feather2pixels

Here is a sneak peak of a new series of screenprinted cityscapes on cardboard I have been working on for open studios this weekend.  They are experiments for part of a larger and presently secret public art project I am developing.  I have to say, this is going to be a unique chance to get some painstakingly rendered artwork at absolute rock bottom prices.   I will be offering have 4 new, different limited edition prints on trash; paper prints of most of my Valencia to Vermont work (24th Street cityscapes from the Mission); even a few remaining Temporary Spaces prints on wood; and some other surprises.  I hope it’s a good year.

Cellspace Open Studios 2011
October 1 and 2
11-5:30
CELLspace: 2050 Bryant St in the Mission between 18th and 19th.

Hey I am co-presenting at an architecture conference in San Francisco this September.  My friends Kelli and Seth have reassembled the Local Mission team to disseminate our thoughts on promoting community through food as part of the American Institute of Architect’s Architecture in the City Festival. Dinner included!

Hey, I inaugurated my newly assembled work space by completing an edition of 55 screen prints on old cardboard and then practically giving them away that night at CELLspace’s Spacecraft First Thursday show.

That was fun.  Thanks if you bought one.

Now I am going away for five weeks. See you soon!

My friends like to pretend that I pass my summer days lazily collecting sand dollars and breaking the law, but I will have anyone who will listen know that I recently executed the largest continuous screenprint of my life.  This print makes up a floor and wall for the world of Down A Little Dirt Road, produced in my capacity as the play’s Set Designer.

How big is it?  The main floor sheet measures about 350 ft²–with a few extensions including a large piece that crawls up the upstage wall, the total is around 550 ft².

To produce this one serigraph to rule them all , we first purchased one large sheet of economy vinyl flooring from our local mega-home improvement garrison and then got to work on its backside.  After a coat of Cracked Pepper Black was loosely applied with paint rollers, we got down on hands and knees to apply the screen prints in pairs, one painful  square foot at a time.  One person held the screen steady while the other manned the squeegee.  After seven hours of this, the pattern was complete and the surface was protected with a polyurethane sealant known to the state of California to cause birth defects while wet.

Not too many days of artmaking have shortened my life expectancy like this one probably did.  But the floor looks great:

Backside of the flooring	After a quick coat of black	After screen printing
Applying the selant	The pattern

Installed in the venue, I was happy with way the prints transformed the space:

before

after

Unfortunately there was a heartbreaking amount of tearing when the flooring was unrolled in the venue.  The vinyl just kind of stuck to itself:

A small tear.

Find out how this problem was solved:  Down A Little Dirt Road opens June 9 and runs Thursdays through Sundays until July 3.  Tickets available at brown paper tickets. Thanks to Jonathan S., Erin B., Molly A., Louel S., and especially Maddie  for all the help making this happen.

Like the ephemeral San Francisco cherry blossom, the beautiful flower that is spring open studios has come and gone. And to the extent that the passing of the weekend reminds us of the many mysterious cycles and rhythms of nature, spring open studios reminds us of the very meaning of life itself.  Where some may find no meaning in sitting around a mostly empty art studio for 48 hours, waiting for a tide of  approval that may never come, others will find illumination.  Through it all, the one unchanging truth is that all shall find free wine.

CELLspace studio artists populated the gallery space and I took the opportunity to set up one of the walls with collected works from the Two Feather Press screenprinting co-op membership.   In my mind, our unofficial motto is screenprinting improves everything and maybe that’s why I thought this spread looked so great.

…And when I arrived at the studio on Sunday morning there was a not insignificant pile of cash under my door.  Apparently some anonymous early riser–bless your soul  whoever you are–indulged in a small shopping spree through our highly affordable offerings.

Thanks to all my friends who stopped by in support.  I really appreciate it.  After the wads of cash, your encouragement always makes it worth it.

Beau walks into the gallery

surprise packs for $2 sold like hotcakes at a hotcake stand with three hotcakes available.

One of the silk screens burned with geology book data.

I made a run of test prints from my geology book stencils. I thought I would experiment with metallic and glow in the dark inks, with the former more or less working and the latter more or less leaving me with four days of neck pain from pushing down so hard on the squeegee. (There is no glow in the dark ink in the final test prints.)

