feather2pixels

Up next: transforming this red shopping cart full of 1 square foot pine tiles into an art piece that is an improvement over an installation featuring a red shopping cart full of 1 square foot tiles.

This might be harder than it seems.  That’s a pretty sweet red shopping cart.

“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

For what is likely my final offering in this record-smashing month of feather2pixelation, I am documenting some more stuff that I am finishing up for the CityArt April show.

I am most excited about a shadowbox prototype I slapped together for these Ocean Beach paper prints.  Increasingly influenced by the impeccable eye of zMom as well as the practical concerns of selling scrap cardboard in a commercial art gallery, I am very slowly warming up to the concept of picture frames.

The primary concern is empirical. To me, the danger of presenting art behind a bunch of glass and mat board is that emphasizes the image over the physical.   I don’t want people to approach this piece as a colorful picture of the California coastline.  Much more preferable is an innate sense that comes from experiencing in person a luxuriously thick slab of paper with a surface textured in layers of  saturated inks.  Otherwise why not just print the shit out on my Epson and save $255 a month on studio rent?

That might not sound like a big deal, but in a world where there is no shortage of images–if anything, we live in a state of image overload–the  more emphasis on the material properties of the art object the better.  If I can’t smell, taste, or touch the art object, I hope to at least see it for what it is.

There is a need for visual artists working today to think of their work less as an image and more as an experience.  This is partly for ego reasons and partly for the reason that not doing so would mean that there is no compelling reason for new visual art to exist.

Thought experiment: wouldn’t we be disappointed if we went to see the original Declaration of Independence in Washington and they had framed it in mat board?  Anyone can Google the text or even an image of the Declaration of Independence, so why do we still go to the National Archives and wait in line for an hour? To see the physical ink on the original piece of parchment.  It is a thrilling piece of paper to look at.

Cue the shadowbox!  I feel like this is a very ideal solution, especially for paper work.  That it is in essence a display case for a mere sheet piece of paper in a way serves to elevate the object in borderline absurd fashion (an exaggeration that has been thoroughly deconstructed in Twentieth century art).  This particular shadow box might actually backfire, as it is made out of 3.5 inch-wide fir slats, casting a ridiculously long and possibly distracting shadow.

And I am still at a loss to make perfect miter joints.

Also: some new signage and an alternate take on yesterday’s teaser.

Studio upgrades! As part of the feather2pixel winter capital improvement campaign, which has mostly consisted me of going out for espresso, I built this workbench. By the way, I have had my eye on that trim saw for a while and now it is mine. It is a triumphant, brilliant saw. I love it.

Sandwich board for Bernal Outdoor Cinema.  Yum.

Thanks Anne and Leslie for helping me grow the feather2pixel Bernal Sandwich Board empire.

My work on the Rapha Cycle Club mural is complete.  To recap: the SF based design firm Rebar hired me to put this image on vertical wood beams.  Forty-five total beams, forty-five total square feet:

With screenprinting out of the question, I decided to get this done with large format digital prints on adhesive backed vinyl.  It’s the very expensive stuff used for permanent vehicle decals, and I learned way more about 3M ControlTac technology than anyone should have to.

My neighbor Fran who runs a printing business out of her Precita Avenue garage, did the printing.  EB and Tommy helped me out with the labor intensive application process, which took the three of us working together four hours to complete:

The grand opening of the parklet is 4pm on Friday November 16,2012.  I’ll be there warming up for happy hour.

I recently spent two weeks as destroyer-in-residence at the Breg-man family workshop in Santa Cruz, California, a wonderful coastal town with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of dreadlocked caucausions and aesthetically perfect fences.  Here are some of the items I completed during my time there.

Hillside Supperclub sign: Fabricated from reclaimed wood and carbon steel.  Screenprint to follow.

An armada of steel frames: For my imminent invasion of a gallery near you.

I must acknowledge the huge amount of assistance from Jonathan.  Without loads of his smithing assistance, this would not have been possible and  I would probably be in the hospital with third degree burns.  But not him:

[flv:welding.flv 320 240]

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 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:

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.

After mail ordering special hinges that completely clear a door from its cavity in the open position,  I finally got around to assembling the door to my light-proof silk screen cabinet.

But apparently I suck at measuring wood and of course its turns out that there are huge gaps for light to get through.  Hopefully its not enough light to ruin unexposed screens.

Did I mention that I teach a college class called Instrumentation and Measurement?

At least the door pretty much opens and closes.

i have reinvented the door

special hinges

enormous, light accommodating gaps

Casters are definitely on my list of new favorite things.  I special-ordered these beautiful ones from the internet to roll-enable my homemade worktable.   They double lock (to disable not just rolling, but its uncouth cousin swiveling) and I was able to very securely fix them in the end grain of my 2×4’s with half inch lag bolts.  Have no idea what I am talking about?  I guess that just makes me the clearly superior carpenter.

Mm, these look good enough to eat.

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

My wide range of incompetence has been well chronicled in this journal^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}.  I was preparing yet another item for that list in the form of a worktable project for my screen printing studio, and that’s what this post was going to be about.  However, I finished the table last night and for the most part it’s not half bad.  Of course it took me over a week to plan (even though I was working from plans that a generous woodworker already worked out).  And over a day to build.  And I hurt myself.  For me, that’s progress.

The worktable

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The worktable

Held together with 3/4 inch dowels