Kickstarter Virgin

_Art Mysteries #6, cover art by William Evertson, due for release late March_

Is it ever the right time to take the plunge...shake off the doubts just say fuck it and mean it?  Is it time to see if all the Facebook 'likes' have any meaning?  Time to get a reality check on the base of support for a limited edition comic set in the art world?  Time to see how Kickstarter works for raising funds to help with the production costs for another year of Kalicorp Art Mysteries?

Oy...but do I really want to find out?

First there is the discomfort involved in bugging friends (most of them other artists) to support a project while they are struggling themselves.  So let me apologize for that right off.

But on the other hand, +Susan Shulman, +ria vanden eynde and I started off with the idea that a comic that featured working but under-represented artists as the real heros of art world is a totally unique concept. The shared struggle of making art is what makes sticking to it bearable.

Plus, Artworld is a mysterious place full of inexplicable hurdles and controversies that form the backdrop of each issue.

Art Mysteries #3, detail page 7

For instance, this panel from #3 featuring Damien Hirst's over hyped Spot paintings that threatened to suck all the air out of Artworld also contains two colleagues worthy of art stardom themselves; performance artist and musician, Jane Wang of Boston and artist Angela Ferrara of Brazil.  And the dialogue about CPR? We keep our eyes and ears open; this issue came out in February, 2012 and by November the art world was reporting crashing sales for Mr. Hirst's work. (Daily Mail)

To date over a dozen artists have appeared in cameo roles. (and we include links to their works)

The first issue frankly wasn't much more than appropriating a comic format and then using the ad space on the inside covers to let people know what the Seeking Kali Artist Collective was exhibiting and where. It was a busy time with a flurry of projects for my collaborators Ria Vanden Eynde, Susan Shulman and myself. 

We loved the feedback we got and got more serious about parody as we put a second issue out. We started using news of the art world as a back story; usually the things that bother us about our profession.  We did panels on Soethby's striking art handlers, strange fundraising at MoCA with Marina Abramovic, OWS, art forgery and the worldwide over saturation of Damien Hirst.

First five issues of Kalicorp Art Mysteries

By our fourth issue I think we hit our stride and found that the comic was part tongue-in-cheek, part art history and part critique. 

Now we've completed five of these hybrid comic limited edition collages it's time to take stock and see what form they should take in the future. Ideally we want subscribers and advertisers and we want to continue to produce these by hand so that they bridge the worlds of comics and zines. 

Hyperallergic ran this article last Oct. 31 around the time when we were first considering running a campaign.  Valentine wrote about some real concerns that we shared as the two quotes typify.

  Link to Hyperallergic's The Danger of Crowd Funding Art by Ben Valentine.  

"Commodifying our friendships felt more and more like a real danger"

"Kickstarter doesn’t offer a way of maintaining a consistent practice over a long period."

My head spins as I over think Kickstarter.  I've contributed to others; yet I wonder, "should I be  putting this out there?"  But ultimately the comic is about artistic risks and the mystery of art making and it helps if we keep our sense of humor about the whole endeavor.

Embarrassing video below.

So, please take a few minutes to take a peek at our Kickstarter Page. We think you'll like what you see. (Some great rewards are there for your support)  Thanks in advance! 

Kalicorp Art Mysteries is a Seeking Kali Artist Collective project.  Seeking Kali is William Evertson, Ria Vanden Eynde and Susan Shulman.   All images ©Seeking Kali

The Goatman Trials

_Artist Susan Shulman in my CT studio with her trial proofs of Goatman._

("And what was Goatman on trial for?"... quipped our mutual Facebook friend, artist Mara Thompson.)
Goatman is a reoccurring character in the online exquisite corpse blog Analogue Narratives in which several artists take on the task of providing an ending to Rene Daumal's unfinished novel, Mt. Analogue.

An artist I often collaborate with, Susan Shulman, visited the studio this past week to work with the press and solarplates to transform her oil stick sketch Goatman into a print.