Because these types test prints often turn out better than my final pieces, I like to mail them.  So I cut down the sheets into  a large edition of postcards and sent them out to the usual suspects last week.   This gesture of goodwill generated a bit of feedback, which expressed various degrees of incredulity.

“This anonymous person who just sent us some art in the mail started to address it to my old apartment, then x’d it out, and then sent it to our current apartment.”

“It had me a bit freaked out.”

“Own up.”

“Thanks, but put my name next time!”

Anyway, you can see the edition of 6 here on my postcard page, where my official goal is 100 postcards by 2013.

Friends, family, Nigerian spam robots:  it is to you, my scarce and scattered and readership that I now make a confession.  While I have been busy in these pages attempting to seduce you with anodyne images of Northern California that you may or may not have noted in passing , I have also been secretly at work planning something big.

Let me first beg you to please not feel betrayed by the belated nature of this revelation, for it was only in the most pressing interests of self-respect that I kept this matter quiet even to you, my most devoted online readership.  (I hope you know who you are.)

What the hell am I talking about, you ask as usual?

Well, basically I recently came across my big chance in the art world.  This felt like the chance I have been waiting for, I think.  It all had something to do with a city fence, a big-time call for temporary art, and the changing Mission Bay community of San Francisco. Now not only have I been at work for the last four years doing things such as creating art about the changing Mission Bay community entitled Temporary Spaces, but I also took the time to put together and submit a bulletproof proposal for what I think is a truly exciting project.  This vague recap probably doesn’t explain anything, but I hope it at least it coveys a few good reasons why even up till Friday I felt enthusiastic and confident regarding this opportunity.

'Pieces are designed some months for passers-by to remove part of and take home. Other months, this area will be designed to contribute to:' not a popular idea.

I rallied my people, I did my absolute best, and without a doubt I put my strongest foot forward.  That felt great.  I am glad I did it.  It moved me forward.  Forward is my favorite direction.

Anyway, last Friday was supposed to be the big day and it turns out that the opportunity is not to be.

The bad part is that in the end my best wasn’t good enough.

Yeah… that part really sucks.

Oh well.

I’ll probably be over it after this weekend or this month or something.

I really don’t want to sound melodramatic or anything.  There are incredible things going on in the world right now affecting the lives of millions and this thing was only about me.  But as  inconsequential and selfish as it ultimately was, I guess I really wanted this particular thing.  Even though there will be other things this perfect. Some time in the future. Maybe.

Anyway, yes: I know this is how things go.  I just thought I should mention it here, since this is my art archive-website-thing.  Or something.  Immense thanks to my four invaluable advisers: Erin, Z-mom, Montreal, and Julia H.

People seem to be much more interested in my studio when I am working on t-shirts.   So maybe out of the goodness of my heart or maybe out of a pitiful need to be noticed, I printed a few tops for friends and family.

My secret weapon: H&M.  How are they able to manufacture garments in Bangladesh, ship them eight thousand miles to the West Coast of the U.S., and sell them at profit for $5.95?  Just a little thing called supply side economics you dumbass liberal apologists.  You jerks are so in love with regulation that if you had your way this rampant federal government would probably be trying to take over the delivery of everyone’s goddamned mail (and taxing me for it).

Anyway the series depicts three figures selected the from the city’s history.  I already executed a second printing, mostly because I carelessly failed to buy any large shirts the first time.

It’s a series of, I don’t know, twenty? Anyone want one? If so, I will heat set and drop in the mysterious blue container outside. It seems to seems to receive, sort, handle, and promptly deliver anything I place in it.

Much as Spy Kids (2001) begot 2002’s Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, so the Silian Rail poster resulted in a spin off project that I will detail in this sequel to the previous post.  Following their tour, the band played a CD release show in San Francisco.   At this show I was connected with Lia Rose, whose inspiring success in funding her debut solo album on kickstarter.com afforded her the funds to print some t-shirts.  That’s where I came in, she suggested.  I don’t usually print t-shirts because (1) I don’t have the proper gear (2) There are plenty of other people who print t-shirts and (3) They are much better at it than I.  We decided to give it a try anyway and and to my surprise we were able to crank out 75 one layer t-shirts in just one long Wednesday night, including coffee break.  I worked the squeegee, Lia Rose worked the heat gun.

