Consejo Grafico de Talleres in Austin

This past weekend was the 7th annual Consejo Grafico meeting, I first participated in the conference in 2006 representing the Taller Tupac Amaru. This year the conference was hosted by the Serie Project / Coronado Studio in Austin, Texas which was celebrating their 15th anniversary. I love getting together with everyone, it gives me a chance to catch up with everyone and hear about what all the studios across the country are doing as well as always having a chance to check out something special.

As part of our meeting we discussed upcoming portfolios and our next meeting and organizing a Latino Print Fair in Los Angeles for the 2010 Consejo meeting. We also had a chance to talk about the participation of our previous portfolio that will be part of the Puerto Rican Triennial in 2009 which is very special because only people from Latin America are accepted into this exhibition.

Apart from our meeting the conference included a series of panels about Chicano and Latino art with a keynote address by Tere Romo and the opportunity to check out various exhibits that included works printed by Coronado Studio. We also had the opportunity to visit the Blanton Museum to see the New York Graphic Workshop exhibit and see works that Gilberto Cardenas has donated to the museum. It was great to see all the pieces that Cardenas has collected over the years, there were so many prints that I have only seen in books and so many others that I was seeing for the first time.

For the closing of the conference there was an exhibit featuring the Quinceanera portfolio of prints that was created to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the studio and a selection of prints from all the studios as well as some prints from the Taller de Grafica Popular and the Ernesto de Soto Workshop. The event was a blast, there was over 100 prints in the show representing artists from across the country.