The original oilstick on paper, 8" x12" Goatman ©Susan Shulman

Unlike painting, printmaking labors are not immediately visible; visual feedback takes time and it's tempered by experience with the print medium. We can't just scrape off paint or paint over what we don't like.  We can easily be sent back to square one at any step.  

Moving from an idea to a final print edition is filled with discovery.  We struggle to control the many steps and processes of the printmaking to obtain that idealized vision in our minds eye.  The first place we get to see some results of that struggle is in the trial proof stage.

 Various transparencies, solarplates and trial proofs

Solarplate is a light sensitized polymer on a thin steel backing. It's an eco-friendly method of etching that doesn't use traditional acids grounds and related solvents.  Plates can be worked on directly or transferred from clear acetate.  The plates are exposed to UV light either from the sun or a lightbox and then washed in tapwater revealing a graduation of light pitting on the surface that holds ink.  For this print we also used an aquatint screen to help fully develop the tone variation.

UV Lightbox with a relief plate (left) and an intaglio plate (right)

Solarplate showing the pitting that holds the ink in intaglio.

The series of transparencies used in the print. left to right - yellow, red, blue, green and black

Washout of an exposed Solarplate.

Susan inks the black plate.

Checking the blue.

Comparing trial proofs

We didn't like the way the red was printing so we ended up burning a relief plate.  In the photo above we are comparing the results.   The decision to change to relief provided texture to the print which served to make it really pop.

Final trial proof (almost - because we should bump up the blues)

Goatman will need to be editioned on Susan's next visit but most of the trials are complete.  And for the question of what was Goatman accused of?  Probably compulsive attention to detail and excessive use of ink.

Random Focus

...The Thinker, Auguste Rodin...

How do you work at art? Do you focus on one work at a time? Have many irons in the creative fire?

I’m in the later category; an artist with several projects percolating at any one time.  Every morning when I enter the studio usually one of them will emerge as the winner for the bulk of attention that day.   But, as with a big family they all demand time and careful consideration.  As I enter 2013 I've got three projects underway; along with the usual mess of residency and grant applications, a half written Kickstarter proposal and some documentary video that needs editing for the archive.

Detail of woodcut, I Imagine You, ©William Evertson (for Analogue Narratives)

One project has been ongoing for over three years now.  An artistic collaboration that began as a book discussion evolved around the idea of finishing Rene Daumal's unfinished novel, Mt. Analogue.  In Equisite Corpse fashion we (core group of 6, with another 6 occasional contributors) began to construct the surreal and fanciful ending of this spiritual adventure using mountain climbing as a metaphor. Trading words and images we continue this climb to transcendence with often odd side trails and miscalculation of purpose.

Details of woodcut, trial proof of key block, ©William Evertson (for Analogue Narratives)

Lines of the narrative that go along with the image

I glance down at Fish, who is holding me on belay and find myself nearly blinded. He seems to be evolving the higher we climb. Somehow he seems to be exuding more fishness than I’m used to. I fumble in my rucksack for the glacier goggles to make the glare off his scales a bit more bearable.

“Telepathy is more than a parlor trick,” he shouts up to me, “my scales are actually iridescent and in the thin air their refractive properties are magnified.” 
Damn him, how did he know what I was thinking about?

He continued, “At this altitude with it’s delightful thin air I do believe that I can explain Now.”
I could swear that his lidless eye winked, but that’s impossible.

“Since the past is memory and I’m still imagining tomorrow I must be creating the world as I speak.” “Isn’t that grand, William, I’m creating you”

The next piece in the studio also begging attention also relates to the Mt. Analogue saga.  This is the beginning of a dirigible called Harmony that will play a role in an upcoming chapter.

