THE COLLECTION
5,000 original prints and handmade books, collected to be a teaching tool and as a source for inspiration for over 40 years.
This website is an attempt to document the history of master printer Kathy Caraccio, the outcome of more than 40 years dedicated to the fine art of original print. It is also a way of sharing with a larger audience the contents of Kathy's flat files.
Approximately forty percent of the collection is currently displayed on this website. We intend to constantly upload new works. If you would like to be added to Kathy's mailing list, please sign up here.
HISTORY
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Kathy Caraccio started collecting prints while still in college. Very early in her career, Kathy apprenticed for four years as a master printer at Robert Blackburn’s The Printmaking Workshop, Inc. The experience working with Blackburn's collection and witnessing Bob Blackburn's approach to community making and mutual support decisively influenced the making of K. Caraccio's collection.
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The collection has over 5000 artworks, as of 2019, prints and handmade books covering a wide geographical range. It expresses and is a result of both Kathy's collaborations throughout the decades with artists, as well as her personal taste and appreciation for handprinted works.
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Among the artists Kathy has editioned with and feature in her collection are Emma Amos, Ed Baynard, Romare Bearden, Brodsky and Utkin, Scott Campbel, Mel Bochner, Robert Blackburn, Robert Kipniss, and Louise Nevelson. Among the artists Kathy continues to collaborate with are Bea Bardin, Scott Campbell, Dave Collins, Gail Flanery, Stephen Fredericks, George Nama, Lynn Newcomb, Mikhail Magaril, Adam Pitt, Emily Trueblood, Robin Sherin, Tanja Softic and Ellen Weider.
DONATIONS
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The K.Caraccio Collection sporadically makes donations to other institutions and fundraising initiatives. The most significant donation made by the K.Caraccio Studio was to the Rutgers Archive for Printmaking Studios (RAPS) at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum. K.Caraccio studio was among the founding members of the archive in 1982. The RAPS primary purpose was to document the collaborative activity among American printers and artists by serving as the repository of studios' artistic production and related raw matrixes. Starting in 1982, over the course of 30 years, the K.Caraccio Studio and Collection donated more than 500 prints to the RAPS.
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Among other institutions recipient of donations in the past years are the Japan Tsunami Survivors Fundraiser, the National Academy of Arts and Design, the Portland Museum, the Society of American Graphic Artists - SAGA, Newark Public Library, the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Manhattan Graphics Center (2016, 2018), the Friends Seminary (2015), Artists Talk on Art - ATOA (2018), the Woodstock Art Association (2018).
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RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME: THE REST IS HISTORY
Becoming a Master Printer and Collector with Bob Blackburn
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August 11 - September 12th, 2021, at the Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts 20|20 Gallery. Curated by Marianna Olinger and Morghan Williams, the show presents works from the K. Caraccio collection, mostly collected between 1972 and 1976, a period in which Kathy joined the newly incorporated Printmaking Workshop as an assistant and aspiring master printer. In what she describes as her “graduate school”, a defining moment in her career. Not only did she become a master printer with the abundant collaborative opportunities in the studio, the cultural and artistic exchanges between artists, but the witnessing of Bob as a collector led Kathy to begin an archive of printer's proofs and trades.
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Access the catalog here
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