Making The Fallingwater Collection

The Pool 11x14” Print— unframed: $150, framed: $240

The Hatch 100-Page Journal— $46

The Hatch 11 x 14” Print— unframed: $150, framed: $240

Junior’s Balcony 11 x 14” Print— unframed: $150, framed: $240

The Cellar 11 x 14” Print— unframed: $150, framed: $240

The Project:

Last summer I applied for and was accepted into The Fallingwater + PG&H Maker Project for the 2020/2021 year. PG&H is a Pittsburgh-based hub for makers, providing resources and opportunities for the local creative entrepreneur community, and I was thrilled to be a part of this project opportunity with Fallingwater, the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright house built over a waterfall in the nearby Bear Run Nature Reserve.

Nine local artists participated in the project and we kicked it off with a socially distanced trip last September to the Fallingwater campus. It was a beautiful fall day with a light breeze and leaves falling & floating down the creek below the modern cantilever house. We had a private tour of the grounds including access to various rooms of the house that are not normally available on walking tours of the grounds (no photos inside the house though—sorry!). I focused on being a sponge, filling my journal that day with scribbled notes and sketches of compositions from in and around the house and grounds. 

The objective of the project was for each of us artists to create a small line of limited edition products exclusively for the Fallingwater Museum Shop, inspired by our time touring the grounds. Each of us artists made shop-ready prototypes of our product collections to present to the Fallingwater staff by April 2021 after a series of concept & design meetings with the Fallingwater team over last winter. Fallingwater then had the opportunity to purchase our exclusive products to carry in their museum shop for a least one year, and those items that were purchased would then be produced at scale to fulfill their order. 

Inspiration:

For my line of letterpress printed products, I created a series of four 11 x 14” abstract prints guided by the architectural elements of various quiet corners of the house & grounds and a 8 x 5.25” hand-bound journal. The four abstract prints represent the hatch door & staircase leading down to the creek below the house, the guest pool, the cellar stairwell, and Junior’s balcony. I wanted these prints to encourage a scavenger hunt of sorts for visitors to the house & grounds. Each print has the location title of the quiet corner it represents printed on the bottom of the print with handset antique metal type. 

I see my abstracted compositions as 2-D renderings of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 3-D compositions in these specific locations on the Fallingwater grounds. I used the iconic shapes found in the 3-D compositions of the house as centerpieces in my prints for identifying each of the 4 spaces, such as the arch of the hatch door, the rounded blush sandstone stairs of Juniors Balcony, the unique geometric shape of the green algae-filled guest pool and the boulder the house is built into in the cellar stairwell. 

Each print has 5-6 layers of color with hand-mixed ink, printed one color at a time on my vintage Vandercook printing press. Each layer of color is printed with either a hand-carved linoleum, oak plywood or MDF block or with vintage metal border rule.

For both The Cellar and The Pool prints, I highlighted the organic natural elements around the house juxtaposed with Wright’s geometric style, knowing Wright was a fan of mixing organic and geometric elements in his work. For The Cellar print, I created a printing block with crinkled paper to emulate the organic texture of the boulder that is built into the main house. To show the juxtaposition of the organic rhododendron hedge along the iconically geometric patio pool, I created a printing block made of a wood glue brushstroke, so I could print what appears to be a painted brushstroke on The Pool piece. Problem-solving these new types of printing blocks pushed the boundaries of my print practice and for that I’m grateful!

Last but not least, the Hatch Journal, designed to match the Hatch 11 x 14” wall print, is inspired by the iconic hatch staircase which leads down to the creek & waterfall below the main house at Fallingwater. I got to enjoy the rare experience of walking down the iconic staircase and sitting at the bottom platform to dip my toes in the chilly drifting water for a moment of peace, and I wanted to share that experience with other Fallingwater visitors through the abstract wall print and hand-bound journal. The journal hinges at the top like the hatch door, and some of the limited edition journal prototypes have light blue interior pages with a grid to harness all your thoughts as they flow like the running creek below the iconic house. Each journal has 100 pages of lightly gridded paper, either light blue or cream, a 6-layer letterpress printed cover and is wrapped in a letterpress printed bellyband to hold it flat. 

All of the printed products are numbered and signed with limited editions no more than 11 prints each. Only a portion of these small editions will be available for sale at Concept Art Gallery in Regent Square while the exhibition is up from November 19th to January 7th. 

(Very) Limited Editions—Why?

Why are the editions of these artworks so small compared to my normal edition sizes for prints? Well, many of the artists involved in this project found it frustrating to partner with the Fallingwater staff leading this project. For many of the artists invited to participate, after much deliberation over months of negotiations, Fallingwater decided not to purchase any of our products to carry in their shop for the next year. While they led me to believe that they loved my designs & finished printed prototypes through multiple design reviews, they didn’t want to pay the price for handmade products made exclusively for their shop. Even after I met them at their negotiated lowered price points, they didn’t understand why I would need to print editions of 75 prints of each design in order to meet their price points with the time-consuming process of handset letterpress printing. So these small editions available for sale are the printed prototypes I had made for them back in March. I cannot reprint these designs with the context of Fallingwater associated with them, so these very limited editions are all I’ve got to sell to make up for the entire month of long studio days spent to create this collection. 

This has been an extremely disappointing outcome to this project with tolls taken on my mental health and creative confidence. I am only being transparent to provide insight to others about how artists are regularly undervalued in our society and nothing will change unless we artists speak up about it. All in all, I have learned many hard lessons from this client experience and am moving forward, proud of the collection I created for this project.

Let’s Celebrate the positives—the art!

In an effort to end this project on a high note, we are celebrating all the beautiful art products made by the group of talented local artists with an exhibition at the Annex Gallery at Concept Art Gallery on Braddock Ave. in Pittsburgh—and we’d love for you to join us at the opening reception this Friday, November 19th from 6-8pm! The other artists participating are Stone + Sparrow Studio, Clark Morelia, Temper & Grit, Alexis Caldero, Mary Mack Prints, Rachel Rearick, Blakbird Jewelry and Jen Allen Ceramics, and you won’t want to miss the awesome inspired pieces they made for this project too!

How to Buy:

All of my limited edition prints, as well as the work of the other artists, will be available only through Concept Art Gallery until January 7th on a first come first serve basis.

However, if you are not local to the Pittsburgh area and interested in purchasing a printed piece from my Fallingwater collection, please fill out the print reservation form via the button below and I will contact the gallery to check availability. If the prints are still available, I will ask for a deposit from you while I go purchase your prints at the gallery and ship them to you with a final invoice including shipping costs.