the work we did in England or small. Right. Yeah. So these are just still that eventually they're going to be this book but these are we made all the all the little triangles all the little squares that you'll see our analog and these are digital. Setups of them and these will be part of this book called inventory we don't know where it's going yet but it's been going for a while and this is an inventory of the pieces that we have so far. We have a question here. Sure. Oh Patty Smith right who is in the story you just told Diane Patty Smith and Alan Ginsburg is that Patty Smith and the poet Alan Ginsburg so Alan Ginsburg was much her senior the beat poet and Patty Smith musician and poet and philosopher. And and the book that she wrote is called just kids. Her life with Maple Thorpe right photographer. He had already died by the time she wrote that book but she had promised him that she would write that book. Thank you. Thank you. We have another question here. Okay. They. Yeah they have been collaborating over 30 years. That's pretty impressive. I mean it's one of it's so inspirational to me the year collaboration I have to say. And we do have a question in the chat it says how do people buy your work. Well at exhibitions they can buy our work and also. My website has almost all of this work will be on my website which is dianne fine.com. Simple as that just dianne fine.com and you'd be able to inquire we don't have prices on the website but you'd be able to inquire and that website is my website and there's a section that's my collaborations with Mario so we are very interested in selling our work. Always. It's always a pleasure. Well it's finding a home for them more than you know. Right. Definitely finding a home. And giving them a life. As a matter of fact I don't know if Noreen Sedou was able to be here for this talk but I was at visiting her not too long ago and saw the piece. I'm not remembering what. Anyway I didn't even know like I forgot that Noreen had it and there it was in her beautiful home. Right so that's that's really a blessing to find homes for the pieces so but don't be shy. Ask go to the website and ask us. I do. Yeah one more one more question. Do you. Well they have press names. What are your two presses names. Are you do. Oh Moon Cush Press is. Cush. And gravel gravel road gravel. And yeah Google those you'll you'll get. You'll certainly get things but the website that is pretty comprehensive. Although this most recent work has yet to be uploaded I'll do that soon is Diane fine calm. And you know the collaboration over time. I just Lorraine has a question for us Diane. Okay. Hi there. This is just wonderful. Thank you. Hi. Thank you so much for sharing your work with us and Diane I've had the great pleasure to collaborate with you and put some haiku poetry in your images. You are. You are the person. Well I love that work. Lovely balancing stones. What was that called. Standing stones. Yes. Which I was able to put a poem to so I just wanted to. Thank you so much for for lending me that work it was just an honor and a beautiful piece. Thank you. It was a beautiful piece. Thank you. Thank you. That's actually a wonderful collaboration right there. Yeah. Right. Three-way collaboration and Mario and Lorraine are just meeting for the first time. Yeah. And you know that 30 plus years is what I have and Mario has to collaborated with other people. And I think one of the things that's unique about us is it's been ongoing. It's without without any hiatuses. If that's the hiatai. I'm not sure what the plural of hiatuses. But ongoing and it should it should you know my wish is that it it continue for as you know another 30 plus years. I so hope so too Diane. Thanks Mario. So it looks like Jennifer has a question about having any tips or advice for current graphic design students. Well you know interestingly Mario pointed out we both studied graphic design as undergraduates. And then we both went to printmaking. I don't I can't speak for you Mario but I know you did printmaking as an undergrad. And that was really my my first love and it was leaving school. You know I made the decision that I wanted to pursue that and went to graduate school for printmaking. But I think the way in which we use the work. The way in which we use that our graphic design training informed us in our work is typographically. And I'm sure you know this if you're a graphic design student. You can't you know you can't know enough about type the history of type the use of type. If you're I mean obviously there's many other things involved with graphic design but recently. Who sent this to me I think Tracy Han sent me a website and you have my contact information. So if anyone's interested in this I can get this to you which is what's it called something like type fonts fonts F. O. N. T. S. Fonts in use. And you can you know when you're choosing a font whether you're just doing something you know writing a letter to someone or writing a grant proposal or or doing a graphic design piece or an art piece you're like whoever uses blah blah blah right you look through all the choices of fonts and there's so many there but probably very few that you actually use. So this site like you can choose a font and it shows you some barbershop in Zimbabwe where they're using that font so it's really really cool to see how people make use of things that you couldn't imagine. You know what that particular font would be used for so I mean I don't know that that's answering your question but I think you know for for us our experiences specifically with with type and type design. Anything else. No more questions here. Thank you so much everyone. And I can't wait to see what this new work comes out like. Okay. Yeah we're taking inventory of it see. Look how orderly it is compared to this. Right. Right. So yeah I need to do I need to do this is my house I need my house to become like this. Within reason. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. I appreciate the opportunity. It was lovely. Thank you Diane. Thank you Melanie. Thank you Melanie. Thanks for coming. Thank you so much. Thank you for your work. Sign it out.