feather2pixels

I’m getting ready for the March show at City Art:

…By printing some labels on wood, complete with Linnaean taxonomy, for my series of Invasive Species screenprints.

(Remember this print with embedded flies?  Me neither.)

Anyway, some see them all Friday March 01, 2013 at City Art. 828 Valencia from 7-10PM.

PS: If you buy the art at the show, you get the wood label for free!

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.

Here is where I am recording the July 2012 configuration of my display at Coyote Counter Collective.  423 40th street in Oakland.  This month I’m showing framed prints on cardboard, Michelle’s beach print on pine, and a mini installation of wooden tiles.

My latest series of prints on trash (three traffic cones in the park at thirty times of day), is up at Cafe LaBoheme.  This is my second showing at Boheme, one the great gathering places of the Mission District.  The pieces are a little misaligned and wobbly because we have to suspend all art from above, but this is basically my vision for this series.  Nice photos coming soon!

Cafe La Boheme (across from 24th Mission BART station)
3318 24th Street
San Francisco, CA

Well I spent some joyful time printing, hand-binding, and editioning a catalog for my latest series of prints on trash.

Then I spent some more, less fun time distributing and photographing the catalog.

Then I spent some possibly-wasted time programming my website to show you the catalog here.

Q: What’s seventeen inches long and divided into eight segments?
A: You are technically correct if you guessed the Peruvian giant yellowleg centipede, but you are more correct if you answer was “sheets of Fischer’s latest postcard edition“

Because I want to maintain pace for 100 postcards in 100 years, putting my Three Cones in the Park stencils in service of a new edition seemed like a good weekend goal.

PS_Print was having a sale on posters, so I designed a postcard pattern and got it printed on some beautiful 11×17 card stock. Using the screens from my original piece on cardboard, I reprinted layers 2 and 5  on top of the pattern in metallic ink.

So the print is on the address side of the postcards, which is unconventional but I think it’s a good idea because it (a) subverts the tyranny of the two sided postcard (if you write on the front of a postcard, which side gets the fridge magnet?); (b) invites the sender to addtheir own art; and (c) looks more interesting.

Resisting the temptation to dig too much deeper in to postcard semiotics, I deferred to practicality and cut out paper squares that left white space for addresses.  After all, postcards are meant for mailing and mail needs addressing. It’s a pretty simple little screen printing trick: just lay some paper cutouts between the screen and the substrate–the ink will hold them in place for hundreds of pulls:

The resulting print:

After the second and final layer, I finished things off by hand perforating the sheets.

Here’s what one of the final 8 postcards looks like.  Go to my postcards section to see the entire sheet in all its 72dpi glory.

By no means is this a novel screen print technique, but I really like the effect of printing the same image in two slightly offset colors.  Here is an example for my studio session yesterday, shown in metallic red and violet.

That’s it.

This is pretty stupid and took too long–much to long–for me to do, but I programmed a “View Pieces by Time of Day” button on my Three Cones page.

Yesterday I rented a fancy telephoto camera lens to photograph my recent series of prints on old cardboard.  The lens isn’t just fancy but incredible in its ability to make almost anything look good, shooting a razor thin depth of field that separates subject from a background that blurs into creamy oblivion.  But could it make my art look good?

After bringing the lens home in a car that is only a few times more valuable, I did some testing with CW’s new camera.  Just messing around without much idea of what I was doing opened up a new world of quality that I will probably never have access to again.   I guess I can sort of understand how photographers get obsessed with gear, although the idea is pretty unappealing.

Anyway my friend Michelle very generously donated her morning to hosting me and my cardboard at the City College SF Photo Lab, where there are two rules:

1. I don’t touch anything.
2. I don’t touch anything.

They must have been expecting me.

Michelle set up big, fake looking lights that made a pacifying sound when they flashed.  She showed me how to light my work without harsh reflections, and she did it all with a smile.  We shot all thirty-two pieces.  Overall, much ado for a bunch of trashed cardboard: here’s Three Cones in the Park on my Objects page.

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.

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)