This was the goal:

Typically,  printing a light color on dark fabric is the screenprinter’s classic pain in the ass scenario.   There’s almost no ink that will look opaque and bright when printed light-on-dark alone.  Printing a light graphic on a dark shirt usually requires a base coat of white or an initial spot bleaching step to lighten the bit of shirt directly under the ink (i.e. discharge printing, which is like magic.  Check out this fantastic video demo for excruciating technical detail more info). Naturally,  I was pretty sure I would fuck up all of the above and waste poor Lia Rose’s hard earned venture capital.  Once again, I found myself toeing the line between mediocre and piss poor.

What was I going to do?

Luckily, the light-on-dark dilemma is only a dilemma if a bright and opaque graphic is desired.  You actually get a somewhat cool vintage-y look if you just say screw it and print with no conditioning.  So screw it we did, hard and long with excellent results.  It was an edition of 75 shirts, printed on Alternative Apparel with Matsui RC  ink, heat set at 320° for 60 seconds.  Mediocrity pays off again!  Here’s Lia Rose with a freshly heat set men’s medium.

And a close up of the feaf, a “feather-leaf hybrid.” I think they have them in Madagascar:

Silian Rail Poster:

I thought a productive way to kick off the July printing season would be to crank out a series of starkly radiant posters for my favorite Bay Area boy-girl post post-rock experience, Silian Rail. Time was of the essence as our heroes were embarking on a west coast tour in a matter of days, and the project proved to be a much bigger pain in the ass than anticipated. This was mainly due to incompetence on my part.

The image was inspired by a recent camping trip to Angel Island with Christina, Marella, and EB (I can’t believe I have never done that before).   I had a feeling that the band would be in to a subdued natural scene that invoked their native Oakland.  That led to this Bay Bridge-Victorian-moon rise trifecta.  The images were printed on 30 x 22 Canson stock in a variety of colors:

(Click to enlarge)

Here’s some details.  The bridge:

The window:

The moon:

Of course I accidentally produced all the exposure films one inch too long for the paper. This near fatal mistake required some eleventh hour jerry-rigging in order for the band name to come through, which it barely did in the end. Luckily there was room for me to tape the text in the bottom corner of the film. Here’s what I am talking about.

And here’s some of the other (slightly too long for the paper) films:
Layer 1:

Layer 2:

And that’s probably more than anyone ever needed to know about the Silian Rail posters. Eric and Robin hit the road and the posters were on sale up and down the continent for an incredibly affordable five dollars. A limited edition of 45 or something.

Earlier this week, the 24th Street Project was finally ready to be installed at the new Local Mission Eatery. So I bought a 6 pack, rallied some friends, and we spent six hours fastening a grid of 350 wood tiles to six enormous slabs of MDX.  Three days later the industrial grade glue still hasn’t come of our hands, but I have a warm feeling from knowing how dedicated my friends are in my time of need.

Thanks to:

• Jim
• Erin
• To-Shi-O
• Cat
• Yaron (owner of Local Mission Eatery)
• Laser

And now you shall witness the proceedings on this third rate video I made.  (Pay attention to the second part of the time lapse and you can see the inimitable Phil–proprietor of the legendary Philz coffee shop two doors down–look on with questionable approval)

[flv:24_install.flv 480 360]

In addition to gallons of carcinogenic waste, one of the by-products of the printing project I recently completed is a large pile of newsprint proofs.  Basically, these are test prints we pulled in the process of  constructing our multi-layer compositions on wood.  This is the kind of shit I love.  Screen printing is exacting and absurd;  the fact that an artifact of the process can have such a loose and abstract quality pleases me.  And there are hundreds of these.  And I kind of like them better than the final pieces.

Needless to say, they have a bright future in the greater feather2pixel universe.  Stay tuned and check your mailboxes.

The restaurant for the 24th Street Project has an online home. Kind of.

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.