The Subconcious Art of Graffit Removal

I recently got a copy of a short film called The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal. I found a clip on YouTube. It has gotten me thinking about those places where you see odd colors of paint, where once there was a tag or a graf piece, and now there's only the record of it being there; the recorded gesture of someone covering up someone else's art, thus creating again on top of a creation. I have begun to find instances in my own travels where I'm drawn to such areas. This image was taken in Newport, Mass on a trip we took there. I was smoking a big cigar, and there it was. I find it interesting that this electrical box holds all of the remnants of work pasted by other artists, and yet it seems to me to be a complete piece in and of itself with or without the original items. It's enigmatic to say the least; leaving us to wonder what made up this surface at different points in time.

Drawing on the demented within us all: the art of Mario Torres

I want to post briefly on one of my friends, Mario Torres, a young up and coming in the world of comics and art, maybe somewhere where the two of those meet. He's been compiling work for his first series called Subhuman, and Track 1 is now available. He calls them tracks, as in music track on an album. His idea is to create a series much like a cd with and handful of tracks and then call it a day, publish a compilation and move on to the next project. In this mode of working, he wouldn't have to stick to one story line for too long. It's smart; inspired by music, comics, underground metal, and art of all kinds.

His prints from the past semesters in printmaking have been quite interesting. He made a nice portrait of Rasputin, and if anything, he's got the work ethic that will take him somewhere. That's the main thing about being an artist, and when I come around the studio at odd hours, it's Mario I run into. He out-produces most people around Las Cruces, and he's starting to fall in with people who not only make art, but those who find ways in starved economic situations to make a little bit of money. Bit by bit, he's getting out there, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him in the compilations some day, spreading the intelligent demented word for us all to guiltily consume.

If you'd like to get a copy of Track 1, contact him here.

DIABOLUS@NMSU.EDU

Found: your artwork?

I was at the RISD museum the other day, and lo and behold, there's this little plaque on a strange wall, and nowhere around is any identification. I stood there and read the sign, and then read it again, and it still doesn't make much sense. Obviously a RISD kid pulling a Banksy move in the museum there, and who knows how long it stayed up, but it's nice when you're moving through impressionist painting galleries to see something totally strange. I like being caught off guard, like that. Museums need a little more of that.

Ready, Aim, Rock!

Just listed on my facebook marketplace site, this print is now available in the red color version, or you can also get one in black and white, which is also very nice.

This is a piece from my series of drawings this past year, where I started with appropriated images and then turned them into prints after some alteration. I'm never too sure about who these people are when I begin a piece like this, but I get a feeling early on exactly where to take it. To me it speaks about American nihilism, and our media world where information about our wars and our popular culture are presented with one another without noticing the irony of that situation. As a friend of mine says, "...that tired irony story again."

Los Trabajadores: still working

I've been making prints about the farm workers in the valley here in Las Cruces for almost two years now. It's the kind of work that I feel is important and for a long time I guess I had made assumptions about the people who would take this kind of work. I had yet to meet the workers themselves, and my language barrier does not help when I'm trying to communicate or ask questions.

One advantage of my latest living situation is that I go out almost every day into the fields. My favorite place to run is along the irrigation canals, and I even made this my subject matter for a while, but it didn't amount to much. The other day, there was a ho crew working in an onion field, so I ran home as quick as I could, and I returned to take pictures and to speak to the workers themselves. After staring at their images for so long, and spending hours creating life size depictions of them, I finally got up the confidence to just go out into the field and to speak up. I spent about two hours traveling from end to end of that onion field. I met them all, spoke to a few, and even found myself to lean over and pick out a weed or two that someone had missed.

