To create her series of oil monotypes, Montejo worked with the esteemed Oehme Graphics in the Summer of 2021. Sue Oehme wrote the following about their shared time creating Montejo's monotypes:
"I first met Lola when we went to see the great film by Julian Schnabel about Vincent Van Gogh in Denver with a mutual friend. Afterwards we all went out for a cocktail and Lola and I got a chance to start our dialogue.
A few months later, we scheduled a studio visit to get better acquainted and for me to learn more about her painting process. This is usually a good place for me, as the collaborator, to guide the artist in a certain direction based on their studio practice. When I saw Lola’s paintings and especially some of the items in her studio that she would use to create “edges” and shapes, I found the starting point. She often collages torn bits of paper onto the canvases, so we devised a plan for her to create many small “plates” out of the torn scraps of paper, that she would then coat with acrylic medium in order for them to print the oil-based inks. She also did this process with a few smaller bits of torn sandpaper.
Here's where the first “magic” happened: Once she had coated the papers, she piled them up into heaps, which ended up virtually glued together. (I had neglected to let her know that she should put wax paper between the layers).When she arrived at the Oehme Graphics studio to start her project, we spent a few hours pulling these apart, and they all had small UNCOATED “scars” from the pulling. These areas became very easy for me to ink with lots of intense color which printed very richly. A beautiful happy accident!
Every day in the OG studio, before I would arrive, Lola would create 2 different color palettes that we would use for 3 prints. She often would even mix some of the colors, or leave some for me to mix. One day it was a dull pink, black, brown, white, and tiny bits of accents colors. Some of the ‘plates’ were wiped with ink; others were relief rolled. Both techniques produce very different effects, which played with and off each other. By the second day, she was incorporating a watercolor “background” plate as well. Overall, we were able to complete twenty-six gorgeous monoprints in 5 days.
As a testament to how much we all enjoyed our time working with her, Lola was invited back to OG by 3 pm on second day of her project. That’s an all-time record."
