Sam Gilliam: Make it Wonderful

Sam Gilliam: Make it Wonderful was an exhibition of monoprints by Sam Gilliam (1933–2022), on view October 13 – November 18, 2023, at 536 West 22nd Street. This exhibition will focus on thirteen large-scale monoprints that Sam Gilliam created in 2021 at the Brandywine Workshop and Archives.

Make it Wonderful presented one of the last projects produced from this collaboration before Gilliam’s passing in 2022. Pulled from a single watercolor painting, the color areas were digitally separated into three values: light, medium, and dark, to produce a series of what Giliam referred to as “emphatic black and white prints.” Using oil-based lithography ink the monoprints were created from maple wood blocks milled with a computer numerical control (CNC) router.