He told her that, instead of selling paintings, she should offer drawings at minimal prices, and use those to develop a support base and build her portfolio. That way, she could continue to keep her work before, and accessible to, her public, until better times usher in a return of higher-priced art.
“Build from the bottom up when the economy can no longer support the high-end pieces,” she summarized.
 Margaret-Ann Clemente stands by equipment she used in making the prints in her current exhibit. The print she just completed id 'Ark of the Past Covenant,' an artwork she felt best represents her journey of artistic exploration that led to this show. |
Though she normally does not offer reproductions of her own work, Clemente makes an exception with “The Variation Print Series,” which she will unveil for a one-day show from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18 at the Twin Pines Art Center in Belmont. The show is timed to coincide with a recent music festival held at the art center and the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Twin Pines Art Center building.
The series consists of 21 abstract, original hand-pulled monotypes and monoprints that fluidly blend brilliant color and ground the eye with darker shades and defining lines. Each is reprinted on a high-end ink jet printer using fine art watercolor paper.
She stresses that the works are prints, not giclees. “I decided to reproduce my work so that I could offer the public prints at a lower price,” Clemente said.
With a choice of black, white or natural-wood framing, and colors and eye-catching designs that seem to flow like a visual conversation, the prints take their place among Clemente’s works displayed in private and corporate collections across the country and in Europe.
Depending on size and framing, the prints range from $200, $230 and $300. Currently Clemente is offering a bonus of a $100 discount if a purchaser returns the work to exchange for a new piece that, upon reflection, might better fit the design scheme of the surroundings.
In addition to providing the artist with a way to ride out the economic crisis, this body of work represents a year of artistic exploration for Clemente. She brought in an array of media — clay paint, latex house paint, eco-paints (without chemicals), and metal leaf in gold, silver, aluminum and copper. She also brought in an array of materials that loaned themselves to texturing: chine colle, crystalline particulates and even Styrofoam. “I was experimenting to see how far I can take the mélange,” she said.
She customarily does not clean the plates of her press between prints, so that the residue from one print can blend into and enhance the next one. “In essence, the press creates a print independent of me,” she said. “It’s almost 3-D.”
Clemente brought an established art background to this exploratory year. She set herself up as a printmaker and painter in 1992, focusing on themes around the animals of North America, her native France and her Sicilian heritage. However, following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, she refocused her work into an abstract style she calls “internal expressionism.”
She has participated in a number of solo and group exhibits, and been honored, through the Coastal Arts League and around the Bay Area. She teaches printmaking, painting and drawing around the Bay Area and at her Twin Pines studio. She had also spent time in the business world, with a seven-year tenure as an art software program planner in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and El Segundo — a background which gave her the savvy to reconstruct her art during the recent economic downturn.
“My job as an artist,” she explained, “is to think of creative solutions so that I can offer my works to the public.”
The Twin Pines Art Center is located at 10 Twin Pines Lane in Belmont, and can be reached at (650) 224-8329.
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