Books published by Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation

For more than 50 years, American conceptualist Mel Bochner (born 1940) has been shaping dialogs between art and language through exhibition concepts, paintings and sculptures that embrace systems and structures to reveal their cracks and limitations, undermining the means we use to comprehend the world. Bochner created his first prints in 1973 at the invitation of publisher Robert Feldman of Parasol Press (who introduced a generation of minimalist and conceptual artists to printmaking through his work at Crown Point Press). Since then, Bochner has employed many different forms of printmaking, using and abusing its material possibilities and its unpredictability to counter the methodical fashion in which plates and stencils are cut, characters per line are fixed, or print runs set. This volume surveys Bochner's longstanding engagement with various types of printmaking, from aquatints to monoprints.

Mirror, Mirror collects the vast body of prints made by Los Angeles-based artist Alison Saar (born 1956) over the past 35 years. Addressing issues of race, gender and spirituality, her lithographs, etchings and woodblock prints are evocations of the sculptures for which she is renowned. Saar undertakes printmaking with the same tangible approach to unconventional materials and methods found in her sculpture. Cast-off objects such as old chair backs and found ceiling tin become the foundations for etching or lithography plates. Carved wooden panels used for wood block prints echo similar techniques established in her hewn wooden forms. In addition to printing on paper, Saar also employs a variety of used fabrics like vintage handkerchiefs, old shop rags and antique sugar sacks that are layered, cut, sewn and collaged--empowering the content of the image while resisting the flat repetitive nature of the medium.