 Beginnings of the sculpture Harmony, ©William Evertson

Link to the Analogue Narrative Blog


And the final Work in Progress

Fishsongs, the Extinctions, ©William Evertson

This third piece I'm cycling with is also a woodblock print.  This piece will be my largest to date, measuring 22" x 84".  The original image is from my series Fish Songs which appeared in The Billboard Project in Atlanta this fall.

Video version produced by my friend and often collaborator, +Susan Shulman


Atlanta Art billboards from Susan Shulman on Vimeo.


Intended as a series based on ecological catastrophes the first that is in progress is a reference to the rapid melt of polar ice.

Fishsongs, panel carving detail, ©William Evertson

So whether you work one piece at a time or find yourself working with random focus, Cheers to a creative New Year.

Another Damn List

...©William Evertson, Go Make Another List. (ink on paper)

I feel strangely compelled to jump on the yearly wrap up bandwagon with a few of the exhibitions that inspired me during 2012. None of these shows were huge blockbusters but they did speak to me and in particular with relation to two topics in my own art that are becoming more important in my 4th decade of art making, the narrative and process.

Narrative in the sense that my work is becoming more literal; moving from the symbology of an idea or concept to telling a more personal narrative of my relationship to my milieu.

The other concern is process or the method of making art.  Since my days as a student in the seventies when conceptual art was prevalent to today's incarnation where we seem to be in a post skills generation I often felt that arc of development grating on my perhaps naive, or nostalgic or romantic notions of what it was to be an artist. Frankly, I want a strong idea well executed.  But what happens if you have a weak idea well executed by others? (as many artists do)  Or a strong idea you can only poorly execute yourself, either through lack of resources or lack of necessary skill?

So, it is through those two lens' of concern that I've selected several shows that inspired me in 2012.

Ten Thousand Waves, video installation by Isaac Julien

Just when I thought I had lost the capacity to watch another multi screen video installation Boston Institute of Contemporary Art hosted Isaac Julien's 9 screen projection Ten Thousand Waves.
(Link to ICA press release which also contains a link to a slide show of stills from the project)
Three separate stories are interwoven among the screens and as you wander and pause to view the installation from different vantages the stories blend in infinite permutations. Especially evocative is the use of the green screen images of the ancient sea goddess Mazu, protector of fishermen and sailors, who is said to guide shipwrecked sailors safely to shore as she glides from screen to screen.

Julien has taken a powerful idea for alternative narrative and through collaboration with actresses Maggie Cheung and Zhao Tao, video artist Yang Fudong, poet Wang Ping, and venerable Chinese calligrapher Gong Fagen created a fascinating platform for contemplating storytelling.

Junirui Gassen, The Battles of the Twelve Animals (detail)

The Met hosted a lovely exhibit called Storytelling in Japanese Art.
(Link to Met press release)

This quiet (ie: non-blockbuster) group of works shows the power of narrative in various formats from scrolls to screens to objects.  It also foretells and serves as the precursor to our more modern forms of animation and graphic novels.  

Bernini, terracotta sketch

Another Met hosted exhibit that fascinated me was Bernini, Sculpting in Clay.
(Link to Met press release - and closing on Jan. 6)

This exhibit featured drawings and clay "sketches" that show the development of the artist's vision for his renowned statuary and fountains in Rome.  Detailed yet raw and powerful in their preliminary form they exemplified my particular fascination with that romantic notion of an artist able to conceive and execute at the highest levels while also maintaining a workshop for the fabrication of the full scale pieces.

Quay Brothers

Before MoMA presented Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets I have to admit they were barely on my art radar.

(Link to MoMA press release for Brothers Quay)

Now, I've visited twice and purchased the DVD of their films.  In this retrospective not only are the films available but also the very idiosyncratic stage sets used in the making of the Quays very strange stop motion pictures.  Their art is a throw back, an anachronism in the art of film and the results are largely indecipherable yet immensely mysterious and rewarding. (on-going until Jan.7th)

Glass, Wilson and Childs,  Einstein on the Beach

Finally, the re-staging of Einstein on the Beach this fall at BAM.

