ARTIST STATEMENT:

"Wagnerian Rock" is one of a series of five screen prints with upper and lower images- a form of leveling often found in cityscapes, where a billboard for Ten High Bourbon hovers over a flower shop. This work uses both drawn and photographic images, an outdoor setting, and a stage. In this case, the scene is from a Wagnerian opera with other elements superimposed. It is impure and the focus is on a convergence, a confluence of diverse visual elements as a means of liberating and transforming imaginative responses.

This work uses five transparent colors in five runs on five screens. In this process, the color sequence and the degree of color transparency involve a programmatic, almost mathematical layering in order to turn five colors into a multitude of color variations. Much of the prep work was done on a kitchen table in Highgate, London, and later in East Sheen. The actual printing for the first state of this print was created in collaboration with Chris Prater at Kelpra Studio in London.

Biography:

Walter Askin studied art at the University of California, Berkley, where he was named the Calmerton Scholar in Art, and at the Ruskin School, Oxford, England. He has exhibited his paintings, prints, sculptures, and drawings internationally, from museums and galleries in Japan and Korea to those in India, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and the United States. His one-man shows include the Künstlerhaus in Vienna, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, and he has participated in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, and others. He has been chair of the Arts Advisory Committee, the Studio Art Advanced Placement Committee, founding chair of the Art Committees of the Commission on Presidential Scholars and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, and a member of the Academic Council of the College Board. He is Professor Emeritus of California State University, Los Angeles, where he works as the Director of the Visual Humor Project. He is also author of Another Art Book to Cross Off Your List, A Briefer History of the Greeks and a number of other publications.