Deborah Oropallo
Six Shooter, 2009
pigmented inkjet, portfolio, essay, and poem
11 prints - 18 x 16 in. each.
edition of 10

In 2009, Deborah Oropallo completed Wild Wild West Show, a series of images inspired by the rodeo and printed on large honeycombed aluminum panels. The Six Shooter suite of eleven pigmented inkjet prints is a companion to Wild Wild West Show, delivering the artist’s consideration of western imagery – in this case, compositions inspired by cowboy-themed toy pistols – in a more intimate format.

Six Shooter was edited and proofed by Oropallo and Donald Farnsworth at Magnolia Editions in Oakland, CA. The series was printed by Sam Bennett and Tallulah Terryll on archival Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper using a twelve color Canon pigmented inkjet printer. The Six Shooter prints are housed in handmade clamshell boxes, designed and created by Andrew Rottner at Magnolia Editions. Each portfolio is covered in Canapetta book cloth with a white leather star embedded on the surface.

A text by Nick Stone and a poem, Cowboy, are included with each suite of prints. Cowboy, originally titled The Best Whiskey in the West, was composed in ASL (American Sign Language) by an unknown author and passed down manually for many years. In the late 1940s, Dr. Mervin Garretson signed Cowboy at the Maryland School for the Deaf; this reproduction is a transcript of Garretson’s version, assembled from memory by Jean Boutchard.