(link to BAM press release)

To me this opera/ expression of avant-garde rebellion circa 1976 was like a unicorn; that is, I'd never seen one. (until this fall)  Now, although in many moments of its performance I felt my numb seat like never before, it is one experience this year that continues to haunt me with its odd yet precise construction.  Obviously not the result of the lone genius variety of artist but instead a fortunate collaboration in which seemly disparate elements seem to meld to work as a mesmerizing dream. Truly a marvel of stagecraft.

As I prepare for another year in my own studio, concentrating on authentic narrative and mastery of process, I'll finish with a link to the exact opposite type of art I am at work on.  (Link to Jonathan Jones review of Damien Hirst)  

Concerning Hirst's U-turn from conceptual to traditional; 

"Now he has confessed, with his ambitious yet miserably unaccomplished still-life paintings, that he admires the skilled art of the past, and would love to paint like Manet or Velázquez, after all."

Ouch!!

Well friends, may your artistic endeavors meet with much, much better reviews....here's to a fruitful 2013.

Drawing!

...One More Agony, ©1979 Evertson, spray paint and chalk on paper...

This ancient piece executed shortly after I moved to NYC from grad school sums up my dilemma after viewing two drawing exhibits recently. Some art is so good I can't stand it.

The exhibitions currently at the Morgan Library and the Frick are sweeping in the scope of history covered and a must see for artists interested in the sublime beauty offered by drawing.

First some links:

The Morgan Library covers Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich.

The Frick covers Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery.

One of the dangers for me, as a working artist lies in comparisons.  It's easy to become overwhelmed not only by the virtuosity of these masters, but the fact that the works have been safeguarded and admired for centuries. Just imagine the task of archiving and preserving something as fragile as paper for centuries.  I wonder as I look through my flat files of works what will happen to my work, certainly precious to me but what of their survival?

For example, the Munich collection which dates from 1758 when Elector Carl Theodor commissioned the creation of a kabinett of drawings and etching certainly has required generations of dedicated curators.  It now contains over 400,000 works on paper and is a triumph of will over the horrors of wars, plunder and nature.

Titian, Rider and Fallen Soldier, ca.1537

Indeed war is a favorite subject matter during the Renaissance and Rider and Fallen Soldier by Titian illustrates the horror and frenzy captured as a drawing.  Several pieces on exhibit are intended as more commemorative in nature but the immediacy of the act of drawing struck me as I look over the knees of the fallen man into the vagueness of the victor astride his mount.

The piece contains grid lines so it is a mystery as to its purpose; whether as study for a lost work or a proposed work. The catalogue tantalizes us with mention of a mural destroyed in 1577.

Pontormo, Two Standing Women, ca. 1530

 This Pontormo struck me as having an abstract quality yet with an economy of line and shading conveys a drama unfolding. Or is the abstract and ethereal looking upon its more corporal self?

Huber, View of Feldkirch, 1527

Discovery of artists unknown to me of which there were many in these two exhibits left me a bit chastened.  Huber is a good example.  The year is 1527 and here this man is placing nature in front of the trapping of man.  Very oriental feel about this ink sketch in the handling of the tree and mountains in the background. (....and the eye and observation to be this confident!...)

Friedrich, View over the Elbe, ca. 1816

Exhibitions like this also serve to focus my thinking concerning narratives of influence and how we categorize artists into schools.  This Friedrich has an unmistakable feeling of the surreal about it; from the framing of the half circle world below the bridge to the lonely figure above.  While it could be classified as allegory I find the cropping and composition of the natural observed world particularly transcendent. The piece is rendered in graphite with shading of a warm brown wash.

In our modern sense drawing can exist as a major working method in and of itself and as we move to the more recent works we do see that drawing became something more capable of existing as the final vessel rather than preparation.  Or perhaps it has come full circle, in that drawing first appeared as pictograph intended to communicate directly.  Later becoming secondary or process or training as our human inclination to elaborate developed.  In the case of the early works represented here one can witness both the eye training and the use as preparatory material.