What I found was simple actually. One guy, Vincente Rodriguez, 24, spoke English and he made a simple case for why he does this work. He travels two hours to and from work every day from south Juarez. They cross the border to and from home six days a week. He said that he had a baby, and that was his reason to drop out of school. Because there's no work in Juarez, he chose to come to work the fields, like his brother and his father. This picture shows all three of them, a family portrait. It was a simple choice. He had a child and wife to support, and this was work he could get. He said that he would work those fields for the rest of his life. To know that he would be in those fields for the next 50 years has stuck with me. We in this country take pride in always wanting more, to always rise farther and farther up, to have more than our parents, etc. I'll be sitting with his words on my mind for years to come. More than ever, I feel that it is important work. It is something that I want others to know. That out there, working for a small amount of money, are people who have no hope of doing anything but what they do. And what they do is hard work, unforgiving, and unnoticed.

Brack's sound print

Brack Morrow is my collaborator on sound prints, and he almost achieved recognizable sound on this track. You can tell something is there, but it's not clear yet what is playing.



This second track is more of the noise side of my research, where I'm searching for rhythm only made through etching. This is more about timing, print process, and not necessarily to make music.

The body and Cheryleve

I wanted to talk about Cheryleve's work for a while. Of course I'm biased about it, but her work has really come together in the past year or two, and her MFA exhibition is going to be outstanding.

Digital Japanese Print?

I'm searching for this artist's name. Unfortunately I cannot find any reference to the work. It is a dual screen video piece that shows a kind of simplistic landscape scene done in the style of a japanese print. It's an animated image of a highway with cars driving by and rain falling. Quite nice, and strange in the way that it emulates the old style. Vivid.

Brian Dettmer

I've been paying attention to Brian Dettmer's work for a while. He takes old found books, especially dictionaries and encyclopedias of different sorts, and alters them. His cutting of the pages leaves select images and text that create new visual spaces within the structure of the original book. The re-purposing of old obsolete materials isn't anything new, but his way of working is quite unique. It reminds me of A Humument by Tom Phillips. Same end result though Dettmer's work is in the round. It makes me think about how we use books and text to communicate, the layout of systems like that, and how someone can adapt that linear structure to new ends.

Brian Dettmer's Website

Humument Website

Happily consumed by her art.

I was at Brown University the other day and they had this great exhibition of Joseph Cornell, Hannah Wilke, and Lee Bontecou among others. I always enjoy seeing Bontecou's work, whether it be her drawing or sculpture. They're so powerful, raw and scary. The experience I have in front of something like this sculpture is that I'm vulnerable. It's something you want to get close to, and simultaneously you don't want to get too close. Lasting work.

Lee Bontecou's work on the MOMA website

Margaret Wertheim

Margaret Wertheim is one of the founders of the Institute for Figuring.
Here's a short note from their site,

"The Institute For Figuring is an educational organization dedicated to enhancing the public understanding of figures and figuring techniques. From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring."


The Institute for Figuring website


I believe that I've encountered her work before, but what compelled me to blog about her that the fact that I've been on the search for creative crossovers with science. Her project of crocheting a coral reef is a great example. It's as she puts it; a feminist perspective, environmental activism, and also a mathematical theorum put to the test. Hyperbolic geometry was proven by crocheting. Here's a great TED talk about it.

Prints and sounds

For a few months my roommate and I have been pursuing this strange but compelling goal of integrating printmaking and sound. It's a strange task since many questions come to mind at the thought of the project.

Can we make sound from prints?

Is printmaking even compatible with sound?

How do we even begin to explore this?

My thoughts immediately went back to an old friend and our activities in the print shop. Many printmakers, I'm sure, have printed the grooves on record LP's. It's a natural conclusion to imagine that the lines pressed into the vinyl will print onto paper with a good inking. In fact, it works really well. So well that I wondered if we could somehow start there and make this project go forward. So our first experiments involved making circular zinc plates and making lines to play on record players. My goal was to synthesize sound through line depth in etching. I tried drypoint to no avail. And in all my experiments, I only achieved a passable beat in one singular line. Still, the results so far are enough to spurn us on.

