Celia Álvarez Muñoz American, b. 1937

In 1998, Álvarez Muñoz came to collaborate with Katherine Brimberry at Flatbed on the print titled “Sweet Nothings.” The source of the image was Celia’s innovative photographs of objects placed on tiers of plexiglass over weathered concrete in natural sunlight, creating a layered effect. This was the pre-digital era, and all layering was done with single exposures on black-and-white film. It was Celia’s wish that the print have a “candy-like” color, so Flatbed collaborated with Sam Coronado’s studio and his printer, Brian Johnson, to screen-print the image in layers of color. The finished print has over ten color screen print runs. Over the color image, Brimberry worked with Álvarez Muñoz to create a letterpress relief plate to print the text in ink so transparent that only in the right light or angle can it be legible: “Saint Anthony would help you find anything, including novios, boyfriends, provided you prayed to him for nine weeks.”