Heizer, Untitled, ca.1968

Some later works represented in the exhibit such as the Heizer piece tend to operate on several levels.  This piece seems to exist first as words, with an erased heading of "Statements" Further erasure of the words and headings and subsequent banding with graphite and ink seem to impose a landscape feel to the piece, perhaps referring to the artists practice of large scale earth works or of obliterating the statement in favor of the visual.


One other fine link is the review by the always knowledgeable and insightful John Haber from Haber's Art Reviews.

Only a few more short weeks to see these drawings - Both exhibits close January 6th.

A Little More Babel

 ...And damned if there aren't problems in Art World.

Kalicorp Art Mysteries, Issue # 2, detail page 2

I continue to find interesting tangents to my last post; so based on discussions that took place on my Facebook wall, here are a few more links to ponder.

This first one from by Simon Doonan writing for Slate.

Doonan who describes himself as author, fashion commentator, and creative ambassador for Barneys New York titles his piece "Why the Art Word is So Loathsome"   He goes on to list eight ways in which the emperor has no clothes.  I think he has some pretty valid points but wonder what actually came first when he claims that exhibitions began resembling Barney window displays in the late 70's.  Quoting item #4, "Artists put down their brushes and stole my objets trouves, my staple guns and glue guns." 
As inspirational as the window displays at Barneys tend to be I still find slightly more authentic expression coming from artists when it comes to installation pieces. 

 
Then "Why Slates Takedown of the Art World is Totally Wrong", by Jillian Steinhauer for Hyperallergic points out that most of these complaints are sweeping generalizations guaranteed to get everyone nodding their heads yet shows more about a lack of curiosity than a real critique. Reacting to Doonan's remark that: "...artists like to be controversial and piss people off", Jillian reminds us that , "Most importantly, telling artists that they should shut up and fall in line for the good of the children is basically a way of relieving art of all its potential value and saying it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter."

 After all the death of art has been predicted for many of the same reasons since Hegel wrote Lectures on Aesthetics in 1818. 

Or when Duchamp created the Fountain.  Or when Jackson Pollock began flinging his paint on a canvas...or...my personal favorite, Hirst's world wide exhibition of spots.

I'm reminded of Joseph Beuys' great piece Explaining Paintings to a Dead Hare, when confronted with easy dismissals of artists currently at work.

The point being art is damn robust and simply because someone finds that it is a messy, imperfect and difficult to unravel doesn't make it any less vital than at any other point in history.

Carolee Scheemann - Interior Scroll

 Personally I find that the explaining of art and it's loathsomeness or what it should be or not be....or why it remains as important as ever to be difficult but even a cursory glance through my fellow artists websites or Facebook pages reveal that great and important work is being made every day.

So as writers keep writing about art, artists in turn will keep revealing what it is.

Tower of Bable

 Arts criticism in graphic novel form from Evertson, Shulman and Vanden Eynde.

Kalicorp Art Mysteries #3 (detail page 7)

Or...perhaps the better title is "Who hijacked the Bollocks?"  Lately I've been geeking out to the flip side of making art and thinking about those who write about art.  Over the course of the rise of the Internet we've seen the decline of the print media and fewer dedicated arts writers in print.  Blogs, Internet versions of former print titles and more alternative net niches now fill the void, but not without the soul searching of those that write for a living.

Just for fun I'm listing a few of the links I've read over the course of the last month.

Critic Dave Hickey calls it quits on arts writing: from GalleristNY (interview with Sarah Douglas)

On why he hates group shows, contracts and other forms of art-world bureaucracy, why art critics have no power"

More on Hickey by Edward Helmore and Paul Gallagher in The Guardian.

