FILMS/PHOTOS - JASPER JOHNS
JASPER JOHNS AT SIMCA PRINT ARTISTS
with Hiroshi Kawanishi, Takeshi Shimada and Kenjiro Nonaka
“Alright, Katy Martin, who made two incredible Jasper Johns films in the late 1970s when you were practically a kid. Uh, actually, yeah, that’s about it. Just watch them.”
** NEW - JUST COMPLETED IN 2026 **
🔗 view the film
ALTERNATE TAKE / JASPER JOHNS MAKING PRINTS
1979-2026, 4K digital transfer from the Super-8mm film original
30 minutes
This film is created from newly restored footage of Jasper Johns, collaborating with Simca Print Artists, that I shot years ago in Super 8mm film. Much of the footage was unusable at the time due to technical problems I couldn’t correct for in film. Now, with digital, those are easy to fix and that opened up a new set of possibilities. The challenge was to stay in the present while revisiting and reviewing the art making process that I documented back then. In a voiceover narrative, I locate myself - then and now - within what for me was a formative experience. I also talk about Jasper's process as we watch it play out in relation to the prints they were making.
HANAFUDA / JASPER JOHNS
1979-81, 2K digital transfer from Super 8mm film
35 minutes
— newly remastered in 2019
HANAFUDA observes the artist, Jasper Johns, and the master Japanese silkscreen printers at Simca Print Artists, as they created three different images from Johns USUYUKI and CICADA series. For me, the camera was a pretext for an in-depth apprenticeship and the finished film recapitulates my process of learning, gleaned over time, as I watched Johns and the printers at work. What I wanted to know was how one generates a work of art and, for that matter, what is art, what work is involved, and how do ideas as opposed to physical labor drive the decision making process. The films became a meditation on art and craft, as well as on the dialectic of mind and body, concept and actual work.
Read the INTERVIEW with Jasper Johns that is on the HANAFUDA soundtrack.
SILKSCREENS
1978, 2K digital transfer from Super-8mm film, 20 minutes
with original music by Richard Teitelbaum
— Newly remastered in 2019 (film to digital)
— Remastered in 2015 by Anthology Film Archives (film to film)
SILKSCREENS follows the choreography of printmakers at work, pulling the edition of Johns' print, THE DUTCH WIVES. It was filmed at Simca Print Artists in New York. I got the notion of repetitive labor as a form of dance from the French painter, Edgar Degas. No doubt, I was also influenced by minimalism with its impetus to integrate normal, workaday movements into fine art. For the sound track, I worked with the musician, Richard Teitelbaum (who in turn had worked with John Cage). We used ambient sounds from the print shop and the street outside to reflect the kind of hearing that you experience as you work, when sounds float in and out of consciousness.
“A mesmerizing piece of choreography and motion, SILKSCREENS follows the printmakers at work pulling the edition of Jasper Johns' THE DUTCH WIVES. Featuring exquisite sound by electronic music pioneer, Richard Teitelbaum, SILKSCREENS is an absorbing document of artisans in process and the space they inhabit.” — Anthology Film Archives, program notes
PHOTOS
A series of photographs, all taken at Simca Print Artists on February 8, 1980