Doesn’t seem all that bad at the moment.
I went here last week:
Where it was sunny and warm, and there was neither ice nor snow. For the Codex Bookfair and Symposium, a biennial event in Berkeley, CA, featuring the finest in publication materials. I was mostly bowled over by the fact I didn’t have to wear a coat, and I could run without a hat. I saw many beautiful books and talked to many lovely people but, as I tend to do, took no documenting photographs of the experience, except for this one of the trees. What kind of trees are they? Anyone know?
I made progress before I left on this:
Which is going well, and I now have all of the text set, except for some bits I think I’ll re-set. There are parts that look fine in print, but the breaks don’t make sense in animated form. Or the font is wrong, or that e is upside down and I didn’t catch it until it was too late. There’s a few more blocks I want to carve, and a few more colors I want to try. But most of it is in good shape at this point.
I am worried about the pacing/readability issue, but I’ve found a very honest person who I’m sure will give me very honest feedback as far as that goes. The problem is, I read very quickly, and I also already know what the text says, so when I’m scanning these images in and arrange them in a sequence I think the pacing is a bit too quick in many cases for someone Other Than Myself to get it all. 
After seeing much work at Codex I thought more about having a boxed edition of prints, a small edition, with a copy of the animation inside, so you can read it either way, digitally or physically. I also think now that certain parts of the text would make nice poster-size editions, and that this block should be used in some other form.
I also have finally started setting up a shop, which you can see here, so as to make available all past printed projects for sale at reasonable prices. I am generally much better at making work than at selling work, or selling my work, though otherwise perfectly capable of running other people’s businesses. I think I should maybe work on that, in the interest of income diversification.
The College Art Association National Conference juggernaut is coming to NYC shortly. One of the slew of programming offerings that’s going on in conjunction with their conference is this selection of video works, which is going to include my work Your Own Lazy Siesta.
College Arts Association
Presents
Band of Outsiders
Screenings
ARTspace Media Lounge
7:30AM – 5PM Feb.10 -12
Concourse F, Concourse Level
Hilton New York
1335 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10010
The entire program was selected by a group of nine curators; we’ll be screening selections at the Center for Book Arts as well:
The Center for Book Arts
February 1 – April 2
Weekdays: 10am-6pm Saturdays: 10am-4pm,
Reception on February 11 Friday, 6-9 pm
with a special screening of the selections from
The Big Screen Project Program.
The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001
The Big Screen Project
Selections from Band Of Outsiders
Feb. 9 -12 5 – 9PM
Public Plaza behind the Eventi Hotel
6th Avenue b/w 29th and 30th
New York, NY
The Big Screen Project is right around the corner from the Center; you can learn more about them here: http://www.bigscreenproject.org/. They’re behind the very white, very high tech food court in the Eventi Hotel (which I find slightly intimidating, but which serves tasty snacks.)
More about Media Lounge here: http://conference.collegeart.org/2011/artspace/medialounge.php
And if you’d really prefer seeing video in the comfort of your own home, try this.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/10250099 w=400&h=300]
Both the wonders of sleet and the joys of snow. Indoor games are getting old. I’m tired of chasing my own tail.
Right now: it feels like 13 degrees. I’ve got a piercing eye headache. We fixed all the lights in the studio spaces at the Center for Book Arts this week and now I can see everything, including the poor printing I’ve been doing and all the dirt in all the corners, and look at all that clutter. What a fool I’ve been!
It’s going to snow again! I’m going to start growling and chasing my house cats around the apartment. We had a quieter than usual opening last night, which was exactly what I want. People I liked came. Cheese was eaten. No one growled.
I’m out of paper and maybe only half way finished? Maybe less, I’m not sure. It looks pretty though. I might have to go back and print more of certain parts, and I’m not sure about the line breaks, or the pacing, or the colors. Well, some of the colors. Some of them are just ugly. But not this one. This one is pretty.
I have a cold, fruit flies in the kitchen, two cats that hate each other, large amounts of fake leather book cloth to dispose of, and nothing to look forward to other than more January. That’s what January letterpress is made of. I’m moving slowly on my experiment, but at least I’ve gotten to the racy part. (See above.)
On the other hand, it’s not snowing. Perhaps it won’t be snowing on Wednesday either, and you’ll be inspired to come to this:
Everything in Time
January 19, 2011 – April 2, 2011
Organized by Tate Shaw, Director, Visual Studies Workshop
Everything in Time presents prints, installations, videos, conceptual poetry, and bookworks about the experience of an excess of imagery and information. The exhibition includes twenty-six artists with clever approaches to the surplus of information encountered in ordinary life.
Also on view:
Featured Artist Projects:
Guy Laramee: The Great Wall
Mara Adamitz Scrupe: I Own This Land
Opening reception for all three exhibitions Wednesday, January 19th, 6 to 8 pm at the Center for Book Arts.
I’m the opposite of electric blur. I’m fuzzy headed and speechless, but in a good way.
This week I’m working on an exciting new project.
I’ve got an open-ended group of prints going, color runs printed from a group of shapes carved out of linoleum, sort of like a very small alphabet of shapes.
I’m starting with maybe five or six of each shape and then layering something different to each on each successive run.
Then there’s a text that goes on top: a collection of found text, quotes, stolen phrases, loosely organized around eating. The end result with be a short video and a boxed set of prints; I’m thinking the video will be the ‘bound’ version-with the text presented in a set sequence to be read, and then the box of prints can be read in whatever order the viewer wants.
I’m scanning in each progressive state of each print, so that there’s a record of what happens over time to it. I’m also leaving in all the typesetting errors and corrections, so that there’s a record of that process as well.