Charles " Chuck" Arnoldi

In 1983, Arnoldi and Richard began creating monoprints at the Emeryville studio from half-sawn dry eucalyptus branches they'd collected from groves in Los Angeles and the Berkeley Hills. The sticks were painted in bright striking oil colors and collaged onto chain-sawed plywood sheets, also painted in vibrant saturated colors. The stick and plywood matrix was then placed in one of Tullis' hydraulic platen presses to emboss the sticks and board. Upon reaching up to 1000 tons of pressure, the images were transferred to the thick handmade paper.
 
In 1984-85 Garner refurbished the 4' x 7' offset press in Santa Barbara. For the first time, Arnoldi was forced to approach his compositions with a flat surface in mind: the rolling press, which printed on one continuous plane, would not accommodate the layers of uneven branches. The branches were thus abandoned in favor of multiple painted chain-sawed plywood plates. By printing these in succession on a single sheet of paper, they found they could create depth of space and a slight dimensionality with the paint. By using great amounts of paint on the plate's surface, the press's wiping motion and tremendous pressure pushed paint into the void left from the bite of chainsaw drawing. When the paper was pulled from the plate, viscous oil paint adhered to the paper surface, creating physicality. Arnoldi's style transformed over the years to suit the various presses available at the Tullis studios.

About:
Charles Arnoldi is a contemporary American abstract painter and sculptor. Born on April 10, 1946 in Dayton, OH, he moved to California at the age of 18 and went on to study at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. He has been widely exhibited in the united states and abroad, notably including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.Today, Arnoldi’s works can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others. Arnoldi lives and works in Los Angeles, CA