15 Facts About Donald Farnsworth

Donald Farnsworth is the director of Magnolia Editions, a fine art studio and printshop in Oakland, California.

In 1981, Farnsworth founded fine art press and publisher Magnolia Editions in the San Francisco Bay Area with co-founders David Kimball and Arne Hiersoux.

Donald Farnsworth now publishes artworks at Magnolia's 8,000-square-foot Oakland, California warehouse location, both under his own name and in collaboration with his wife, artist Era Hamaji Donald Farnsworth.

Since 2006, Donald Farnsworth has been artist Chuck Close's main collaborator on an ongoing series of editioned tapestries and prints.

The UV-cured inks function as an acid-resist, and have allowed Donald Farnsworth to establish a contemporary approach towards photogravure.

Donald Farnsworth is credited as one of the first artists to seriously explore digital printmaking.

Donald Farnsworth received a BFA in 1974 from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MA in printmaking in 1977 from the University of California at Berkeley.

Donald Farnsworth studied printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute with Richard Graf, Kathan Brown, Gerald Gooch, Bob Fried, and Gordon Kluge, supplementing his courses by concurrently studying chemistry and printmaking at Laney College in Oakland and lithography at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Donald Farnsworth soon found that there was a growing demand for handmade paper from artists: in the late 1970s, he created paper for editions including several by John Cage at Crown Point Press.

Some prints, as well as work by Donald Farnsworth himself, are included in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Donald Farnsworth has published several articles on traditional papermaking methods and papermaking as a means of conservation.

In 1978, after marrying Era Hamaji, the couple immediately set off for Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where Donald Farnsworth designed and helped build a handmade paper mill while Era worked with artisans, teaching and developing new craft products lines.

From 1975 to 1986 Donald Farnsworth was an associate professor at the California College of Arts and Crafts; in 1987 he was a guest associate professor at the University of California at Davis while serving as president of the board of directors of the World Print Council.

Donald Farnsworth's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the American Craft Museum.

In 1979, Donald Farnsworth received a Contributions to the Field Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.