David Rathman returned to Highpoint’s printshop in June 2009. Those familiar with Highpoint Editions will remember his Five New Etchings from 2005, a suite of intaglio prints featuring Western scenes and darkly humorous bits of text. One of his new prints is a muted spit bite etching that revisits this Western imagery. In it, two cowboys move through an austere landscape with the phrase “It seldom matters, the words you say” hovering in the space above them. A second etching combines spit bite, scraping, burnishing, roulette and drypoint in a gritty image of two battered cars stacked in a junk yard; floating above the cars is the phrase “The way we get by”. Rathman is also currently at work on a large-scale diptych of demolition derby cars. Both vehicles will be tiled into multiple prints, emphasizing their quirky, reconstructed quality.