Artwork Description:
This is the artist’s first etching in a series devoted to THE BEAT POETS, entitled “Atomic Alphabets.”Jerry Di Falco created this intaglio and aquatint etching using a zinc plate that was etched in several baths of nitric acid. It is from the SECOND Edition of FOUR Editions, and all four editions are limited to five etchings each. The work depicts Jack Kerouac and a friend standing outside The Kettle of Fish, a Greenwich Village Bar popular with The New York City Beat Artists and Writers during the mid- to late-1950s. The artist printed all editions on a printing press built by Charles Brand of New York Citymoreover, Di Falco works at The Center for Works on Paper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as part of the OPEN STUDIO IN PRINTMAKING, which is connected to the Fleisher Art School and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The image plate size is six inches high by four inches wide, and the print measures about eleven by ten inches. This ready to hang work ships to the buyer collector with an archival mat and metal edged frame that measures about 13 by 10 inches. The price includes all shipment costs. This etching also incorporates the studio technique of Chine colle, a process that uses mulberry bark paper to add color areas to the print. The artist—also a poet whose father was a jazz musician during the 1950s and 60s—studied creative writing and poetry with Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Stanley Kunitz at Rutgers University in 1974. Di Falco also befriended the beat poets Allan Ginsberg, Larry Ferlinghetti, and John Weiners in the 1970s and is currently working on a manuscript of his own poetry entitled, “PAINTED RELICS”. He was responsible for bringing Ginsberg to the Rutgers Camden campus in May 1974 for a reading attended by over 2,000 people. He was privileged to see Weiners’ perform in his own theatrical work, AM-ah-RIKA with Performance Artist , MAYA, at a small Philadelphia club on Camac StreetSpring 1985. The small audience then went to a friend’s Powelton Village house, where an all night poetry session developed.
Keywords:
Beat Poets, Greenwich Village, 1950s, Kettle Of Fish Bar, Intaglio, Original Printmaking, Celebrity Printmaking