feather2pixels

Mere weeks after printing this, I was in the mountains for this (scroll down to see the images–I don’t know why).

Coincidence? Fate? Or does the the motion of the moon and its resultant appearance from the surface of planet Earth follow some sort of regular pattern? The answer of course is impossible to know, but I spent the final week of summer ‘010 in the Sierra Nevada contemplating such sweeping issues.

See?  Pants-less contemplation:

Also I climbed a mountain with beloved companions.

And I witnessed interfaith love consecrated at the wedding of a Wohlwend. No photos of that so far, but I did purchase this panel painted with house paint at the Nevada City Crafts Fair.

And now I must go earn my keep. My day job starts now.

People seem to be much more interested in my studio when I am working on t-shirts.   So maybe out of the goodness of my heart or maybe out of a pitiful need to be noticed, I printed a few tops for friends and family.

My secret weapon: H&M.  How are they able to manufacture garments in Bangladesh, ship them eight thousand miles to the West Coast of the U.S., and sell them at profit for $5.95?  Just a little thing called supply side economics you dumbass liberal apologists.  You jerks are so in love with regulation that if you had your way this rampant federal government would probably be trying to take over the delivery of everyone’s goddamned mail (and taxing me for it).

Anyway the series depicts three figures selected the from the city’s history.  I already executed a second printing, mostly because I carelessly failed to buy any large shirts the first time.

It’s a series of, I don’t know, twenty? Anyone want one? If so, I will heat set and drop in the mysterious blue container outside. It seems to seems to receive, sort, handle, and promptly deliver anything I place in it.

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.

While I was away this summer I received an email that looked something like this:

Translation:  your workspace is gone.  This is just kind of how CELLspace works operates and that’s okay.  I took the opportunity to move my whole screen printing operation from the upstairs former craft loft to my downstairs studio .  Space is a lot tighter but if I open both doors and suck in my stomach it still works.  And I have really been enjoying coming to CELL during the long summer afternoons, working while the warehouse is sunny and artists are doing their thing.  Here is the new setup.

“You all know me
Still same old G
But I have been low key
Strongly disliked by most of these fellows with no means of personal motorized transportation,
No snowmobiles and no skis.”

–Adapted from Dr. Dre, M.D.

Hello.  Welcome to the post in which I sheepishly acknowledge my conspicuous lack of online activity and do my best to atone.  I am still active.  I still remember my English.  I’ve just been reluctant to spend any more summer time than necessary in front of the computer.  Apparently, this reluctance does not extend to shopping for leather boots or streaming “Nightmare on Elm Street” to my bed.  But rest assured that in this particular struggle between mind and matter, I resolve that mind shall heretofore regain the upper hand to ultimately slay matter, separating head from body in however many bloody blows to the neck it takes to get this blog rolling again.

Did I mention that I was away for a while?  It’s true.  I can even prove it with this doctored cell phone picture from the Israeli-Syrian border:

And since then I have been in the studio, busy as an autistic beaver.  Six layer night-scene posters, second edition wood prints, t-shirts up the wazoo, a collaboration with Molly Martin and Torben Ulrich (Lars’ dad):  I have had my reticular webbed paws in a little bit of everything this summer.

And now I want to share it all with the world.  My plan is to post a little something every day or so until I am caught up.  By updating feather2pixels.com, I am confident that the world will be a changed place.    When you finally see all that I have been up to, I am confident that you will eventually click out of your browser and perhaps get a drink of water.