feather2pixels

I was already on pace to complete this new series for the beginning of February.

So I figured I might as well proceed with my weekend woodwoorking marathon to fabricate the frames on schedule. How could I pass up the chance for such choice alliteration?

It feels good to be manically productive.  I feel that this series has moved me forward in some important and presently not understood way.  Thanks to Jesse and zMom for advice, room, board.

[flv:30_frames.flv 480 360]

The payoff:

OK, because the gallery that was to show my ambitious new series (24 new pieces in 24 days) has dissolved before it even got started, there remains no reason to pursue the imaginary sense of suspense I was previously attempting.  I shall heretofore reveal all.  This new project is another series of prints on trash, but even more legitimate trash.  Imagine me diving into an absurdly deep dumpster at work wearing my fancy dress shoes and you will have imagined the back story of this series.

The image is three traffic cones sitting in one of my favorite Golden Gate Park glens, and the neat thing about the series is that each piece is unique.  Not only is each rectangle of cardboard disgusting in its own special way, but the base layer of every piece is printed in a different color that blends into the same white light that illuminates the cones throughout.  The different colors span the entire visible spectrum and the net effect is a gradual journey from twilight to dusk and back again.

I am not sure if that makes such sense, but the idea was to hang a six-by-four matrix of all twenty-four pieces by color.  Kind of like this mockup.  The idea was to price them so low that people would be idiots to not buy them, and as they did the installation would dissolve and I would be rich.

Here’s the sequence of a few of the pieces:

Layer 1
Layer 3
Layer 5

Next: A small oak tree becomes thirty frames.

Recently sighted: Grant Street in Chinatown, stained red from Chinese New Years firecrackers.  Woah.

Correction: I am not part of a new gallery, the new gallery I am not part of  isn’t going to be on Larkin Street, and there most definitely isn’t going to be a show in February.

Anyone need twenty-four framed cityscapes ?

Did I mention I was invited to join a new collective gallery owned and operated by artists?

Did I mention that this gallery is on the same Larkin Street block where I purchase my quasi-legal pharmaceuticals as my favorite Morrocan restaurant?

Did I mention our first show goes up this February?

It is all true and I am planning something exciting, complete with special effects.  Check out the gradient technique:

I bet Andy Warhol never thought of that, welcome to the future,.

Please check in again soon to see what I am making and how this series comes out.  Or even better come to the show.  I would love the moral support:

Gallery 1044 February 2012 Show
1044 Larkin St, San Francisco
Feb 01-Feb 26
Opening Reception: 2nd Thursday (2/9) 6-10pm
(Did I mention I will be offering this absurdly cheap, unique and gallery-enabled series of screenprints)

This Saturday saw the completion of a rare printmaking collaboration between myself and the extended Bregman family.

The project involved the production of one edition of prints that modestly explored the concept of Kindred.  Ziggy (aka Zmom aka Zig_Poet@gmail aka Erin’s Mom), an accomplished Santa Cruz print maker, started things out with a woodcut she described as “invoking the family tree:”

[flv:zmom_print.flv 480 360]

After that, I compiled a primary source motherlode of old letters, journals, report cards, and telegrams found in the Bregman family archive and also one of the world’s great junk shops (thank you, Ben Hill).  With the help of Erin and my letter-writing typewriter, I constructed the words into an extra special, one-layer silver screenprint:

Today in my San Francisco studio it all came together:

What a cool little project. So now I guess if someone I don’t know likes it, it’s off to Australia. Or something.

Recently I devised plans to expand my series of prints on trash.  Among other things, those plans include building box frames out of scrap hardwood flooring and plywood.  I don’t think most of my work warrants or deserves frames, but there’s something I like about putting a flourish on a frosted flake box I found in the mess hall dumpster.

So it was with great effort that I completed a few prototypes last week.  A box is a concept simple enough for a small child to understand, yet it took me hours to put these together.   Among many other things, something I never realized is hardwood is hard–I learned that the…difficult way.

The art floats flush with the surface and I like how the gap calls attention to the rough edges.  Now all I need is a wood shop, enough flooring to cover a small room, and roughly twenty-four more of these.

Little Opera is definitely one of San Francisco’s top fifteen, possibly only, all-kids’ opera company.

After an initial round of tee-shirt fabrication for the kids, Little Opera founder and feather2pixel sex contractor EB worked with me to print something more suitable for adults.  Since the kids’ shirts, as you will recall, featured an intriguing but possibly altogether inappropriate obscure nineteenth century composer, we figured there wouldn’t be much to change.

The kids shirts featured a dark print on a light shirt:

The adult shirts were printed with a negative image for the slightly more advanced light print on a dark shirt.  Getting a suitably opaque light print on a dark surface is a notoriously unfun screen printing technique to execute.  Conversely, deliberately executing light on dark poorly may result in this pleasingly nuanced monochromatic effect:

Cool, huh?  Amazing that it’s just white ink with a little medium for transparency and sparkle for attitude.  To me it says “I give to charity but I don’t take shit from anyone.”

Here’s negative and positive stencils:

And finally, here is the staged joy of screenprinting:

Welcome to 2012. It was an exciting end of year season here around feather2pixel headquarters, with several visits from far flung colleagues and several more travels to distant shores. In the interests of moving things right along, here’s some artifacts and photos to recap.

Okay let’s get back to work.