World Printmakers Newsletter #31 September, 2004

Announcing the New
DASH Members' Show
We’re proud to announce the Second DASH Tropical Mosaic members' exhibit on World Printmakers. The Digital Art Society of Hawaii decided to repeat their experience of 2002 with their latest work and additional artists. We find this group’s digital prints interesting both for their local flavor and for the constant evolution of the artists’ images, something which you can readily confirm for yourself, comparing this exhibit to the one we hosted for them two years ago. Our congratulations to DASH president, Arthur Nelander, and the whole group for this new-improved-burns-brighter-washes-whiter Tropical Mosaic.

Editing Plates from
Half a Century Ago
This month’s lead story has a homespun air about it, as it happened at our house, or more precisely just down the hill at Maureen’s studio. Thanks to Berto Concepción, a longtime friend and client in the Canary Islands, she had the opportunity to pull a first edition from a set of etching plates done in the 1950’s by Francisco Borges, an extraordinary Spanish artist, born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, exiled in Venezuela after the Spanish Civil War, returned to his home city in 1968 and who died in 1994. You can read the story and see the prints in “A 50-Year-Old First Edition.”

Nigerian Internet Scams
Target Unsuspecting Printmakers
Canadian printmaker, Audrey Feltham, of Atelier West in Newfoundland, sent us an fascinating email last month and we’re going to pass it on here. The message seems to be “Beware of online Nigerians bearing gifts…” This is Audrey’s account:

“I had an enquiry through my website for purchase of fine art prints from a fellow in Turkey who was supposedly buying the work for a client in Nigeria. They insisted that the work be shipped immediately. It was a $5,000.00 Canadian purchase. They provided a major credit card, expiry date, and an address for mailing. I phoned the credit card authorization people and got an authorization number.

"Apparently the card was good. When I asked if they could confirm that the name matched the card number, they said they couldn't but they would give me the phone number of the bank where the card was issued. It was Chase Manhattan in the United States. When I phoned I found that the name I was given did NOT match the card number, and the poor woman who held the card had no idea that she had just purchased $5,000.00 worth of fine art. Needless to say I voided the transaction.

”Apparently these shysters get credit card numbers off the internet and then search for websites where they can get fine art and other high priced, readily mailable consumables and have them shipped to Nigeria where they sell them and keep the money. So, printmakers should be very wary about internet sales and should be certain to check the issuing banks to make sure that the name matches the card number.”

Let's All Support the
Sarajevo Mini Print Exhibit
I used to be the European correspondent for a hotel guide, a job which took me (and frequently Maureen) to Yugoslavia every other year. It was one of our favorite destinations. Yugoslavia was such a pristine place in the 70’s and 80’s, bucolic and unspoiled, friendly and pacific, not to mention the Adriatic beaches and the Julian Alps. Over the years we became very fond of Sarajevo. We would sometimes drive all night so as to show up at lunchtime in the old square to eat their amazing charcoal-broiled cebapcici with finely-chopped onions on pita bread along with that pungently organic liquid yogourt.

We were saddened by the events of the war there and have often wondered if there wasn’t something we should be doing to help. So we were delighted when Clive Barstow, the Australian printmaker, art professor and co-ordinator of the Open Bite Australia Print Workshop, wrote recently to remind us of the upcoming Sarajevo Mini Print exhibit (official name Euro Art Centre-Exhibition with ADOGI and Mini Print International) and suggest that we might want to give it a boost. Yes, in fact, we do. So we want to encourage everyone in the World Printmakers karass to participate. You can find the details here: http://www.euroartcentre.com/mps/about.htm.
(There seems to be something of a dates mixup on the page, but if you go to the bottom you’ll find in almost invisible magenta-colored letters: “ENTRY FORM FOR 2004.”)

We've Been Spammed
into Submission
We’re changing our email addresses. For some time now we’ve been snowed under by tasteless junk emails (We don’t even object to the tasteful ones, but they’re unfortunately very much in the minority.) and the only way to escape them seems to be to change email addresses. So, we have altered ours slightly: contact@worldprintmakers.com becomes info@worldprintmakers.com and miguel@worldprintmakers.com becomes mike@worldprintmakers.com. We’ll leave the old addresses active for a couple of months (till December 1, 2004) then close them down for good.

See you next month. Count your blessings and ¡Viva el grabado!

Mike & Maureen Booth
Editors & Publishers
World Printmakers
The Worldwide Showcase for
Contemporary Fine-Art Printmakers
URL: http://www.worldprintmakers.com
Email: contact@worldprintmakers.com

P.S. The gift giving season is almost upon us. Now is the perfect time to order prints and editions from World Printmakers, both for personal and company Christmas gifts. So drop us an email. Give us an idea of what you need, and we’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.

Images from the Second DASH Tropical Mosaic members' exhibit