PROLOGUE

Someone meticulous should investigate the reason why, from time to time, we feel the desire to share our own ideas with others. Then, when the scheduled work is completed together, we only notice the pleasant feeling that arises from things done in unity, even if they do not intend to achieve high levels of excellence. The graphic artists who participated in the elaboration of this folder are 12 students - between 17 and 50 years old - from the Rufino Tamayo Workshop of Plastic Arts, in Oaxaca. It was the perseverance of educator Juan Alcázar and drawing instructor Hugo Hernández who proposed reviving the traditional method of botanical illustration and wildlife art, creating graphic works to disseminate the strangest and most unimaginable botany and wildlife discovered in the New World to the Old Continent. This practice of facsimile multiplication was the usual one until the mid-19th century when the art of fixing and reproducing images by means of chemical reactions inside a camera obscura - photography - emerged. The teacher comments that the destiny of this folder is not to exhibit it in the showcase of an art gallery, but rather it is a bookstore copy, as it pursues an educational objective that stimulates the intellectual and emotional capacity of the person who reads and views its double didactic content. In order to achieve greater dissemination, each sheet is to be reproduced using a cheaper printing system - offset - so that it can reach the libraries of schools. For a plastic artist, a printmaking workshop always represents the inner world. And just as the enclosure of a house consolidates and fortifies the dynasty of families, there, in this “laboratory” of intimacy, the creative talent of artists is nourished and developed. That place is then a walled refuge where the jealous soul of its inhabitants gains vital strength, because it is the interior of this tightly fitted and intensely inhabitable geometry of space where the result of an effort derived from a strong intellectual operation is best sanctified in a loose way. When the artist, slightly ajar, crosses the door that leads to the breadth of the exterior, he is instantly transported to a different visual certainty, where at every step he will be seduced by the immediate attraction of the sudden. The other space that is a protagonist and co-participant in this dissemination task is the Ethnobotanical Garden of the city of Oaxaca. A garden is always a symbol of growth, slow vegetal orgy and new and reborn fecundity. It is the outer world, of limited and intimate surface, and that in miniature reproduces the other unlimited universe that surrounds it. It seems as if in this territory of artificial roads and rivers, a wild past had been kidnapped, giving way to the different “domestic” forms of the future. A garden is a place of growth, and where each plant detects the succession of seasons, visibly manifesting its temperament and way of being. It was in this garden where the artisan students of gouache and burin from “Rufino Tamayo” got in friendly contact with nature, and where each one of them, through their own visual selection, began to take the first notes, extracting them from among the specimens that were classified there; some were solemn and majestic and others of imperceptible beauty. The director of this impressive and labyrinthine garden, still unfinished, is the naturalist botanist Dr. Alejandro de Ávila, belonging to the same tribe as Humboldt, and practically knows everything, and if he doesn’t, he finds out about the Oaxacan flora. He is the one who has illustrated each sheet of the folder, letting us know the scientific and vulgar names of each plant; their physical peculiarities; their fascinating form of nutrition; their geological, topographical and ecological characteristics; their striking genetic history, and their varied food, craft and industrial use. He also warns us if a plant is in danger of extinction (P*) or if it is simply threatened (A*) by man’s long, harmful and predatory hand. He also beautifies his text with the selection of some stanzas by Pablo Neruda. Here, in this human “portfolio”, the two most primary expressions of handwritten graphic design come together: Drawing and written word, respectively showing us the physical and statuesque presence of the drawn plant and the monographic document of the letter that speaks to us and tells us a story. If we momentarily go back in time, let us remember that it was that other teacher from school - whose name we may no longer recall - who taught us, without riddles, the beautiful “tricks” of reading on paper... and also how to observe. The Technique If an artist wants to fix a plastic idea on paper, by means of a short sharp tool, they carve a flat surface, with the intention of creating the duplicated relief of their creative imagination. This task of reproducing multiple identical copies is called ENGRAVING. Under the concept of “graphic work,” all that typographic work executed on a thin sheet of blocked plant fibers (paper or its derivatives) on which a metal plate has exerted pressure as a mold is grouped together. The aim is to obtain a certain number of reproductions, and the artist, to avoid excessive excellence, limits the run of their multiple originals, which they will subsequently validate with their signature. It may be worth saying that until relatively recently, both the selection of specific techniques and the good handling and definition of lines were considered essential qualities of a graphic work, but nowadays contemporary art not only allows the combination of different technical processes but also reveals the artist’s ways of imagining and skills through the direct use of spots and smudges. In any graphic printing process there are 3 basic elements: the PLATE, on which the artwork is executed; the PAPER, on which it is printed, and the INK, which “reveals” everything. The material of the plates can be wood, stone, zinc, copper, brass, acrylic, or any other that can withstand the intervention of metal tips, burins, scrapers, gouges, acids, etc. For the 12 engravings in this folder, the 12 students from the “Rufino Tamayo” workshop used 12 zinc plates, and the result was: 12 INTAGLIO PRINTS. In their execution, two indirect techniques were used: Etching and Aquatint. In ETCHING, the metal plate on which the artist has to work must first be varnished, and if it is then subjected to a bath of nitric acid {Etching}, the liquid will corrode the areas that were previously hollowed out by the tip of a needle that has removed that protective resin. Finally, an ink will cover the surface of the oxidized lines, and through impregnation, images will be reproduced on paper, which has been subjected to the action of a press {printing press). The AQUATINT technique is very similar to the previous one, but its use provides tones that shade certain areas of the metal plate, therefore there are no lines. This practice is often combined with that of etching, and then it is said that this procedure is mixed. Victor Garcia Dominguez Tlacochahuaya, abril/2022.