New Rodrigue Estate Print Release Celebrates Nationwide Streaming of “Blue: The Life and Art of George Rodrigue” on PBS – Access Film via Our Documentary Page

In 1991, George Rodrigue opened a gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, a place he’d admired since attending art school in California during the 1960s. Following the gallery’s opening, Rodrigue spent stretches of time working and creating in Carmel, becoming a part of the area’s community. In 2013, the organizers of the Carmel Art & Film Festival selected Rodrigue as the event’s featured artist. To commemorate the occasion, Rodrigue chose a Blue Dog mixed media work on chrome paper, created in 2010, to serve as the festival’s official image.

The work features the bust of a Blue Dog silkscreened onto chrome paper with hand-painted embellishments, including flowers and a yellow background. It’s the result of extensive artistic experimentation. To create mixed media works on chrome paper, Rodrigue had to find a paper that could absorb both silkscreen ink and acrylic paint. He eventually found materials that allowed him to execute his vision so thoroughly that he could use the chrome paper as he might a painting’s canvas, saturating the surface with vibrant, colorful designs.

In 2024, when Blue: The Life and Art of George Rodrigue, the first feature-length documentary about Rodrigue’s career, was in production by WLAE Studios, a New Orleans-based public television station, the Rodrigue family selected this mixed media image as the film’s official promotional image. To coincide with the documentary’s wider release on PBS channels across the country, this mixed media is now available for the first time as an estate-stamped silkscreen print. The Rodrigue family retitled the originally untitled work I’m a Movie Star, a title George had used previously. Like the original silkscreen, I’m a Movie Star has a chrome paper base, preserving the visual qualities of the original work and marking the first time a Rodrigue mixed media on chrome has been reproduced as a silkscreen print. A portion of the proceeds from sales of this print edition will benefit WLAE and their public television programming.

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