My roommate Brack Morrow, a sculptor and burgeoning printmaker, the inventor of the sound lathe pictured above, discovered that he could create a drypoint line that plays nearly recognizable music. That was another breakthrough. I'll post images of the prints when I get them, and links when I can find audio hosting on the web. Can a print be played? Is our goal to recreate vinyl record technology? No. Is it a good place to start? Why not?

All Hail the King of Street Art

Tell us what to buy, follow, and believe, Oh Shepherd. The shepherd guides us. He leads his followers, his flock, and cuts the trail for cool. Under his guidance, we know that plumbing the depths of propaganda and photographic history is o.k. for our personal benefit; decisions can be made to alter public property and content without thought of recourse. This all despite that for the cult icon finding that danger lurks around the bend in the guise of copyright enforcers regarding his own acclaimed work. Indeed, Shepherd Fairey does rely heavily on appropriation. I think most of his work was taken or borrowed from somewhere. Adapting images to our own uses may be common in contemporary art, part of a mindset that spans our culture in music, science, and art, but wow, this guy really doesn't generate much of his own source material.

I was lucky enough to be able to see Shepherd Fairey's mid career retrospective in Boston not too long ago. Actually, I am REALLY lucky to have a girlfriend out east who caters to my creative curiosities when I travel to visit her. Anyway, there we were in Boston, a gray cloudy day, and up above looming overhead was the giant graphic of OBEY, Andre the Giant's visage altered and stylized by the artist. Poor Andre, losing his cult status to those of us who remember his bad ass pro wrestling persona, and becoming a stand in for another pop icon, one known in street art and fashion as OBEY. In a way it is fitting to look up and see his blank ambivalent stare looking out because it serves as a marker for the artist who resides in the galleries of the building below, the Institute for Contemporary Art on the Boston shoreline.



The show contains any number of takes on the Andre face, so many as to seem repetitive or exhausting. I have to say that Fairey has a way of layering and composing his work that is truly marvelous. The surfaces are crackly and crisp with layer upon layer of newspaper collage, spray paint, hand working and even more layering of his own characteristic patterns on paper. Over time, he has created a pantheon of graphic exploration, all stemming from his love of apropos and the face of the Giant. One thing of note that I was particularly inspired by was his use of stenciling materials, chipboards and rubylith. Not only is he presenting art, he is presenting stencil materials as art, thus creating no waste in his process as he stocks art shows with his discarded worn out xacto cut relics. I found those pieces some of the most engaging since it reflects a respect for the materials which is something most unique. The works are rich and alive, loaded to the hilt with fuel for our dissent; declaring peace over war and a new order of flower power hanging as a rose in the muzzle of so many guns.

Still, when you encounter amidst these peace slogans so much cynicism and targeted puns, not to mention commercialism, you begin to wonder if talking the talk actually has any effect besides allowing the artist to look at himself contently in the mirror. Making art about war never stopped it from happening after all, look at Goya, Callot, or Daumier. Fairey's work is more akin to the Chapman Brothers who took original Goya prints in their piece "Insult to Injury" and defaced them with face paint on many of the figures in the gruesome works. They merely made it a joke that art can survive so long as record of violence, and yet it can have no effect on the cause. I don't want to really challenge Shepherd Fairey's talent, his work is fantastic, but when I see a collection portraits of superstar rebels (Tupac, Biggie, Slick Rick, Joey Ramone), all who have capitalized on their aura of rebellion, I have to wonder if we do not see the same in Fairey himself. He does quite well for being seen as the street punk, while behind the scenes he has art shows, publishes books, produces OBEY paraphernalia of every sort, and generally finds ways to be the keenest business man in all aspects of contemporary culture. Let's not even get into the Obama image. He even had some really cheesy bling-bling objects in the art gift shop that truly didn't speak to me as street aesthetic. It was more like high end merch for the consumers who have to see the street elevated to the level of high art for them to consume it.



