Raymundo Muñoz - "Limited Edition: Fading Rainbow"

Hi, my name is Ray Muñoz, I'm a Denver-based printmaker specializing in linocut relief printing, and I'd like to share with you some thoughts on my piece. When I received my 50" x 50" sheet of Stonehenge, I was excited by the possibilities, but also a little worried. I know I wanted to make a large piece, but I had never printed anything that large. Plus Stonehenge is not a paper I'm used to working with, and we printmakers are very particular about our papers. Recently, though, I learned the chine colle technique where you print onto thin paper first and then fix that to a heavier backing paper. Thin papers are much easier to print by hand, and I really enjoy using Japanese papers for this specifically. As for dealing with the large size, I chose a one-from-many approach, wherein the entire piece is composed of many smaller, more manageable pieces. 

The limited nature of the medium (that is, one sheet of paper) inspired me to circle back to my Limited Edition series. In this linocut series, I present different endangered species that are ghost printed in succession, resulting in an image that fades with each repetition. Along with the blocks I had already carved, I made 14 more for a total of 30 species. Each block was printed with a wooden spoon onto Japanese paper in a different color then mounted to the Stonehenge. Presented together, the strips add up to a rainbow spectrum of fauna and flora that fades downward, and is titled "Limited Edition: Fading Rainbow." This is a big extension of an idea I previously explored at the Firehouse Arts Center that only included coral species. The message, of course, is sobering: the beautiful and colorful biodiversity of our planet is fading with each generation right before our eyes. What species is next? How quickly will it fade? And is there anything we can do to reverse this process and preserve this very special spectrum? This spectrum, of course, that we humans are also a part of.