feather2pixels

My second panorama is just about done! It’s an abandoned cruise ship in the old SF shipyard. Exciting stuff for me. It will look something like this.

Saturday was good. Me and CW started the day at The Grubsteak, the old rail-car restaurant where dining options fall into two distinct categories: diner food and fine Portuguese cuisine. We got the greasy breakfast. Recently, CW has been revaluating how much of me she wants to see around. It is a complicated question and many factors, such as her new rescue dog who wants to devour my leg, are working against me. For the moment, though, I had the undevoured leg up on the little bastard for long enough for a waterfront ride along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building farmers’ market, where the determined cheapskate can fill up on locally grown organic miscellany, one quarter of an ounce at a time. And Pier 39. A more determined version of myself would have the energy to explain why the dude who jumps on glass reminds me of myself. Needless to say, there are some good things about Fisherman’s Wharf:

[flv:http://www.feather2pixels.com/blog/post_video/pier_39.flv 640 480]

And later, alone, I rode to the ocean, where it turned out to be one of those days you have to be kind of crazy to be there. I couldn’t keep my eyes open because the entire beach was engulfed in a small sandstorm and later in the shower I was rubbing the California Coast out of my hair for at least ten minutes. I needed it, though, and that’s what I love about cold, slightly disgusting and dangerous Ocean Beach–I haven’t done anything that deliberate in weeks. Plus, there were driftwood sculptures.

I’ll cut to the chase: the most important thing that happened on Saturday was Pitt’s dominating Big East Tournament championship. They were simply unstoppable. It was totally unexpected. Why, it was just two weeks ago that I was sitting alone in the Pinole Valley Applebee’s parking lot, sobbing to myself after a fourteen point spanking by West Virginia in what must be the most pathetic snapshot from the last couple of years of my life.

I’m happy now, though.

I am not above web-logging about the weather. It was a real nice weekend. Nice enough to wear shorts to Adrienne‘s house on Sunday morning, where she made:

(a) breakfast.
(b) a laytex cast of my right ear.

Then, by the light of the rotting Cellspace skylights, I finished the principle printing involved with the first of my first large format panoramas. For reasons too boring for even a weather post, this has taken two months! That’s a long time for something so unremarkable. As I was cleaning it all up, I ripped one of my $40 screens. That’s a lot of money for something so unremarkable.

I biked to a bonfire at ocean beach with CW, where the air was much less wet than it was at my last ocean beach bonfire experience and where we witnessed a child double his body weight by eating marshmallows. Totally outdone, I drank merely 1/70th of my body weight in discount beer.

I could also mention bluegrass, thai noodles, and unhealthy amounts of time on craigslist, but I wouldn’t be telling you anything you didn’t already know.

This key recently came to be in my possession. It looks quite ordinary. Friends, this is no ordinary key. This is the key to my screen printing dreams. This is the key to CELLspace.

Even dedicated feather2pixels readers who recognize the name CELLspace may still be confused about what exactly goes on there. The confusions ends here. CELLspace is one of several adjacent warehouse spaces on the 2000 block of Bryant Street that serves as a community-based art space. It hosts after school programs, private art studios, adult art workshops, and events. Lots of events. This weekend there was a massive clothing swap, which is a great place to pick up loads of Old Navy clothes that Mission hipsters are embarrassed to wear. If there is a roller skating party in San Francisco, it’s usually here. Also, there is a screen printing loft and I like it. CELLspace always seems to be on the brink of financial ruin and, as a result, working there has always been an unpredictable affair. Some days I get in, some days I don’t, and some days I end up crying on the sidewalk. But not anymore. Now I have a key.

Most recent project: Jill’s save the date cards.

On Wednesday night, Nowell and I discussed Postcard #28 with a reporter from the Haight Ashbury Beat, which is a newish SF neighborhood paper. The paper took notice of Nowell’s Cole Valley address and was attacking the local boy makes good angle in what turned out to be a slightly surreal interview, if only because it lasted four times longer than the film in question. For a night, we got to feel like local heros.

The streets are damp, the air is cold, and a handyman is busy snaking unimaginably large clumps of girl hair from our various drains. I am trapped here. I can no longer avoid this journal. And, probably, some of the hair was mine.

Here is some art stuff that happened, for the record:

I got a fat check from The Lab gallery, which represents my earnings from their post-postcard show (post a 50% gallery commission). At $12 a set, they were a steal and I’m curious who bought them. Are they sending them? Where are my gushing emails of adulation? The ruling: The money should cover paper.

Postcard 28 got selected to screen at the SF Independent Film Festival’s opening party. I’m not really sure what that means beyond what they told us:

“Your film is an official selection in the program but, since it won’t be showing in the theater, will be listed just on our website and not in our program guide. Our parties are one of the things SF IndieFest is known for, and people love being able to watch more films while enjoying the party vibe.”

The party vibe: truly the way this film was made to be seen. Eh. I’m actually totally excited. The ruling: We will take what we can get.

As part of a series of large art pieces, I test printed the first of several panoramas I have been planning. This is what it looked like:

That’s highway 280 in the background. The final pieces are slated to be five foot long, mixed media works on wood. The ruling: I will believe in it when I see it.

Oh, and some other crap.

The SF postcard video project is done! Nowell posted it last week and now I’ve followed suite (that only took six hours). Check it out.

