FOLIOS

The "Folios Program" was created by artist/photographer Ray Esposito as a way to encourage people to collect art and photography.  Each folio has five works giving the beginning collector an excellent start on building a collection or for the experienced collector the opportunity to add to their collection at a modest cost.  Each set is stored loosely with interleaves in a beautiful blue folio and slipcase.  Two of the folio's come from Ray's extensive collection of almost 40 years.  The third comes from asking some of his close friends to join him in designing the photography folio.

In addition to these three folios there are four "non-folio" albums you can examine to the left.  The first, Modern Prints for Sale are works by master printmakers including Calder, Arms, Bacon, Gauguin, Dali and many, many more.  Most of the prints in this album are 20th century through about 1960.  All are available unframed.

The second contains a few larger scale prints from my personal collection.  Each is priced unframed.

The third album contains examples of my paintings and the fourth my larger scale prints.  Nothing like blowing your own horn. The bio below explains why I think I was born a decade or more too late.  My work is abstract for the most part although I am now working on a series representing spanish missions and plan on doing some portraits.  So far the album contains the first mission.

P.S. Some of the images in the albums are a little blurry or the lines are crooked. (I have no idea how that happens.)  While I figure out how to properly use my digital camera and this blog system, please bare with me.  As I get more experience I plan on replacing the blurry and crooked images as soon as possible.  All sales come with a 30 day money back guarantee.

To order or ask questions send email to ray79830@yahoo.com 

The Program

FOLIO 1: A folio of contemporary prints including woodblocks, screen prints, etchings, monotypes, lithographs, blind embossings and other media from my collection of forty years.  Examine prints in Folio 1 to the left.  Buyer selects any five prints with no restrictions as to artist.  Folio 1 cost $400 ($80 per print) plus $20 shipping and insurance.  (Estimated value of a set of prints is $500-$650 depending on selection.)

FOLIO 2: A folio of rare prints.  Examine prints in Folio 2 to the left.  Buyer selects one print from each of the five categories.  These include the original Audubon 1856 Bren second edition; Antiquities of England; Theodore Jasper bird prints; a matted page from an April, 1521 prayer book and etchings printed in 1632 by Leyden from the work Martyrs Mirror. 

Because of the age of these works some pages are very brittle, especially Antiquities and the Jasper bird prints.  No print has been included if the tears and breaks are extensive and progress into the artwork itself.  Those breaks that do exist are clearly marked in the descriptions. 

You will note that the Antiquities prints in particular are exceptional in color.  Previous owners have taken great care with these prints.  All of them look as if they were painted just yesterday.  Age however has played a part in their brittleness but as long as they are handled with care and enjoyed for their vibrient color, they will continue to last many years.  Folio 2 costs $450 ($90 per print) plus $20 shipping and insurance.  (Estimated value of a set of prints is $600-$900 depending on selection.)

FOLIO 3: A folio of contemporary fine art photographs.  Examine photographs in Folio 3 to the left.  Buyer selects five 11" x 14" (or other sizes in selected cases) photographs in any combination including one work from each artist or multiple works from one artist.  The folio has ten prints from each artist representing work by Ray Esposito, Alpine, Texas; Kim Taylor, Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Shirley Watts, Uvalda, Texas in that order.  Two additional fine art photographers will be added shortly. Folio 3 costs $450 ($90 per print) plus $20 shipping and insurance.  (Estimated value of a set of photographs is $800-$1,500 depending on selection.)

The other albums are self explanatory.

Photography Folio Biographies

RAY ESPOSITO: Ray Esposito is a self-taught painter, photographer and printmaker.

Ray took time off from being an artist to found and manage a national non-profit organization - The Brass Ring Society - to reach out to special children. With the help of artist friends from around the country who donated their art, an art gallery - Galleria Esposito - was begun to raise money for children.  The Society was dissolved on December 31, 2005 after twenty five years.  Ray's present plan is to continue to raise money for various children's charities with the folio and other art sale programs.

Ray did not totally forego his own work but limited himself to printmaking.  Three years ago, Ray returned to painting.

Ray is a throw-back to the '50's when Abstract Expressionism was the rage. Claiming to have been born two decades too late, Ray missed working with such giants as Rothko, Kelly, Newman and his favorite artist Helen Frankenthaler. Still, he persues the area of abstract expressionism called Color Field Painting and calls himself a Color Field Minimalist.

Ray's work can be seen in a number of museums including the Corcoran Museum of Art (Washington, D.C.), the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon), Georgetown University and the Smithsonian among others. All work is copyrighted to Ray Esposito and cannot be reproduced without his written permission.

KIM TAYLOR: Kim Taylor grew up on a farm in Michigan. She didn't have a camera until she graduated from high school.  She has been shooting ever since and loving every minute.  According to Kim, “After eighteen years as a mother to two wonderful kids, twenty four years of marriage to a brilliant photographer & twenty three years in various professional labs, I never want photography to NOT be fun.”   She has enjoyed making images from landscapes to draped nudes to the broken or lost things in life. 

Kim uses various cameras to make her images. Depending on which camera fits the final vision it could be her 35mm SLR, a Holga or the Lubitel she "borrowed" from her husband and never returned.  Kim feels lucky to have shown her work in MIchigan, Texas, New York, and abroad in Italy and Japan. 

SHIRLEY WATTS: A native of Montana, Shirley has lived and traveled throughout the western United States and various places abroad. Growing up in Bozeman, Montana on the back of a horse, she began taking pictures at the age of nine, after winning a camera in a contest. As an adult, photography has become her passion. From the magnificence of the western mountains to the elusive, spiritual beauty of eastern Montana, Shirley found an endless source of vistas and microcosms to practice and learn photography as she grew up. Several years ago, Shirley moved to west Texas where she found the austere grandeur of the Chihuahuan Desert, the Davis Mountains, and Big Bend National Park to be a continual source of intrigue and photographic challenge. The ever-changing light, shadows, and colors evoked a magic about the area that is fascinating beyond description.  Wherever they are taken, each of Shirley’s photographs portrays sense of place at that moment.

Printmaking Biographies

RAY ESPOSITO: See above

BARBARA MASON:  Barbara Mason is an artist/printmaker who lives in Aloha, Oregon. She was introduced to printmaking in 1985 and has been fine tuning her skills in the media ever since. An active volunteer and arts advocate, Barbara has been a resource person for the Beaverton School District since 1976. She has served 6 years on the board of the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts at the Portland Art Museum, (as president in 1992, the year the center opened) and two years on the board of the Northwest Print council where she is currently an artist member. She is in the second year of a three year term on the board of Crow’s Shadow Institute, an art institute on the Umatilla Indian Reservation that is dedicated to the artistic and economic development of native American artists. In addition to a love of ink and paper, Barbara’s work shows a passion for archaeology. She has an extensive library on early man and says “Artists spend their whole lives defining their world with their work. My interest in the primal shapes of the prehistoric rock artists is often apparent in my artwork, we can’t know where we are going if we don’t know where we have been. I can feel the thread of my personal humanity winding back thousands of years and I realize how all peoples are connected regardless of space or time.” Travel is also a great influence, and scenes from vacations to Europe and other parts of the Americas are depicted as well. Barbara’s monotypes are each original works of art, no two are alike. The method is very direct: lithography ink is manipulated on a smooth plexiglas plate and then transferred to 100% damp rag paper with an etching press. Her works are in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, Intel Corporation, Crow’s Shadow Institute, and numerous private individuals. Barbara is the current director of Waterstone Gallery; an artist owned gallery in the Pearl Art District of Portland, Oregon.

JEANNE NORMAN CHASE:  To follow