Brooklyn Editions x Avant Arte: Gabrielle Garland's First Edition

BKX and Avant Arte present Brooklyn-based artist Gabrielle Garland's first ever artist edition. Titled Anything worth having hurts a little, the work is a take on domestic bliss in Garland's traditional, whimsical style. Avant Arte is a world-class publishing and collaboration house that produces editions for some of the most prominent and influential names in the art world, and connecting with both the creative producers there as well as Gabrielle, made for an exciting launch.

Gabrielle Garland is a prolific artist and a master of personification. Her most recognizable works are painted houses that are akin to human portraits — houses of various style, architecture, and size, are painted with slanting roofs, stretched windows and shutters, and crooked foundations, all in a fantastical color palette of Gabrielle's choosing. Each house has a distinct feeling and persona, begging a question of character and lifestyle in each unique composition.

“I do not want to impose a particular meaning on a space or a painting, but I want to study and document all the ways we can experience space.”

Anything worth having hurts a little is of one of Gabrielle's iconic house paintings, and consequently the first time she has ever done a print or artist edition. Working with Avant Arte internationally, we were the liaison between the creative producers abroad and the artist. Being local to New York, we welcomed Gabrielle into our studio to help her realize the process of translating one of her canvases (in particular, this one being 3' x 4' large) into a print. We printed Anything worth having hurts a little on 100% natural white cotton rag matte paper, to help boost the warm colors of the work's subject while capturing the subtle textures in Gabrielle's brushstrokes that were an important part of the original work.

Each print of the edition was numbered and signed by the artist at our studio, and included a unique embellishment per print. Each house has its unique house number, added in archival pen to the surface of the print, that corresponds to the edition number. As the house in the original painting did not initially include a number plaque, we had Gabrielle paint a plaque which we then scanned and edited into the print file.

Studio photographs of working and artist signing taken by Brooklyn Editions Inc. Staging photographs of the print taken and provided by Avant Arte. Artwork courtesy of the artist, Gabrielle Garland.