feather2pixels

Mystery tiles,  out of order, for the time being.

Hello.  I recently completed a small commission to develop this photo into a series of prints, using only nine planks of laminated pine and one slice of homemade Ranier cherry pie:

The commissioner? My sister Michelle. The event?  Her birthday in July.  The final prints can be found in my objects section.  Here is a small sample:

I found an exciting new place to display my work.  Coyote Counter Collective is what we in the industry call a re-tail space and those who have ever seen a coyote know that motherfucker has one serious tail.  Upon reflection I guess it’s a little hard to imagine a coyote ever needing to re-tail so I am not exactly sure if we quite have that right yet.  Or perhaps that’s the Counter part.

Anyway it’s a co-op storefront in Oak-land, where the trees are green but the Occupiers are not,  and my first official duty as a member was to screenprint a fistful of signs for some to-be-determined guerrilla advertising.  They came out well I think–a rehash of my go-to sign in one afternoon design–featuring glyphs from my beloved Remington 333 (eternal thanks for that, Kristin Roeder):

And here’s what my inaugural hanging looks like in situ.

I am starting a bold new project.  I’ll explain more later, but it has something to do with motion, antique motion pictures, separation and reconfiguration, why birds sing, and wordplay.

For now, the Mark Bradford exhibition at SFMoMA among other things got me thinking more about surfaces and materials.  He collected fragments of his urban environment (South Central LA) and spend a decade reassembling them into monumental canvases that deserve to be in a museum.  And there they are.

For the purposes of large quantities of materials and surfaces, I like to start at stores that sell hardware, fabric, and junk.  After some test pieces, I began my first new surface by adhering some deliciously textured burlap to plywood, flattening, and working the nooks and crannies with acrylic medium and sandpaper.

Here’s some work from the fourth meeting of the postcard workshop: (more…)

I am quickly approaching the end of my winter screenprinting workshops.  Tonight marked the third of four meetings of the postcard class in which, after much preparation, we finally got to printing.  Here are some of the pieces completed tonight.

Jason‘s heart (this is one of the best pen and ink rendered stencils I have seen–he got superb line quality)

Alison’s two-layer poem print on wood.  I was impressed how well the text worked here.  I am biased, but the print on wood looks great to me.

Grace’s greeting card.  Her two layers from hand drawings combined very effectively.  Simple and well executed.

Oh yeah, I also figured out how to make an animated gif with Photoshop.  Why I would want to make an animated gif is another story.  But for now it’s time to party like its 1994:

More items printed at the postcard workshop:

Jeni's print on guitar wood

Jeni's print on guitar wood

Jeni's print on guitar wood

Jason's postcard

Grace's greeting card

The final tile of the 24th Street Project.   (The “info, maps and more” are on their way, in anticipation of tripling my monthly hit count from ten to thirty. )

The principle printing for the 24th Street project is in the books.  Oh my god!  I didn’t think it was possible.  Yet tonight at 9:22 pm PST, the following took place:

[flv:final_print.flv 480 360]

That’s right: the final pull of the final piece.  If you thought that was boring, imagine setting up one hundred and four of those screens and watching the video seven hundred and sixteen times.   Okay so it wasn’t the biggest project in the world, but at least I can show up at my day job now.

Here are the last two prints: Potrero and Vermont.

On Saturday we completed these prints of Utah and Florida. We are done printing twenty-two of twenty-four pieces for the 24th Street project.   That’s 92% done!   This has been the focus of my life for the last few months and I am now realizing that at no point did I really take the time to think about the possibility that it might end.  The project just seemed too big and precarious to finish before February.   But the end is very much in my mind now that there is just one more printing session left.

I am going to do it. I am going to tell you about my current project. That is, after all, the presumed point of this online information dispensary, contrary to what four years of overwrought personal laments would have you believe.

My current project is a permanent installation in a new restaurant opening next month on 24th street.  Right here:

This is the biggest creative project I have taken on since the band’s last record release on the East Coast.  We almost sold one unit at that show and I’ve been riding the wave until now, the point where I shall unleash a thirty-foot wall of artwork upon the residents of the Inner Mission.  The wall’s going to be installed with a grid of several hundred wooden tiles, twenty-four of them screen printed works of bona fide  Art, one for each intersection of 24th street from Valencia to Vermont.  Right here:

Would you like to see some?  You will have to help me artificially inflate my click count:

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Here’s a little piece I put together for my friend Cooper.  It’s a screen print on wood and a year’s worth of MUNI fast passes.  He’s giving to someone special for Christmas and it’s better than anything I am giving this year.