Project Description

Charles Garabedian’s paintings reintepret scenes from Greek mythology in vibrant colors and in large scale. (Some of the pieces shown here are over eight feet tall.) His dreamlike scenes are rendered in oil on rough paper that grows with many attachments as each painting takes shape.These aren’t neatly framed rectangular canvases. The paper warps toward you and expands in whatever direction the image demands. It was important for the catalog to reproduce this physicality by showing the shadows cast by each piece. And of course, the color had to be vivid.

One of the first decisions on these catalogs is always the format. I’d entertained the idea of a tall, skinnny book to give the most area to the largest pieces—The Good Thief and Target, both shown below—but it would’ve done a disservice to the many horizontal works. We went with a square format to split the difference.

As color is so important to Garabedian’s work, we decided instead to pull a few representative tones from the paintings and print a series of four separate covers, each embossed with the title of the show, “Sacrifice for the Fleet.” The inside cover of each edition was printed in one of the other colors. Orange was paired with red, teal with cyan. To underline the tactile appeal of the work we added a Curious Touch coating to the cover stock to give it a skin-like feel.

The embossing was done with two separate dies. Charles’ name rendered in large beveled letterforms used by the U.S. Air Force, as a nod both to the title of the show and to his service in the Air Force during World War II. The title of the show was struck into the paper with a regular magnesium die. It was necessary to do two separate die strikes, because the pressure necessary to get a good impression on CHARLES GARABEDIAN would’ve obliterated the more delicate show title.