Frank X Tolbert 2

December 17, 1945 - July 13, 2023

Frank at work in 2015 creating “Yellow-Crowned Heron”, an etching, at Flatbed Press.

It is too soon to lose Frank X. Tolbert 2. A great artist and friend to Flatbed, Frank brought his magical way of interpreting the world into the printmaking sphere. We got to know and love him during his many projects at Flatbed. As a painter, he stepped out of his comfort zone into a fishbowl of printmaking zeal and then shook it for all it was worth when he created his Texas Bird Suite of eight large color etchings 2015-2018. He liked to sign his work with a simple X, indicating his middle name “Xavier” and added the number “2” beside it. Others might want to use the traditional Roman numeral “II” but Frank insisted on Frank X Tolbert 2.

Frank’s kindness and generosity greatly endeared him to the art community of Houston, where he and his wife Ann Stautberg lived, and also to the Texas art community at large. He had many stories to tell and he knew how to bring out the best stories in all of us. He had stories about Terlingua Chili, highway art shows, New Orleans fortune tellers, and the bird estuaries of Galveston. Most often his stories found their way onto the canvas or into woodcuts and etchings. In his practice, he created a visual language all his own through the recurrent use of personal iconography, and his work is often interlaced with ambiguity and humor.

Frank attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock, the Texas Tech Art Extension Course at Taos, and North Texas State University in Denton. His works are part of important permanent collections at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and a part of many private collections. His projects at Flatbed can be seen here: Frank X Tolbert 2

Go in beauty, Frank.