Robert Cumming
Maurice Sanchez, printer
1991-1992
Workshop: January 21-25, 1991
Robert Cumming received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art, and two years later received his MFA from the University of Illinois. His first teaching job was at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where he became involved with mail art, an early conceptual movement that bestowed art status on items sent through the postal system. In 1970 Cumming moved to southern California to lecture on photography. While there, he also engaged in creative writing and developed conceptual drawings and constructions that he then photographed. Cumming works in a variety of media, including painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. His works layer meanings within meanings, with references to science and art history, always with a distinctive wit. In 1978 Cumming moved to western Massachusetts, where he continues to make art.
In all media Cumming is known as an innovator, and printer Maurice Sanchez provided a perfect collaborative foil. In addition to producing straightforward ink monotypes, Cumming also executed a series of prints using a single image drawn in graphite (One Fuel/One Flame) that Sanchez printed on multiple sheets. Using a variety of ad-hoc drawing media and techniques (including a Q-tip mounted on a compass and drafting pens dipped in diluted litho inks), he added color to the images, producing a series of variant monotypes.
Robert H. Cumming. American, 1943 –
Monotype on paper
Sheet: 19 1/4 x 21 in.
Monotype on paper
Sheet: 27 3/8” x 36”