From Texas with Love: Prints from Flatbed Press

Flatbed Press is pleased to announce ‘From Texas with Love: Prints from Flatbed Press,’ an exhibition opening September 10 at the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University in New York City. Curated by artist Bale Creek Allen, the exhibition brings together a selection of prints that reflects Flatbed’s more than three decades of collaborative printmaking in Austin, Texas.

The New York exhibition comes at an especially significant moment for Flatbed, which was recently accepted as a member of the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA). Membership in the IFPDA places Flatbed within an international community of leading galleries, dealers, and publishers committed to the field of fine prints and printmaking. Flatbed will participate in the IFPDA Print Fair at the Park Avenue Armory in New York in April 2027.

Founded in 1989 by artists and printmakers Katherine Brimberry and Mark Lesly Smith, Flatbed Press grew from a simple idea: to create a place where artists could come together around the specialized equipment, knowledge, and collaborative possibilities of printmaking. Today, Brimberry serves as Flatbed’s director, continuing to lead the press and its collaborative publishing program. Over the years, Flatbed has developed into a nationally recognized press and a community centered on the making and appreciation of contemporary prints.

Flatbed has collaborated with artists from Texas and across the country, including John Alexander, Terry Allen, Michael Ray Charles, Luis Jiménez, Julie Speed, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Peter Saul, and James Surls, among many others. Working in etching, lithography, relief, monotype, and other print processes, these collaborations are shaped by an exchange between artist and printer—one in which experimentation and the physical processes of printmaking often lead the work in unexpected directions.

For Flatbed co-founder and director Katherine Brimberry, the exhibition at Columbia offers an opportunity to look back at what began as both an artistic need and a belief in the importance of community:

“I really saw a need as a printmaker and artist myself. I’d just come out of graduate school and needed a studio with a press to continue my practice. Printmaking takes specialty equipment and it takes space, and most people don’t have that equipment or a space for it. That’s why all over the world, you find printmaking communities sharing a community space. Austin just didn’t have one, and that’s what I wanted to create.”

‘From Texas with Love’ celebrates the artists, printers, ideas, and relationships that have grown from that original impulse. Seen together in New York, the works offer a view into Flatbed’s history while demonstrating the continuing vitality of collaborative printmaking.

In-person viewing: LeRoy Neiman Gallery Columbia University 2960 Broadway 310 Dodge Hall, MC 1806 New York, NY 10027