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#(53) BIG MAN

Edition of 213 of which 100 copies are signed 1-100, 26 are signed A-Z as artist's proofs, and three sets are signed as progressives.

October 10, 1975 Eleven colors 14" x 24"

Client: Phil Carroll, Fantasy Records, 10th & Parker, Berkeley CA 94710. Telephone (510) 549-2500

A-Z: Artist's own use

(Print Casebooks 2, 1977) (the poster was also reproduced as a record jacket)

When John Henry was a little bitty baby, no bigger than the palm of your hand, his mother looked down and she said to him, "gonna be a steel-drivin' man." So pronouncing his death sentence, to break his poor heart in a hopeless contest with a steam drill. A century and more gone by, we still celebrate this glorious failure, because it was not a failure at all. Man vs. machine is really man striving within himself-struggling with his own creations. Father and son, might be a better way of looking at it. The father who is not outshined by his own son has created something lesser than himself, setting in train a decline from the age of gold, to silver, to brass, to iron, and at last to clay. What if the steam drill had not won?