Excerpt - Criticism is..."calcified, self-reverential and a hostage to rich collectors who have no respect for what they are doing."
Excerpt - On collectors - "They're in the hedge fund business, so they drop their windfall profits into art. It's just not serious," he told the Observer. "Art editors and critics – people like me – have become a courtier class. All we do is wander around the palace and advise very rich people. It's not worth my time."

Predictably this is followed by artists and fellow critics shouting don't let the door hit you on the way out. This Charlie Finch post from Artnet is typical.

Good essay by Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times on critics, jargon and collecting.

"...the faster and louder the art world spins, the more it harbours doubt about its obvious froth and mediocrity.  And that doubt hides behind two things: prices and professional jargon."

Also in the news (news in the art world at least since the rest of the world is concentrating on Lindsay Lohans latest meltdown) was Sarah Thortons top ten reasons to quit writing about the art market.

Hint - it's boring, repetitive, unhelpful and it doesn't pay enough.

 Plus it involves a painful level of pandering. Kalicorp Art Mysteries, issue #5 - detail page 12

Recently New York Times art critic Ken Johnson faced accusations (and an online petition calling for more sensitivity) amidst of buried racism and sexism.  Kyle Chayka gives us the lowdown on the blogazine Hyperallergic.

So while the critics sort out their brave new world artists will go on doing what we always do; bemoaning the market and taking criticism poorly while kicking back with wine and espresso after a day in the studio.

Seeking Kali Artist Collective in Paris (Susan Shulman, Ria Vanden Eynde and William Evertson)

PS - The first five of the limited edition Kalicorp Art Mysteries are almost sold out.

Methods of Working

Commuters ©Evertson 2006 solarplate etching, 8 x 10.5

I recently saw an excellent post from the blog Brain Pickings by author Maria Popova on the working habits of famous writers.  It got me thinking about comparisons to the working habits of artists and specifically, "how does my days schedule hold up?"

Maria culled through Paris Review archives and found some interesting excerpts from diaries and interviews by Bradbury, Didion, E.B.White, Kerouac, Sontag and many more.  Keeping in mind that there are huge differences between these well known authors working on a project and most of the working artists I know as friends and colleagues; most notably everyone I know isn't making a living solely from their art production.  This aspect seemed mostly absent from the authors; so I'm assuming, with some exceptions, these authors are writing of their days after achieving some success.

The first similarity is the quest for solitary time in which to immerse oneself.  This Hemingway quote seems about right.

 When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.

Corona ©Evertson 2010 digital pigment print, 17 x 22

I come from a blue collar background with a dad who worked on the family farm then trained to be a machinist and eventually had his own auto repair business. (where the whole family pitched in 6 days a week)  In the years after college and grad school I also tended to be self employed in order to have some control over my time.  Mostly I built; sometimes welding, sometimes cabinetry but for years it was houses.  Hardhat work where you bid on jobs and work your tail off in all kinds of weather until you collect a check.

I bring that mentality to my art. Get up and go to work; work the job (now primarily art) and not the clock. Quitting time comes when you're satisfied that you've made enough progress. My day begins around 5:30.

5:30 - 6:00     Wake - coffee - breakfast - quick check of tv news and weather

7:00 - 8:00     Computer to check email, Facebook and blog comments
8:00 - 9:00     Workout (because if it doesn't happen it becomes too difficult later)

9:00 -11:00     Back to computer for PR, updates to websites and blogs, grant applications or           residencies, digital archiving and generally the business end to artmaking.

