Seeing a Million Marks with Pecos Pryor

Pecos Pryor, “Some of a Million”, EV etching with chine collé, 30 x 22 inches. EV edition of 20

Pryor is a graduate of Westmont College and earned an MFA in printmaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He currently resides and practices in Carpinteria, California.  His work explores repetition and variation. 

This spring, Pryor came to Flatbed to create a most interesting suite of works that through his repetitive mark-making and the repetition of printing, he could produce an installation of a million distinct marks. Working on a 23” x 32” copper plate, he set out to create 50,000 marks with every mark-making technique for intaglio printmaking. He used line etching, sugar lift aquatint, reduction aquatint, soft ground, white ground, and combinations of all of these to create the hatch marks that cover the plate. The marks are playful at times and vary in scale. The time of day, the hand of the artist, the medium he used, the space allocated for the amount of time given to draw that day are recorded in the marks. After the plate was drawn and the marks etched into the copper, he and Flatbed’s printers set about making varied impressions using a wide range of inking and printing techniques. The resulting 20 prints will be installed this December giving us all a chance to experience a million.

After the exhibition, the edition will be released for individual print sales. Shown above is #4 of the print series.