This website is launching today because it is the sixth day of Kwanzaa, also called “Kuumba, creativity.” This day was chosen as a bridge between the virtual and physical worlds as we know them to exist today.  By selecting this day, we acknowledge that creativity comes in multitudes of forms, including sharing information. 

Lithography is a printing process that’s hundreds of years old.  It expanded the opportunities of both the artist and audience to participate in an exchange of ideas and beliefs.  Lithography creates a broader distribution of information at a price range that is generally more accessible than original artwork. Value is added to the work when the reproduction has a limited number of copies, and the print is signed, numbered, and dated by the creator.

In Emerson Terry’s story, you can read that his use of both lithographic and digital printing came into being for the same reason as the original artwork. When Terry painted his  African Cowboy series, the technology of that time (mid-1970’s) was lithographic printing. There were so few images and text that told the story “One out of three cowboys was African American, Latinx or Indigenous,” Terry wanted to spread the stories and images as far and affordably as possible.  So, the set of four African Cowboy lithographs, Bose Ikard, Nat Love “Deadwood Dick, Mr. Add, and Broco Sam, presented here on this website is part of a one-time, limited run that Terry had produced in 1976 when his daughters’ teacher told her, “There were no black cowboys.” 

These printed images continue to grow in value, monetarily, culturally, and historically.  These prints document that we helped to build in the “Old West,” and we continue. . .Asé!