Monoprints
Jim Sherraden, creator of the monoprints in our online catalog, is manager, curator and chief designer of Hatch Show Print.
Hatch's great niche, dating from its first poster in 1879, has been its dedication to the production of show posters. The last family manager, Will T. Hatch (1886-1952), left a particular legacy of powerful woodblock images that helped define the look of country music during the 1940s and early 1950s.
When he came to the shop in the mid-1980s, Sherraden, a successful lyricist with his name on more than 40 recorded songs, was enthralled by the Hatch archive. He set about to reprint, or "re-strike" the old hand-carved images that derived not only from country music but from the entire spectrum of American entertainment enterprises Hatch served over the years, including minstrel shows, circuses and carnivals, silent film and "talkies," auto and boat races, rodeos and animal shows.
Anyone can stand behind a press, throw two woodblocks on top and make a poster. You need to take it further and make it your own.
During the process of using a single test sheet for multiple jobs on the press, he discovered that the inadvertent overlay of imagery was often as arresting as the single illustration. It must have felt very nearly like art until his friend, sculptor Alan LeQuire, told him, "Anyone can stand behind a press, throw two woodblocks on top and make a poster. You need to take it further and make it your own."
The monoprint collection shows that Sherraden did just that. Each collage is composed from carved woodblocks and image fragments, zinc photo-plates, dingbats, and wood and metal type. Run through a large letterpress, then overlaid with colorful borders, touches, and swaths from an ink brayer, the resulting impressions suggest a fourth dimension across time and an explicit denial of the obsolescence of things, places, events and people. Each contains the idea that creative collaborations with the designers and woodblock carvers who have come before can be liberating and are, most definitely, art.
- Elek Horvath