feather2pixels

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:

[flv:knoebels.flv 600 400]

One of the silk screens burned with geology book data.

I made a run of test prints from my geology book stencils. I thought I would experiment with metallic and glow in the dark inks, with the former more or less working and the latter more or less leaving me with four days of neck pain from pushing down so hard on the squeegee. (There is no glow in the dark ink in the final test prints.)

Because these types test prints often turn out better than my final pieces, I like to mail them.  So I cut down the sheets into  a large edition of postcards and sent them out to the usual suspects last week.   This gesture of goodwill generated a bit of feedback, which expressed various degrees of incredulity.

“This anonymous person who just sent us some art in the mail started to address it to my old apartment, then x’d it out, and then sent it to our current apartment.”

“It had me a bit freaked out.”

“Own up.”

“Thanks, but put my name next time!”

Anyway, you can see the edition of 6 here on my postcard page, where my official goal is 100 postcards by 2013.

clicl to enlarge!

Awesome, Tamar.

Here’s some work from the fourth meeting of the postcard workshop: (more…)

I am quickly approaching the end of my winter screenprinting workshops.  Tonight marked the third of four meetings of the postcard class in which, after much preparation, we finally got to printing.  Here are some of the pieces completed tonight.

Jason‘s heart (this is one of the best pen and ink rendered stencils I have seen–he got superb line quality)

Alison’s two-layer poem print on wood.  I was impressed how well the text worked here.  I am biased, but the print on wood looks great to me.

Grace’s greeting card.  Her two layers from hand drawings combined very effectively.  Simple and well executed.

Oh yeah, I also figured out how to make an animated gif with Photoshop.  Why I would want to make an animated gif is another story.  But for now it’s time to party like its 1994:

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

Recently, I picked up a girl at a play and we went on a road trip through our country’s northern territories. These are the three things I learned in our attempt to connect with the land:

1 Hens can lay an egg every day.
2. Sea cucumbers breathe out of their assholes.
3. Honey is the only foodstuff that doesn’t spoil.

Should I be embarrassed that the highlights of our twenty-five day quest for enlightenment are essentially the results of a one minute Google session?

Probably.

Is there a point in clicking the link to check out some post cards that we sent from the road, made with found materials and Mod Podge?

Probably not.

But if you notice that one is addressed to you, then you really should come and get it–for reasons too boring to get in to, they are all at my house in San Francisco.

People sometimes tell me that Nowell and I are looking more alike these days.

Is that what happens to friends in older age?  And if so, what does it mean that Ben and Joe sent me the exact same package last week?

This week I am a real artist.  I sold two Temporary Spaces sales to people that I know.  However, maybe even more exciting than those intra-zip code transactions were the Kid Monsters orders I received from the 94403 and the 34251.  I didn’t even know a zip code could start with a 3.

I recently took the opportunity to use Walgreen’s $1.29 poster board to my advantage.   Shopping at Walgreens was recently described as frustrating because anyone working there has necessarily had a shittier day than you, and conventional wisdom suggests that it’s where imagination goes to die.  But this bargain, alongside the free film refills offered with their photo processing service, keeps me coming back for more.  A couple of bucks was enough to buy material for a three postcard series and a pound of expired dry roasted peanuts.

To make the film positive, I placed some of my kid monster illustrations under acetate and painted over them with India ink.  Screen printing the cards with as terrible form as possible (multiple, uneven passes with the squeegee) produced an interesting effect.
They turned out pretty cool. This is as close to loosening up as I get.

So a few months ago, a small girl asked me if I wanted a drawing.  I said of course and she promptly drew this and handed it to me:
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Socializing has become less natural for me every year since college. Given a long enough exchange, meeting new people now requires me to confess that I work at a maritime academy in Vallejo. I have been experimenting with methods that prevent this from ending conversations.

On a cool night last week over cheap beer at some Mission District bar, I was doing my 2008 version of socializing with someone. The Academy eventually came up and this time it led to an inventory of nautical tattoos: she had two Popeye-style forearm anchors, a lobster on the bicep, something forgettable inside the lower lip, and a bunch of underwater stuff under her clothes. Then an 800 pound dog or something distracted me and that was that. Later, though, as is my custom, I let the episode get inside my head. When your life-changing decisions are another people’s personal aesthetics, is it time to find a new bar?

Instead of taking any kind of positive action, I think I’ll just keep screen printing useless postcards. Here’s the latest set, about San Francisco fast food, currently available at this place for approximately 1/500th of the cost required to make them.