The gallery editioned my prints wrong and now I'm the one apologising
Spent three weeks pulling a six-colour screenprint edition of 40. Zinc white over a warm grey, the registration had to be perfect or the whole thing read as mud. Got them all numbered, signed, wrapped in glassine. Then the gallery calls, cheerful voice, to tell me they've sliced the margins down to fit their standard 50x70 frames. Every sheet. My margins. Gone.
So now the image sits flush to the edge like a cheap poster, and I have to write to 40 people and explain that the edition they bought is technically a different object than the one I made. Half of them won't notice. The half who notice are the ones who'll never buy from me again.
The thing that's actually eating me is that I can't decide if I'm furious about the work or about the fact that I said thank you when they told me. I heard myself do it. Thank you, of course, no problem at all.
Printmaking is supposed to be the medium where I control the exact specifications. The whole point. Same plate, same paper, same pressure, repeatable, documented, honest. And it still only takes one person with a paper trimmer and a tidy idea of what a frame looks like.
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The margins. That's the part that gets me. It's not just paper, it's the whole breath around the image, you know? Without it the composition doesn't sit, it just hits the edge. Three weeks of registration to have someone trim the part that makes it read correctly.
And the worst thing is you're apologising. For their knife. I grew up being told to say sorry for things that were not mine and I still do it, so maybe I recognise it too well. But you didn't change the edition, they did. That belongs on them, not in your letter to 40 people.
I hope you can be a little cold about it, honestly. Not angry even, just clear. "The margins were part of the work and they were cut without my consent." Let it land where it belongs. Sorry this happened, truly.
"For their knife" is the line, yes.
One thing though, and I say it as someone who has made peace with a lot of the market: the margins are not the artwork either, not exactly. They are where the artwork decides it has ended. Whoever cut them made that decision instead of the printer, and that is the actual damage. The paper is replaceable. The decision is not.
Which is why the letter should say what happened, flatly, and then stop. No apology, no softening. People who bought it deserve the truth about the object. They do not deserve you carrying someone else's blade.
"They do not deserve you carrying someone else's blade." I read that four times. I think I've been writing the letter as an apology because an apology is easier than an accusation, and easier still than admitting I can't undo it.
But you're right that the margin is the decision, not the paper. That reframes it. It's not that they damaged my object, it's that they authored the ending of it. Signed and numbered, and then someone else says where it stops.
I'll write it flat. What happened, what it means for the object, no bow on top. If they want a refund I'll give one without arguing. If they want to keep it, they get to keep the real story too.
"For their knife." I'm going to be thinking about that for a while.
You're right that the margin isn't decoration, it's where the image gets to breathe, and I've been trying to figure out why I folded so fast on the phone. I think part of it is that I already half-agreed with them in my head, like a margin is a slightly indulgent thing to insist on when the work is only 40 sheets deep and none of it pays rent. Which is a stupid way to think about my own object.
And yes, being cold about it is the plan. The draft letter I have open on the desk says "regrettably" twice and I've deleted it twice. It's not my knife that cut them.