So what does all this mean? I'm not sure. Maybe just consume more of this artist's output. Buy stuff at stores that sell OBEY, ignore the irony and swipe your debit card. Go to Saks and buy things simply to get a bag that will end up below your sink with the other bags you don't need or reuse. He might be an artist pushing a really vital anti-war message, and one that sort of challenges our blind consumerism, but he also represents that which he tries to fight. You CAN have it both ways, and Fairey surely does. Could he have set it up better to get arrested at his own opening? It might have sucked seeing as it was his night, but talk about a cementing occurrence to keep you on top of the food chain for a while longer. What I guess aggravates me when thinking about this artist is that he comes off in one way, as the street rebel, and the other as a corporate giant in design. One side stands for what is right no matter how the odds are stacked against him. The other, does campaigns for some of the biggest corporations around. Maybe it's just the fact that he can live this double life and be so successful at it and we all sit and wonder about it, and then go out and buy something of his just to think that we have a piece of this phenomena. We do obey, we buy it hook, line and sinker.



If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend it. The show is at ICA Boston.
http://www.icaboston.org/

Looking forward, looking back

Sometimes we gain something in losing. Sometimes we don't win, but end up ahead after all. As an artist you have to be okay about rejection. You have to toss aside a rejection letter like it's nothing; as if nothing had happened. "You didn't lose. It's more like you didn't win, that's all," says someone very close to me. In being rejected from an exhibition recently, I was round-about invited to take part in a print exchange through Joe Loccisano, the gallery manager at Manatee Community College Fine Art Gallery in Bradenton, Florida. I rarely turn down opportunities, which can make for problems sometimes, but this post is about the process and print that resulted for this show and print portfolio exchange.

Our task for this print exchange, an edition of 20 prints, was to honor Dolores Black, the maker of the flag that stands on the moon. The title of the exchange is Black Flag on the Moon, which to me generates many images, especially flags, space suits, rockets, the shuttle, etc.
Much of my work begins intuitively, but I find it is always the case that once you begin playing around, things fall into place quickly after. In this case, I began with a simple image from the moon landing. The astronaut was saluting a flag, surrounded by the black vacuum of space. As I began to cut up copies of the first photo, I started to see many interesting compositions.



Red became an interesting color to me, and I knew that I wanted to do a multi-plate intaglio, so it was a matter of working things out. The red originated from a manila folder I was using to hold the copies. When I had cut out enough and I saw this image before me, it was enough to push to the end.



In the final print, titled "Looking forward, looking back," I thought I would incorporate parts of space history. I researched the lunar lander, the International Space Station, nuclear missiles, Chinese astronauts, and even some pop images. Being from New Mexico, I had to include Virgin Galactic and Spaceship One. So the final piece took shape and using toner transfers onto zinc plates, I made this final piece. The final edition is around 23 and I may make some color variations to see what else I can get from this piece, but I am pleased with the piece. As it was for an exchange, I hope that the other participants enjoy it as well. I look forward to seeing their pieces for this show as well. You can see the print in person at the Manatee Community College Art Gallery in Bradenton, Florida this May 29th. Or you can swing by my studio.

Our Coming Sixth Sense

As I've been thinking about perception (thanks a lot Robert Irwin!)(He's had a good and bad effect on me, I have to say) and experience and the ways in which art can effect those things in us, I came upon this fantastic TED talk introducing an interface that could truly alter and transform the world around us. It's quite astounding as to the possibilities, and without the real thing unleashed on the world, we can only speculate.

