Portfolio of 6 woodcut prints by Artemio Rodriguez

Medium: Woodcut
Signature: Signed and numbered on colophon page
Dimensions: 7.5 x 10 inches (sheet), image size varies
Publisher: La Mano Press, blindstamp at lower right corner.
Edition: of 50

Artemio Rodríguez’s Vive unfolds like a brief poem carved in wood, each page pairing image and text in Spanish and English to form a quiet narrative of revelation. The six prints read as sequential moments: “Someone / spoke to me / all the days of my life / in my ear, softly, slowly / She told me: Live, live, live! / It was death.” In this condensed story the artist captures the essential tension that runs through his work—life and death intertwined, spoken with tenderness and irony.

Each relief print is cut with Rodríguez’s signature clarity and rhythmic line. The scenes move from everyday calm to visionary surprise: a woman seated beneath a tree, laborers at a wall, lovers in intimate conversation, a final skeletal figure revealed as La Muerte. The bilingual text beneath each image bridges worlds—Mexican and North American, sacred and ordinary—echoing Rodríguez’s own experience as a border-crossing artist who finds poetry in contradiction.

Issued by La Mano Press, the portfolio embodies the press’s mission to keep the traditions of hand printing alive while giving voice to contemporary Latinx experience. Vive is both artist book and memento mori: a reminder that mortality itself whispers the injunction to live.