More letterpress! So far, my two strongest impressions of printing on a press are related:

Success!

Kind of.

I went ahead with my next CMYK experiment : a full page print with ever bigger halftones–they are really big now. And it worked. Up close it’s just clusters of large dots in four colors, but from across the room the image focuses and the colors mix:

The image is actually a small section of a panorama of Balboa and 34th Ave (a key intersection in my life, within sight of the essential Balboa Theater and the Dumpling King) I photographed this week:

So my next step is to print the whole thing in the four CMYK layers. The print will be about five feet long.

Finally got series two online, fifteen months after the fact and with a fancy zoom plug-in thing. Get excited.

Since I can’t stand failure (beyond the point of fault and to much unnecessary personal distress), I reprinted my jellies postcards. The results, which were mixed, don’t quite stand on their own since I got rid of the labels. Either that, or this is the best one yet. If you look carefully, you will notice it’s actually a three layer print, the third layer being a light halftone pattern over the jellies. Maybe I will send them.

My silkscreening activities didn’t work out this week. The reason for this minor tragedy is that my screens fell apart. Oh it’s all my fault. Processing a screen involves coating it with a UV-sensitive emulsion and subsequently exposing it to light through an image. The exposed areas of emulsion harden and the unexposed areas are prevented from exposing by the image. These unexposed areas can be washed away, leaving holes through which ink can pass (A positive printing process).

Unfortunately, this week’s emulsion was laid on thick and I didn’t expose the screen long enough to evenly expose my light areas. The result was a blown out screen and seventy-two unintelligible “Jellies of the San Francisco Bay” postcards. Feather2pixels is certainly not known for backing down to a grungy aesthetic, but these suck. I didn’t even bother with the third layer of detail over the silhouettes.

Here is the best one:

Here is the worst one:

How do I want you to feel about my life today?

Well, I finally started cranking out some silkscreened postcards. I am still cutting most of them out, but a limited run (of postcard no. 9, out of sequence only because they were the most plentiful) was dropped in the Mission and 24th mailbox on Friday. Prepare yourself.

There are more on the way. I seriously underestimated the issues involved in screening 220 postcards (matching fronts and backs, successfully printing little letters, finding a good halftone but that’s vague but not too vague) but that’s what workshops are for. Joanna continued to crank out some pretty cool stuff too. I grabbed one of her test strips.

On Wednesday, Phanna and I won trivia night with an unprecedented two man team! It came down to a rare tiebreaker question: “what was the average weight, in lbs, of a knight’s armor in the middle ages?” We said forty-five. It’s fifty. Add one Pig Buck to the bank.

Work is so silly. I read about valves and programmable logic controllers and things like that, and the next day I show thirty-five college kids what I learned. Part of their training is licensing as a third engineer (on a ship) and this week Baby Bluehawk and her friend passed the exam requirement. She stopped by my office beaming to deliver the news and it was charming. So that’s a good part of my job, right?

The second Critical Mass of 2007 was much more successful than the first. This time I coralled the Bulldogger and Marella to join me, but we cut it too close and, again, I missed the beginning (do they really start at 6:30?). Luckily, we intercepted a fellow straggler who came prepared with a walkie-talkie and he led us to Fisherman’s Wharf, where somehow the mass had extended itself. After that (and besides a rare Pac Heights excursion) it was a pretty standard ride. The guy with the ridiculously loud speaker cart was there this time, which makes a big difference.

This week, after nine and a half years of post secondary education, Jill started her first job since the ol’ sandwich shop in high school. That’s the kind of irony grad school gets you. But suddenly she’s a development engineer at a fancy biotech company on the Peninsula and I am very proud of her. I still remember first meeting her in Dr. Stewart’s Physiscs class on virtually our first day at Pitt. We ended up choosing the same major (bioengineering) and working together on just about every group project, sometimes against our will. I caught up with her for a rushed Guinness (which she claims to only drink with me) on Wednesday night and asked her how it was going. “Lonely,” she said. She will be fine. Jill is always fine.

Oh Morgan Jameson, what the fuck are we doing? I wrote her a really heartfelt email a little while ago but it was utterly unsendable. So I didn’t send it, we didn’t speak for a while, and now, somehow, I am doing this thing where I write her about every little detail of my madness. And make no mistake, it is madness: we wrote 5,548 words to each other this weekend. It’s helped bring things to a conclusion but now she just thinks I am insane and self absorbed, which of course is kind of true, but I think I regret it. As it stands now, the plan is to not write each other for a month.
I went to an Oscar party at Louise’s tonight. I will say several things about Louise: (a) she throws a damn good Oscar party. Just like last year, it featured her baked potato bar, which is executed with such authority that it transcends the irony that would surely destroy any lesser baked potato bar. This brings up another good thing about Louise: (b) she’s groomed her irony into sincerity, which seems to me like your only viable option if you are going to stick with this type of disposition(At least without becoming an insufferable Mission jerkoff). Louise does karaoke and Stevie Nicks parties and sundae bars because she loves them. We also made buttons, which I realized is an awesome thing to do.

After another Sparky’s breakfast this week, Sadie took Nowell and I to the giant camera obscura at the Cliff House. It was closed (apparently because the day wasn’t “beautiful enough”) but at least it made for a good Polaroid.