I always think about Facebook or Twitter and the revolutionary impacts they created, though no one could have predicted how they might have been used at their inception. With that in mind, the technology demonstrated in this talk might not even make a mark on our culture after all, but my mind spins at the potential. Our flaccid and analog could be way more interactive, letting a wireless camera and projector serve to do what we could only attempt to rig up through RFID chips. Why wire the world? Why not wire ourselves? Are we not already? I am consistently marveled by the output of the MIT Media Lab. If only we were all so brilliant; if only schools were all so well funded and contemporary in mindset. Keep an eye on this Fluid Interfaces Group and the things coming out of MIT, they may just change our world without us even noticing. Also, if you haven't, check out TED. Since being turned on to them, I have learned a lot about the world, and much of it is optimistic.

http://www.ted.com/

http://fluid.media.mit.edu/


http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/index.htm

http://web.media.mit.edu/~pattie/

Bjorn Melhus/Sandy Skoglund

I've been in talks with a friend about collaborating on a book somehow related to Star Trek. With the way we both work, he writing and me doing what I do, I can't imagine that the references will be too clear. But I just happened last weekend onto a video at the Denver Art Museum about an artist names Bjorn Melhus. After seeing his piece "Captain" I haven't been able to think about much else besides Captain Kirk pastiche and b-movie not-so special effects. Little details are important, and right down to the background noises or the faint musical dramatic flare, I found that the video was funny, confounding, and right out ridiculous. Something nice when you've just passed through a giant red room full of playful gray foxes that are smiling. Sandy Skoglund really transformed the space for her installation, and we were truly immersed.


http://www.denverartmuseum.org/home

Audio Visual Printmaking

Recently the idea was brought up by a colleague of mine, who also happens to be my roommate, relating to Brain Eno and his digital paintings. I was sent a link,

Brian Eno (14 Video Paintings)
http://www.ubu.com/film/eno_14.html

77 million paintings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRkNrWp6tLg

and yet my inquisitive nature stopped rather abruptly at the fact that what I saw was not paint, it was a video. Does a painting have to involve paint or the action of using paint these days? Who knows anymore? Still, we've been talking back and forth about printmaking being presented in a video or audio form, and my mind can hardly wrap around the idea.

First of all, what does a print sound like? If someone heard me carve wood or rub paper would they have the slightest idea as to what the noise was? How could a video document a print? I began to ponder photography and it's inherent similarities to printmaking tradition as I know it. I boiled my medium down to the simplest means, namely that it is a method of reproduction or transferring information. Prints essentially reflect content embedded in a surface. There are positives and negatives. One half is made for the other, and there is a balance represented in the impression given forth from one surface to the next. Is not photography the same, using value based matrices and light as a transferal medium onto a receptive substrate? Is not film then just an extension of that idea? But then a photo is not a movie, and a movie is surely not a print, and photos and prints may be one at times, but more often than not, they are separate as well. I search for a way to convey the print, other than the matrix or the substrate, and yet it eludes me. A video might only be documentation, and would not the final result of such a piece still involve the print, whatever form it might be?

What might the value be in a gesture truly removed from a print, where we might observe process, or hear the making of said work, and yet in the end our experience was outside of direct contact with the work? What would that metaphor be commenting about? If anything it might redirect our focus on this ever present tactile medium, despite the obsolescence it reflects, onto the new ways that prints renew their significance in our digital age.

Krisanne Johnson

I recently came across the work of Krisanne Johnson, and have to say that it really strikes me. The images can be revealing, both of other cultures and how they causes me to examine my own. The images are really marvelous in their portrayal of South African culture. Light plays a strong role in the character of each piece, creating active compositions with shadows. One striking image to me is one of a young man walking, in the Generation Next portfolio, where light is glinting over his eye, creating a lens-like fracture as if he were wearing a extra-dimensional pair of spectacles. You can see her work at her site,

http://www.krisannejohnson.com/

and if you're in New York, her work is included in ICP's upcoming show Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now. On view Jan 16th to May 3rd, The Museum at ICP, New York.

The inaugural post!

Hello all, and welcome to FR33PR3SS, my blog, our blog, about printmaking, and the changing scope of what that label means. I'll be posting to this from time to time, highlighting my print classes' work, things I find in my research, and possibly some notes on the work I've been doing.