feather2pixels

I am starting a project that involves making and projecting 35mm slides from scratch.

I figured my first step should be to test my found projector with some found slides. To my delight, it worked great.

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Soundtrack thanks: Ben, Joe, Nowell, Shal

A few recent gifts (that I have pictures of):

Game

Watercolor

Needlepoint

Rap Video

[iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/53496463?badge=0″ width=”500″ height=”281″ frameborder=”0″ webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/53496463″>Fischer and Erin Wedding Card (Rap Video) Version 2.0</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user4805707″>Nowell Valeri</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>]

I have been working on preparing my prints on cardboard series for an upcoming installation.  Mostly this involves fabricating lots of box frames out of hardwood flooring planks, but I also started thinking about ways to transform a few of the pieces into small dioramas. It’s been fun to think of ways for the art to interact with stuff.

In general I’m interested in exploring the possibilities of the limited edition in printmaking.  Traditionally, printmakers (and often sculptors) generate a limited edition of anywhere from two to a few thousand identical prints, typically in one session,  designating each piece with a serial number and then destroying the master plate so that no more prints can be struck.

To me this is one of the most compelling aspects of printing in the age of mechanical reproduction.  The edition draws attention to a separation between the expressive and technical components of art making that is unique to printmaking.  Printers spend most of their time pulling prints, which usually feels like an entirely different thing than being creative.  The inspiration diverges from the perspiration–they can be entirely different activities.

Part and parcel to the workmanlike aspect of manufacturing prints is the intriguing burden that technology places on the contemporary printmaker:  in an era when reproducing multiples of anything is frivolously easy,  the art maker is compelled to not only generate multiples by hand–the art maker needs an interesting enough reason for multiples to exist.

With that said, here are two of my frivolous ideas for transform a few of my multiples into playful dioramas.  I think the installation will feature 14 regular prints and 4 or 5 different altered prints.

1. Three Cones print cast in amber. Embedded with prehistoric bugs, the surface is hopelessly glossy so the photos suck.

2. SF Botanical Garden print with dino. I found this plastic toy on a walk a few years back.  It seemed strange that it was unpainted, maybe some kind of prototype?  My best guess of the species is Suchomimus or perchance Baryonyx.  Joe Pisch, can you confirm?  Anyway, this is a rare case in which hoarding weird shit I find on the beach paid off.

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.

Recent photobooth activity:

So instead, I’ll leave you with my five favorite photographs from this weekend.

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You know how Joe is a editor for television in New York?  Well from time to time he surprises his friends with little easter eggs that we would have to be watching the Home and Garden Channel very attentively to notice.  Luckily he occasionally passes them on and for my own selfish reasons, this is my favorite one yet.  If  you are really too bored with life to be reading this lousy website, activate the video.  You will probably see where this is going very quickly but start paying attention at the 13 second mark.

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People sometimes tell me that Nowell and I are looking more alike these days.

Is that what happens to friends in older age?  And if so, what does it mean that Ben and Joe sent me the exact same package last week?

I seem to be back from the coast. The south coast. Of Lake Erie. Ben and Joe (barely) flew in from New York, I came in from Pittsburgh, and we all rendezvous-ed with Shal in his newish, possibly semi-permanent home. The night before, driving a Korean rental car upstate, I watched the aggressively uniform landscape of Ohio (is any part of this state uninhabited?) kind of give way to the sprawling, post-industrial mass bisected by river that is the greater Cleveland area. We spent most of time sprawling ourselves: in next-to-back row seats of a tight Indians/Yankees game, in corners of the kind of bars that pull you in with a seven thousand beer menu and keep you there with a Labatt special, and of course on Shal’s living room floor, where approximately one thirtieth of his media collection still fills an entire bookshelf two rows deep. Cleveland is a good place to hang out.

Then I got on the same United States Route 80 of my daily commute and drove East out of the state of Ohio and towards the state of squalor. I was headed to State College, Pennsylvania, where Danny was about to complete his last week ever of studying at the state college in question in a fantastically shitty shell of a house (further ravaged from a party the weekend before). At this point, studying is the generous description of what he does there, though we did wake up at 9:30 AM, after a night of watching DVDs in his warm bedroom, and slashed though a thicket of Ugg boots into middle campus to learn about monopoly. Later on, we went out with his friends to the kind of bars that pull you in with their $5 pitchers of bottom shelf liquor and keep you there because you are not physically free to leave. It was fun and it all made miss college. But not that much.

I completed my five hundred mile circle on PA Route 22 West, where central Pennsylvania transforms to western Pennsylvania via the Altoona Valley.  Freight trains still do things like chug up proud green hills and cross sturdy steel truss bridges here. Once in Pittsburgh, I tried to make the most of my time there by visiting PA’s superior state college, eating a kielbasi fried pirogi sandwich, pinball, and meeting up with Stef and Alicia, who spend less on their new mortgages than what I’m thinking about spending on a studio space. As Alicia’s pup was licking my face over a distracted game of Guitar Hero, I thought, she’s got a pretty nice life.

Joe’s gone. Before he left, Nowell, him, and I enjoyed a fancy civic center dude evening with the Kronos Quartet at the never comfortable Herbst Theater (has it always been hot as hell in there?). After checking in with the wives, we headed down to the bars south of Cesar Chavez, which are slowly becoming my favorite places to drink in the Mission: the courtyard at El Rio is downright charming, the photo booth at The Knockout is second to none, and for good measure there’s even a Taqueria Can-cun in the area. Even the Argus lounge makes up for an overall lack of inspiration with free shots of vodka gimlet and projected Kubrick films.

It was good to have a night out drinking. The moon was high and brilliant. Mission Street felt like a loving old relative with questionable hygiene. The city glowed. Joe is a believer in the well-timed sentiment and so we spilled lots of beer over locked-eye toasts as we made our way through the rounds. Each new drink comes with a small slug of intensity and that’s how drinking with Nowell and Joe is. Later, Joe learned that on this side of the Cascades, ordering a “carne asada” gets you a plate, not a buritto. Nowell successfully ordered a chorizo burrito (every time Nowell gets chorizo, it seems to generate a new inside joke) and I got my secret weapon: cheese quesadilla.

A few days later, I found myself south of Cesar Chavez again, with Adrienne to watch her boyfriend’s band play the Knockout on a Monday night. Spontaneity! Plus a chance to revisit the photo booth! Adrienne remind me of me. Since starting graduate school, she’s been constantly embattled, yet she’s full of plans for displaying our crafts to the world. Thank goodness somebody is.

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