feather2pixels

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.

I recently learned of great news for San Francisco screenprinters.  Two local Davids, Dave and David, just opened a storefront for their screen printing supply business, Anthem. For basic supplies and gear, they offer an unbeatable alternative to mail order, art stores, and Hayward’s dreaded Midwest Sign and Screen.  In particular, these guys offer excellent prices on screens.

In unrelated news, an assortment of my work was on the walls for the opening party of a new screen print supply store near Rainbow Grocery, possibly called Anthem.   Here’s photos of the space from before the show:

Valencia to Vermont is a top pick this week at funcheapSF.com! Fears of a third grade birthday repeat (total attendance: 0)  are being allayed.  In fact I think that for the last two weeks I have been secretly hoping that loads of people come to my possibly fun and definitely cheap opening.  Enough so, that I printed real flyers, decided to set up a little printing station and plan to give out genuine newsprint proofs from the production.   If ink blotches on post consumer waste aren’t enough to bring in the masses, I don’t know what is.

Next event: Wednesday.  Come check out this pain in the ass of an installation and see what all the non-fuss is about.  As for the lack of posts last month, well, I have been busy  moving and procrastinating at my day job.  However next week school is out and I start anew.  Get ready, internet. 

That is my name!

The restaurant is opening this week!

The wall is installed and fully vertical!

The toilets are flushing! (You only make that mistake once)

Understand how famous I am by clicking the video to life.  Damn I need a haircut.

[flv:mission_local_tour.flv 480 360]

Here’s a cool little write up on my work from the 1AM Gallery blog.   The February 2010 group  show it references featured several interesting visions of the city and photos are available at Flicker.  Oh right, I mean Flickr.  The internet is no friend of the letter “e.”

Anyway I ended up selling final copies of two beloved pieces.  One to Sacks 5th Avenue, I think.  If that’s the case,  welcome to the feather2pixel family, Sacks!  I hope you understand who you are dealing with.

The final tile of the 24th Street Project.   (The “info, maps and more” are on their way, in anticipation of tripling my monthly hit count from ten to thirty. )

Temporary Spaces, my series of screen printed cityscapes on wood from 2008, will be featured this month in what I expect is their last show.  I expect that because I am basically out of them. (You know, if they end up selling at gallery prices.)  I was a little reluctant to give up the final copies that I was saving for my personal collection, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to be in a real group show at a real gallery masquerading as a real artist. So I need to let go of this part of the material world.  I need to convince myself  that at the end of the day, fuck it, Stuff is just taking up space in my life and I need to focus on the purity in art that brings us all together as humans.   Right after I stop at Best Buy to pick up a tripod.

So in the name of fucking at the end of the day, I now present you with the hyperlink.  The opening is this Thursday at 7pm and the show runs through February at 1AM Gallery in South of Market (1000 Howard at Sixth).  Incidentally, 1AM turns out to be quite a cool spot focused stuff like graffiti art and stenciling classes and they have any color of spray paint you could ever want for sale behind the counter.   I think you know what I mean.   It kind of makes sense.  I’m looking forward to what my fellow chroniclers of the city have to show for themselves:

The 24th Street Project has an opening date at Local Mission Eatery!  On March 5, 2010 from 7-9, we will have an official art opening with food and art and screen printing and whatever other tricks I stuff up my sleeve.  More details soon.

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.

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.

I am going to do it. I am going to tell you about my current project. That is, after all, the presumed point of this online information dispensary, contrary to what four years of overwrought personal laments would have you believe.

My current project is a permanent installation in a new restaurant opening next month on 24th street.  Right here:

This is the biggest creative project I have taken on since the band’s last record release on the East Coast.  We almost sold one unit at that show and I’ve been riding the wave until now, the point where I shall unleash a thirty-foot wall of artwork upon the residents of the Inner Mission.  The wall’s going to be installed with a grid of several hundred wooden tiles, twenty-four of them screen printed works of bona fide  Art, one for each intersection of 24th street from Valencia to Vermont.  Right here:

Would you like to see some?  You will have to help me artificially inflate my click count:

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