Jockum Nordström is the first recipient of the Swedish American Artist Exchange Program scholarship awarded by Grafikens Hus, and he will participate in the 2008 Grafikens Hus summer exhibition ”Concepts, Chemistry & Copper – Etchings from Crown Point Press, San Francisco” being held April 26–August 24.
The most recent addition to Jockum Nordström’s body of work is a series of three large etchings created during a visit at Crown Point Press in San Francisco in December 2007. In 2007 Grafikens Hus began collaborating with Crown Point Press, one of the United State’s leading print workshops and publishers, and invited Jockum Nordström to be the first Swedish artist to take part in the project.
For three intensive weeks, the artist worked at Crown Point Press’s large studio and graphic workshop in central San Francisco. Nordström had not previously worked with etchings but the new media proved an excellent match for his artistic work process. Like at a contemporary alchemist’s laboratory, the pictures at Crown Point’s studio emerged from the blending of ideas, chemicals and shiny copper plates.The etchings are a unique synthesis of the precision of Nordström’s drawings, the openness of the collages and organic color scale of his paintings. The three etchings are printed by Crown Point Press in exclusive numbered and signed editions of 50. Jockum Nordström’s etchings will also be exhibited 2008 at the Basel art fair, and at Crown Point Press Gallery in San Francisco.
Anders Krüger, Artistic Leader, Grafikens Hus
