feather2pixels

Character Profile, the July 2013 text and language based group show I curated at Root Division in San Francisco, is over.

Just a rapidly fading collection of electrochemical brain markers and digital residue on the internet, the exhibition now exists only to the extent that we accept the highly contested notion of the past as a tangible component of reality. Character Profile does not think, therefore it may not be and may never have been.

To combat existential dread, I recorded this ten minute walkthrough of the show in 1080p.  We did it off the cuff in one long continuous take, so sorry if I misrepresented anything you might find important.   Thanks to EB , Trevor, and Lonwell for help with this.  And thanks to everyone who participated in the viewing and creation of this show.

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One of my big summer projects was An Interview With the Author Monica Zarazua.

It’s a screenprinted motion picture on thirty-eight wood tiles made for a group show at Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oak-land.  That show explored intersections between the literary and visual arts and my intent for the piece was to blur the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, creating an imaginary space for the non-imaginary author of the show’s short stories to inhabit. Here is a pdf of the show catalog beautifully put together by Xiomara Castro.

The images used in the project, which proceeds left, right, up, and down the gallery wall, were collected from photos and video recordings produced for this work.  Here’s a shitty video about one day in that process!

[iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/70608039?byline=0&amp;color=ff0179″ width=”500″ height=”367″ frameborder=”0″ webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/70608039″>Underwater photoshoot for a screenprint project.</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user16153940″>Jon Fischer</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>A four minute video filmed during the making of the visual art piece &quot;Interview with the Writer Monica Zarazua&quot; by Jon Fischer. On this day of production, Fischer enlisted several adventurous friends to improvise dozens of simple movements and sequences filmed using HD video underwater in a 59&deg;F pool. <br /> <br /> To develop the final art piece, individual images selected from single frames in the source footage were collected and reassembled to form intertwined fantastical stories that draw on motifs such as color, text, space, and movement. The result resembles something in between a period silent movie, a comic strip, and the pre-cinema locomotion studies of Eadweard Muybridge.<br /> <br /> The piece creates a story for the storyteller to inhabit. Presenting a complex structure of overlapping narratives that is generated from simple recordings of people in motion, the project explores a fluid relationship between fiction and non-fiction, in which each creates the other. <br /> <br /> Filmed by Jon Fischer and Nowell Valeri in 2013.</p>,/imframe]

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

This was the scene from the top of Bernal Hill tonight (sped up 2000%).

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Valencia to Vermont, my installation of 24th Street screenprints on wood, is now hanging in the office of Supervisor David Campos in City Hall.

It is an honor to see my work on the same hallowed walls that enclosed the likes of Harvey Milk, Dianne Feinstein and George Moscone, preventing them from falling out of the building and helping them determine where rooms ended.  This is all the more exciting for me because Mr. Campos does admirable work representing the Mission and Bernal Heights on the progressive wing of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors –these cityscapes document our mutual district by intersection.   What a cool opportunity!

Thanks to Sheila and David for making this possible.  Thanks to EB for helping with a tricky install and the camera work.

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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:

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My just-completed voyage to the US easternlands resulted in some interesting artifact finds at home, as well as the creation of some new ones. Now I am back.

Some pictures of note:

And finally, a video of me and Danny dominating The Looper at Knoebels in Elysburg:

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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.

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The payoff:

This Saturday saw the completion of a rare printmaking collaboration between myself and the extended Bregman family.

The project involved the production of one edition of prints that modestly explored the concept of Kindred.  Ziggy (aka Zmom aka Zig_Poet@gmail aka Erin’s Mom), an accomplished Santa Cruz print maker, started things out with a woodcut she described as “invoking the family tree:”

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After that, I compiled a primary source motherlode of old letters, journals, report cards, and telegrams found in the Bregman family archive and also one of the world’s great junk shops (thank you, Ben Hill).  With the help of Erin and my letter-writing typewriter, I constructed the words into an extra special, one-layer silver screenprint:

Today in my San Francisco studio it all came together:

What a cool little project. So now I guess if someone I don’t know likes it, it’s off to Australia. Or something.

Kids receive their Little Opera tees:

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Everyone likes tee-shirts, most people like cute kids singing, and a small number of folks like opera.  That accumulates to a fairly good reason to make tee-shirts for Little Opera, San Francisco’s newest all-kids opera company.

In discussing the design with Little Opera CEO and supreme empress Erin Bregman, we decided each year’s shirt would feature a figure from the sordid history of Opera. This inaugural year’s mascot, Engelbert Humperdinck, was selected mostly on the strength of his mustachioed headshot on Wikipedia.

Tonight we made a dark print on light shirts for kids. Stay tuned for the exciting follow up I think I will call light print on dark shirts for adults.

You will note the exquisite detail one can attain with a fine mesh screen.  Note it!

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On location at the Fox Theater:

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I just came back to town from a family road trip through the southwest.  This humongous electrical storm rolling through Beatty, Nevada was a highlight of the trip.

As seen from the Stagecoach hotel and casino parking lot:

(The bolt at the very end of the clip is the best one)

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