PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS VON HOLLE
If the name Mark Patsfall isn’t familiar, it’s because the man is more interested in promoting other artists than his own work. But make no mistake, he is one of Cincinnati’s most influential art world multi-hyphenates.
Mounting exhibitions by local creators in his Over-the-Rhine gallery and teaching them the trade in his cavernous print shop, Patsfall helped launch dozens of careers over the past four decades. Switching hats, he’s also been the go-to fabricator for prints, sculptures, and installations by a who’s who of international contemporary artists. Those relationships strengthened Cincinnati’s renown as a place where artistic ideas are concretized into museum quality objets.
“Mark helped artists who’d never made prints before,” says Michael Solway, owner of Solway Gallery. Architect Buckminster Fuller and composer John Cage are among the notable thinkers who collaborated with Patsfall on prints of their work that were affordable to a wide swath of fans.
Though he’s made brass chess sets for Yoko Ono and an installation of vintage cars for Nam June Paik, Patsfall is first and foremost a master printer. The University of Cincinnati grad, who spent his childhood in Cincinnati, dedicated years to learning the tricky, labor-intensive skills on heavy machinery to produce etchings, wood cuts, silk screens, and lithographs. After working with Carl Solway, Michael’s father, he opened his own shop in 1981, renaming it Clay Street Press upon its move to the namesake location in a pre-revitalized OTR.
Of the hundreds of artists Patsfall has collaborated with, Nam June Paik, the “Father of Video Art,” was the most frequent and famous. Patsfall printed the Korea-born, New York–based artist’s first portfolio of etchings in the 1980s, then partnered on Paik’s career-defining video art and TV-set sculptures, one of which stands outside the Contemporary Arts Center downtown near the corner of Walnut and Fifth streets.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MARK PATSFALL
Patsfall, 74, decided to pull the plug on Clay Street Press at the end of 2023. His property taxes are going up, he says, and he’s ready to (semi) retire. He’s been selling off his machines and ruminating about a swan song exhibition or celebration later this year, though he isn’t sure exactly what that would entail.
One thing is sure, though: Patsfall’s legacy is immeasurable. “Mark has made opportunities for a lot of artists,” says Terence Hammonds, a rising art star who worked at Clay Street Press for several years, starting when he was a teenager. “I wouldn’t be who I am without him, and I’m not alone in that assessment.”
IMAGE COURTESY OF MARK PATSFALL
Cincinnati’s beloved Shark Girl character appears in “My Super Power,” a print by Casey Riordan Millard, from Cincinnati Portfolio IV, an edition of work by local artists that Patsfall published in 2013.
The Hidden Boy was a 1983 edition of lithography and wood cuts by Jay Bolotin about growing up in Kentucky. Bolotin continues to live and show there.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MARK PATSFALL
“Blown-Up Baby Doll,” by the late internationally acclaimed artist Vito Acconci, is a photo of 24 triangular pieces screen-printed on a plastic-like material, which can be arranged and rearranged, fabricated by Patsfall and published by Carl Solway Gallery in 1992.
At the 1997 Muenster Sculpture Project in Germany, Paik debuted 32 Cars for the 20th Century: Play Mozart’s Requiem Quietly. To fabricate the piece, Patsfall and Carl Solway traveled around the Midwest to find cars, which were then purchased and shipped to Germany, where they were painted silver. On the ground in Muenster, Patsfall arranged the cars in front of a castle and buried wires under paving stones so that classical music could be played continually in the area. The installation was later bought by Samsung and shipped to Korea. To this day, Patsfall consults on its conservation.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MARK PATSFALL
Nam June Paik’s video assemblage Mother was one of the first “robot” sculptures Patsfall fabricated for him in 1986. It measures 6 feet, 6 inches. Coincidentally, Patsfall had already been collecting old TV consoles for his own future art pieces. For this piece, he scoured antique shops for the televisions and helped engineer the electronics. Sales from this sculpture series (the pieces are named after family members such as Father, Aunt, etc.) earned Patsfall enough money for the down payment on the Clay Street Press building. In total, Patsfall and Paik made more than 400 works of art together.
The Fluxfax Portfolio was a 1994 edition of prints by artists of Fluxus, an international conceptual movement that began in New York in the late 1950s. Nam June Paik and Patsfall collaborated on the portfolio, originally wanting to bring the artists to Cincinnati to create work but not knowing how they could afford the travel and lodging costs. In a 3 a.m. brainstorm, Paik called Patsfall to suggest the artists simply fax instructions to the print shop.
For Yoko Ono’s Play It By Trust in 1987, Patsfall cast brass pieces and etched a 30-by-30-inch metal chess board. Everything is painted white—a comment, it has been written, on the futility of war.
IMAGE COURTESY OD MARK PATSFALL
Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis were young Cincinnati artists in 2013 when “Quantitative Menagerie” appeared in Cincinnati Portfolio IV. The couple, who had also shown their work in the Clay Street Press gallery, now live in Arizona and are primarily known for sculpture. “I invited artists based on the strength of their work, whether they were printmakers or not,” says Patsfall. Davis recalls, “We could always count on a good scene and thoughtful exhibition at Clay Street Press.”
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