Crawl 2010: Nomenclature

Christopher Rodriguez is a digital artist. He creates work on his computer and it is output on Cibrachrome paper. The resulting images were arresting to the many visitors to his tiny studio. His space was buzzing with visitors asking questions about his process and offering their compliments. Christopher is a thoroughly engaging person, with ready answers to everyone's questions. He likes telling people about his process. He is doing very well, he said. He is living off sales of his work.

But I wondered what the customer was buying? Is it a digital print? Is it an altered photograph? The print world is changing. There are so many methods of making prints now, way beyond the traditional printmaking techniques, and these new forms of art making are forcing the market to develop new nomenclature and customers to expand their understanding of what is a print, what is a reproduction, what is original and what is part of a limited edition series. Luckily, Christopher is represented and his gallery finds him customers, but what I saw in his studio tells me customers need to know what they are buying. And in printmaking this is getting harder and harder to do.