-BIO-
Raphael Cornford lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana, though he once called Oakland, CA home. Raphael works across print, installation, bookmaking, and digital media to create immersive, engaging, and challenging experiences. He is, in addition to showing regularly across the country, currently writing and illustrating professionally while learning more about the wonders of cast iron cooking. He received a BA from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2011 and his MFA in Printmaking in 2016 at Indiana University, Bloomington. Raphael is an educator, artist, activist, and would prefer to have gone for a run today, all things considered. Raphael prefers being addressed as Raph, and very much considers himself a collaborative artist: contact him if you'd like.
-INFO-
My work combines influences from printmaking, comics, and illustration to illuminate the process of identification between viewer and subject while considering histories of material production, distribution, and reception. Constant engagement with the history of each of these fields, both visually and as commodities within a marketplace, produces images that entertain without sacrificing conceptual rigor. The legacy of markmaking is at the core of my current work, following a trajectory of late 19th century printmaking into the golden age of illustration and in turn into the pulps and comics of the mid 20th century. From appropriation to visual quotation to stylistic evocation, the echoes of the past are recontextualized with deep attentiveness to the craft of production.
Both my research and practice trace a legacy from Albrecht Dürer to Edmund Dulac to Jack Davis. Printmaking considerations like graphic middle tone, line weight, and color separation have remained salient through these eras. The visual invention and imagination of the golden age of illustration, coinciding as it did with the expansion of publishing markets across Europe and America, demonstrated how printmaking techniques could be popularized further. Pulp fiction continued the trajectory of graphic imagery as an accessible and exciting medium illuminating the most widely distributed and read fiction publications of its day. Finally, comics introduced sequential considerations to storytelling that redefined how a viewer might engage with a story: by filling in the sequences from panel to panel, the viewer is an even more direct participant in the construction of meaning.
Ongoing, interdisciplinary research into the history of the production of graphic images as both commercial and fine art objects continues to shape my practice. Each stage of the development of graphic imagery, from its beginning as a luxury product for a limited audience to its becoming a popular medium readily available to the public, has carried the biases of its creators, the limitations inherent to the conditions of its production, and the conventions of its marketplace position. This history is ripe for commentary and engagement. Combining material and historical considerations with practical knowledge of the craft of production imbues my beautiful and accessible work with subtle richness.
While enjoying my work, the viewer is reconnected to these histories of mark and production, positioned more consciously within the aesthetic pleasure found in execution of high-level craft without the freedom to disengage completely from the broader world. What does it mean to work within historically popular and democratic forms, in a manner accessible to the general public, without losing sight of the depth of meaning offered by fine art consideration?