Reception: Arion Press at The Drawing Center
October 19, 2023
ViewArion Press at The Drawing Center
October 18 – 29, 2023
Arion Press at The Drawing Center
Featuring Vincent Valdez’s Slaughterhouse-Five Drawings
This October, The Drawing Center is pleased to partner with Arion Press, one of the nation’s leading publishers of fine press artist books, to present a special two-week pop-up at 35 Wooster Street. Founded in San Francisco in 1974, Arion pairs visual artists with classic and contemporary texts to create limited-edition, handmade books printed by letterpress and illustrated with original prints and drawings. A selection of Arion’s limited editions will be available for purchase in The Drawing Center’s bookstore, including Porgy & Bess with lithographs by Kara Walker, The Lulu Plays with drawings by William Kentridge, Jim Thompson’s South of Heaven with drawings by Raymond Pettibon, Machado de Assis’s The Alienist with prints by Carroll Dunham, and Poetry of Sappho with prints by Julie Mehretu.
Most recently, Arion Press partnered with Houston-based artist Vincent Valdez who created original drawings for their latest publication, an edition of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. As Arion’s inaugural King Artist in Residency, Valdez worked at the Press for six weeks and developed twenty-three original pen-and-ink drawings to bring Vonnegut’s darkly comic World-War II classic to life. Highlighting this unique collaboration between visual artists and Arion’s team of expert craftspeople, the pop-up will also include a presentation of Valdez’s drawings in The Drawing Center’s lower-level gallery. Taken as a whole, the drawings coalesce into what Valdez calls a “visual testimony of transformation, hope, love, and survival in 21st-century America.
Featured Artists
Arion Press
Arion Press produces and publishes three artist books a year, each limited to 250 copies for sale, and each conceptually unique and made by hand in their San Francisco facility. Arion’s workshop includes a letterpress shop, a hot-metal type foundry in continuous operation for over 100 years, and a hand book bindery and remains the only printing facility in the country to make books entirely by hand from start to finish under one roof. To date, they have published over 125 limited-edition books featuring such artists as Kenturah Davis, Natalie Frank, William Kentridge, R. B. Kitaj, Christian Marclay, Julie Mehretu, and Kara Walker.
Vincent Valdez
Vincent Valdez was born in 1977 in San Antonio, Texas, and began developing his interest in critical image-making at an early age. His polished execution and singular talent earned him a full scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received his B.F.A. in 2000. His work focuses on painting, drawing, and printmaking, often exploring themes of social justice, memory, and ignored or under-examined historical narratives. Valdez is most recognized for his monumental portrayals of contemporary figures. His drawings and painted subjects often remark, in starkly visual ways, on universal struggles within various social and political arenas. Valdez divides his time between Houston and Los Angeles, and his work is represented in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Ford Foundation, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery. In 2023, Valdez was the inaugural King Artist in Residence at Arion Press.
