Martin Mazorra's Language of Flowers

This exhibition presents Brooklyn based, West Virginia native, Martin Mazorra’s botanical woodcut and letterpress prints that continue the Victorian tradition of the language of flowers. Historically, flowers were a means to send coded messages that were otherwise not spoken in public. Specific flowers communicated specific postures or sentiments. In Mazorra’s Language of Flowers, the choices of single flowers or bouquets, along with provocative text is a contemporary interpretation to this tradition of cautious exchange.

Martin Mazorra is a Brooklyn based artist originally from West Virginia. He works chiefly in the medium of woodcut and letterpress, in a range of scales from small books, prints on paper, prints on canvas, to site specific print-based installations. He is the founder of Cannonball Press, formed in New York in 1999.

Born in Morgantown, WV, 1972. Martin teaches at Pratt Institute and Parson's School of Design in New York City. He has been invited to speak at distinguished institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and has been a visiting artist at numerous universities and colleges nationally and internationally. He has been the recipient of a NYFA Fellowship in Printmaking, Drawing and Artist Books, a United States Artists Ford Foundation Fellow, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio grant. His work is in the collections of the Yale Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Taubman Museum, the Fort Wayne Museum of art, and others.

Image: Martin Mazorra, Sentient Carnation, 24 x 19 inches, woodcut with movable type.