John Robert Craft

Salt Fork Press, a dream and a saga.

I am releasing a new suite of prints in cooperation with Exhibitions 2d in Marfa, and Kouri + Carrao in Santa, Fe in order to raise money to build a print shop that will enable me to produce some large scale works for my upcoming show at the Amarillo Museum of Art in 2026.

The “One Point Suite” comes in a custom-built wooden box set that includes four hand printed intaglio prints, a small cast iron sculpture that inspired the printed image and a custom letterpress colophon with the technical specifications of the edition. The introductory price is $600.00 plus tax and shipping. Because I am raising as much money as quickly as possible, I will offer free shipping on all orders received before the tenth of September. Payment can be made by PayPal or Venmo.

Last year Mitchell Marti called me about an old, huge intaglio press he had found online for sale outside of Boston. I had been on the hunt for a press and was in the process of designing and building a giant press. The bed on the Boston press is 67 inches wide and 10 feet long. Last year I flew up to inspect the press and left a deposit on it. This year I have repaired the floor in the building in Clarendon that is to house the print shop. I have built a 20-foot-long trailer to bring the press to its new home. Once installed I will begin to set up a print studio. The big press will be joining a 30” x 52” American French Tool intaglio press, and a Vandercook SP-15 letter press. To get the shop up and functioning is going to require more… cash/labor. With the gracious cooperation from Dennis in Marfa and Justin in Santa Fe who are helping me spread the word about the press and allowing me to handle the sales directly and keep the proceeds. As well as other friends who are helping push the message on social media, I plan to raise at least $12000.00 that will go directly to this project. Now that the box sets are complete, I am making the appeal directly, to past and potential collectors and friends who would like to help. If you want to help and can’t buy anything I hope you will consider passing word of the project along.

One Point:

One Point is a suite of four intaglio prints using the four-color combinations offered by combining cyan, magenta, and yellow: CM, CY, YM, CYM. The plate is a steel plate that was soft ground etched with nitric acid. The printing was done in Lubbock, Tx at the Charles Adams Studio Project by the artist. This project began in 2018 as the logical beginning to three CMY Four- and Five-Point print suites that were already in progress and published between 2017 and 2019 at Flatbed Press in Austin. If you are interested in any of the other Four and Five Point CMY Suites I have a few of those available. For images and information about these multi point sets follow this link to my website: https://www.johnrobertcraft.com/cmy-suite .

I am very excited to release this suit. The opportunities and challenges that lay ahead to see the print shop to fruition are incredibly exciting. Below is a photo essay of the print project. By choosing to support my work you are becoming a part of this journey. I look forward to the trip!

Sincerely,

Jack Craft

The Colophon

ONE POINT CMY

One Point is a suite of three two color prints, one three color print and one cast iron sculpture by Jack Craft. The edition size is 20 plus two makers editions including a selection of CTP prints. the sculptures were cast in Memphis Texas at Total Alloy Foundry from ductile cast iron. The steel plate matrix was etched in nitric acid using a one half “jack” casting as a stencil to create the image. The prints were printed in Lubbock, Texas by the artist at the work space at CASP. The prints are printed on 600 GSM Lanaquarelle cold press paper. Graphic Chemical Process, Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta ink were used to make the prints in the following combinations: CM, CY, YM, CMY. The prints were trimmed to size by Annalise Gratovich in Austin, Texas. The box was made by and designed in collaboration with Mitchell Marti in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thanks to Charles Adams and Chad Plunkett at CASP in Lubbock for supporting this work through cooperation with and use of the CASP facility. Thanks to Chris Taylor for letting me crash at The Combine on my many trips to Lubbock to do the printing.

Process Photos of ….well the process.