Screen Prints

This week in the studio I have been working on printing a large scale reproduction of a collage for English (via Sweden) photorealist artist Howard Brookes [Falling pictured above]. He does amazingly beautiful, ridiculously detailed, magical realist/photorealist paintings. He works on some for as long as a year. He has been working on two in the studio for the last few weeks. Some of the paintings he does of his collages are just insane. And huge! Anyway, it has been really fun working on his images. We set one to print today at 36 inches by 48 inches. We are planning on printing one at 52 inches wide once we get our big Roland printer up and running next week. We are printing them on canvas so that we can stretch them and he can go in and embellish them by hand. He is also going to collage on top of the print to give it even more depth.


    Also, I got e-mail from A Paper Tiger today that they have a new series of screen prints going. They look pretty beautiful. The Freddi C [pictured above, left] and the Travis Millard [above, right] prints are my favorites. They are both three color screen prints on archival fine art paper. I am a b-boy at heart, so I gotta' rep the London street cred of Freddi C and the Travis Millard image reminds me of a cartoon dog fight. Not reminds, it is a cartoon dog fight. And I like cartoons, especially ones where dogs fight. Not real dog fights, though. That's just cruel, Michael Vick.

Speaking of screen prints, you should see some of the prints my boss has done. He has printed one of the largest silk screens ever produced. It is over eight feet on a side and was printed with over two hundred screens. Oh yeah, by the way, my boss is one of the most ridiculous screen printers ever, represent!

Oh yeah, did I mention, we did tequila shots at work this afternoon to celebrate Howard's print, an etching that Moises printed, success and praise on the botanical images we just printed, and a picture of the Rebbe that we printed. I am a little drunk. Don Julio!!!

I'm out.

Yep

I have been inundated with e-mail from various retailers hocking their holiday wares and after wading through it I have a few things to share. First of all, my old haunt Wootini is having a gallery opening this Friday featuring the work of Phil Blank, an established Carrboro artist [artwork pictured above]. Here's what he has to say about his work:

This show = triracial Carolina legends, cornstalks, postethnic Jewish indy rockers, conjure herbs, astral keyboard magician, universal brothel tunes, ancient Mediterranean female mead dance, Chapel Hill bus segregation history, and other INTP ramblings and bookish hi-jinx.

Anyway, those words aside, the opening starts at 7pm East Coast time, is sponsored by SCION and features the music of Uzi and Family.

Also this Friday, 7pm West Coast style, is an opening at the Cerasoli : LeBasse Gallery in Culver City. In Gallery I is an exhibit of new work from Evan B. Harris entitled 'Maritime and Mythology'. Harris's artwork "plays with nostalgia for his sailor grandfather's fantastical yarns, which have haunted the artist's dreams since childhood. Each of Harris's large-scale paintings is, in its own way, a vessel for the subconscious, lent with the eerie power of phantoms and filled with treasures straight out of the artist's youthful fantasies of foreign ports and being lost at sea."

In Gallery II is a group show entitled 'Gifted' featuring small works from over thirty different including Blaine Fontana, Yoskay Yamamoto, Eric Fortune, Hellovon, Jennifer Davis, Scott Belcastro, Justin Gibbens, Meggs, Melissa Haslam, Tessar Lo, Tofer Chin, Jack Long, Edwin Ushiro and more... Jeremiah Kentner's painting "Simple Thought" is pictured above.

Lastly, at Munky King this Thursday night from 7-11pm is the release of Yoskay Yamamoto's new gocco print [pictured above] and "Koibito" vinyl toy. Apparently, it should be pretty insane as his vinyl sold out at ComicCon this summer.

So that's what I will be doing this weekend. Y'all folks in Cackalacka should head over to Wootini for their show. And don't forget, Ryan DeBord's birthday is this Sunday, so if you see him, wish him a happy, scrappy, dappy-do birthday!

Charlie Don't Surf

After stuffing our faces full of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy, corn souffle, corn bread, biscuits, brownies, and banana pudding and washing it down with a six pack of pumpkin ale at Anne's coworker Sam and his wife Meg's apartment on Thanksgiving, Anne and I decided to get out of town for a little while to let everything settle. So we headed up to Santa Barbara for the weekend.

It was a ton of fun! We went down to Stearns Wharf, went on a pirate cruise around the bay and saw California sea lions and multi-million dollar yachts. We got salt water taffy. We ate at one of the best restaurants in California, a Cajun-Creole-Caribbean restaurant called The Palace Grill where we downed a mess of coconut shrimp, crawfish étouffée, fried soft shell crabs, blackened salmon, and two kinds of bread pudding. It was amazing! We did have to wait for an hour to get in, but it was worth it. There was an authentic Zydeco jug band playing right outside the restaurant and everyone waiting was invited to join in on percussion. Anne played the maracas and I played the washboard.

While in SB, we also checked out the Santa Barbara Museum of Art which had a really good Picasso drawings exhibit and a contemporary photography exhibit. On the way back, it looked like we were driving through crazy smoke from forest fires, but we didn't hear anything about any new fires, and when we got home we found out that it was just some bizarre weather pattern that created very low clouds and fog. I got some great pictures of people surfing in the clouds. It reminded me of that scene from Apocalypse Now where they are surfing through the smoke. You can check out my pictures from the trip here.

Unfortunately, I didn't make it over to the Nike Theater to pick up a pair of Krink Air Force 1's on Saturday. I'm sure they are completely sold out by now. There were only about six people in line when Anne and I drove past on our way out of town, though. Not nearly as crazy as the line for the Kaws' AF1's. Anyway, that was my weekend. I don't have any Limited Ed. stuff to write about right now, but I will try to get on the ball this week.