Friday, April 13, 2012

A Catalog of Works

Two weeks ago, during one of the frequent brainstorming sessions that our collective engages in over G+, we decided what we were missing was a physical archive of works. Between our website and blogs and their various links we could go back and see the various exhibits and pieces  we've created  as Seeking Kali. But, with a couple of face to face meetings coming up with people who could give us a leg up we realized we needed something more than a laptop to present our work.  
Susan Shulman, Ria Vanden Eynde and myself have been in high gear with over a dozen projects squeezed into the past two years and we wanted something physical to show the scope and variety of what we've accomplished with our experiment in social media networking.

early mock up of catalog

This may have been one of those projects that could have been accomplished on one of the self publishing sites but we're particular about every aspect of book making and it's also a good opportunity to show off some skills as well as the art.  So the idea for a small catalog that touched upon all the past two years work was born.  Initially we needed to layout how big this project was and what we wanted to include, so a few trials with printer paper mock ups led us to settle on a 36 page book that contains 3 hand stitched sections.

 cover with the three sections prior to binding

Most of our layout was done in Photoshop and via G+ we screenshared order, layouts, captions, possible photos for inclusion and proofing the final bifolds.  Once settled online the pages were printed in my Connecticut studio on a nine color Epson 3800 using Red River semigloss Zeppelin 45 lb paper.

After folding and collating we made final corrections for spacing and content before printing the first run of 10 copies.  

a stiff open weave cloth is glued to the spine before the cover is attached

screen shot showing a finished book over G+ video conference

From idea to book in two weeks.  We now have examples of our portfolio from the last two years and while the work ranges from performance to video to print editions we also have artist books and the catalog is an nice example to lay into the hands of a few curious curators.  Wish us luck.

More about our artist books can be found on the Seeking Kali website.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

Handing off Issue #4 of Kalicorp Art Mysteries to Hennessy Youngman (aka Jayson Musson)


Sure enough our Kalicorp Art Mysteries is in that big fancy Artworld show thanks to Jayson's YouTube call out for works to fill the new Family Business Gallery in Chelsea.  The tiny 125 s.f. Family Business gallery is a walled off  section of Anna Kustera at 520 W. 21st. recently opened by Maurizio Cattelan (retired?) and New Museum curator Massimiliano Gioni.

Jayson in his Hennessy Youngman persona invited the world wide web to drop off art for his show.  As fans of his video observations on Artworld and in part because our Kalicorp Art Mysteries is about this kind of high drama we wrote him into the story line and brought a comic for the show.

We even got it there in just in time because Jayson was receiving a ton of art and 125 s.f. of space is...well...tiny.  The shutters were coming down for a regrouping but the comic is in. (see top photo)  and despite being just a little distracted he did mention he was a comic fan.

But for anyone not lucky enough to get in, there was some consolation.

Hennessy Youngman's Itsa Small Small World open April 3 and runs through the 16th at Family Business.