Joe Fig

Lower East Side Printshop published three screenprints by Joe Fig through the Printshop's Publishing Residency Program in 2008. Fig color-separated and hand-painted each layers on mylar sheets, and Master Printers, James Miller and Doug Bennett printed them in screenprints.

Norwalk, Connecticut-based sculptor Joe Fig is a master of the Lilliputian, acclaimed for dollhouse-scale models of the studios of such artists as Barnett Newman, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, Matthew Barney, Ross Bleckner and Matthew Ritchie. His uncannily precise models are a variation on the idea of the studio as an allegorical, autobiographical site of inspiration, incubation and execution—both hallowed ground and production center. Possessing the irresistible allure of the diminutive, they always elicit a gasp of delight. 

LESP was Fig’s first foray into printmaking. It forced him to re-think his use of color, and provided a way for him to return to painting. Based on photographs of his models, Fig made three screenprints. Inka’s Shoes (2007), Inka’s Floor (2008) and Brushes (2008) depict the paint-splattered regalia of Inka Essenhigh and Bill Jensen.

 In Inka’s Shoes, crusty with paint droppings, the artist’s feet are sturdily present, planted on the boards that are the subject of Inka’s Floor. Viewed from above, the streaked and stained wood flooring supports an arrangement of paper plates shiny with red, blue and yellow paint, interspersed with clusters of squeezed paint tubes, brushes, other studio tools and a discarded sketch. Underneath is an incipient Pollock, the inadvertent, glorious residue of the painter’s progress. Brushes confers iconic status on approximately two dozen of those upended implements jammed into three containers, recalling Jasper John’s Savarin can as Fig continues, with unabated fervor, to celebrates art and the artist’s craft.

Excerpt from Editions '08 by Lilly Wei