11:00 - 12:00  Short peek into the studio to prioritize work either by deadline or more often by mood.
12:00 - 2:00    Lunch, errands and power nap
2:00 - 7:00     Generally my most concentrated block of time for actual work. Sometimes in the zone, sometimes stalking around the studio like a caged animal, but I stick it out because the zone always returns.
7:00 - 8:00     Making supper, catching up with my wife.
8:00 - 10:00    Doodle, jot ideas in notebooks, music, movie, more Facebook to see what my artist friends are posting.
10:00 - 11:00  Reading in bed     

All in all, I was surprised how similar my days were to writers.  They're not waiting for inspiration and neither am I.  I've got years of notebooks filled with projects, sketches and ideas. I pay attention to the art world; what's showing, what's receiving attention, but it has little bearing on what I produce. Producing is what I do, it's work, it takes time and some solitude; sometimes the result finds an external home or an exhibition but showing up everyday for work is what is most important to me these days.

Another quote from the Brain Picking blog by one of my favorite authors, William Gibson, describes it better than I.

As I move through the book it becomes more demanding. At the beginning, I have a five-day workweek, and each day is roughly ten to five, with a break for lunch and a nap. At the very end, it’s a seven-day week, and it could be a twelve-hour day.
Toward the end of a book, the state of composition feels like a complex, chemically altered state that will go away if I don’t continue to give it what it needs. What it needs is simply to write all the time. Downtime other than simply sleeping becomes problematic. I’m always glad to see the back of that.

Of course it may not always go smoothly as the vicissitudes of life intrude, yet trying to stick to the routine as much as possible IS the challenge and with it learning to say no to both distractions and those who think artists have free time.

How about you?  How do you carve out time to create without going crazy?

 Meltdown ©Evertson 2009 digital pigment print, 20 x 25

Today Only

Today Only - artist book - accordion style

The Today Only artist book began in Leuven, Belgium and moved to Paris, France and finally to my studio in Connecticut.  It started with an impromptu series of performance documents by the Seeking Kali Artist Collective (Ria Vanden Eynde, Belgium, Susan Shulman, Canada and myself)  

 

 tests on a variety of papers and press pressures

Beginning with the concept of impermanence, the temporal and the idea that action only happens in the present we produced a series of pictures taken in thirty locations in Leuven, Brussels and Paris. A final ten were selected and matched to short statements and poetry concerning time and the location where each photograph was taken.

photogravure on solarplate

The images were first transferred to acetate positives then to solarplates.  The photo above shows the solarplate hardening in the UV light of the sun. The book unfolds to an approximate length of 20 feet.  Each page is also embellished with blind embossing.  Cloth covers with embossed lettering encases the pages.

detail of blind embossing

acetate, imprint and plate 

studio shot showing prints drying in foreground and potential order of pages on wall 

accordion folds

Video footage showing the inking and printing of a page from Today Only.

 Colophon

The entire project is even more special because as an international working group most of our collaboration is necessarily web based as we are rarely together to physically work on projects.

Brothers Quay Obliquely Viewed

I was able to catch the Quay Brothers exhibition this past Friday at MoMA just prior to its opening to the public and found it an enchanting departure from the spectacle that has been overtaking the art world of late. The Quay twins have been busy making their idiosyncratic films since the late 1970's with hardly a nod to the rest of the world for that matter.  I found myself fascinated by the world they portray in their films that seem to hearken back to surrealist works.

 The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer

Whether they portray dreamy interiors or mysterious landscapes, they avoid clear narrative yet have an interior logic that defies the viewer to deny the storytelling aspect inherent each piece. The brothers make use of elaborate stage sets, most are no larger than a table top to produce their stop motion fantasies mixing puppets, collage and live actors on occasion.

I was struck by the catalog statement concerning their early history. Born in Central Pennsylvania in 1947, the brothers seem totally without artifice in describing their lives as the typically American 1950's obediently bland upbringing. They certainly describe their awareness of an art (or art world) as minimal until arriving at art college.



The lighting, choreography, pacing and compact camera space make the spaces seem alive with magic.  Trained as calligraphers this type of flowing movement is still very important to the flowing movements of these dreamy films.  No pop flash of a Tim Burton extravaganza but a well crafted exhibit with rarely seen early works on paper.
The short film Anamorphosis which is included in  a DVD set available at the museum is instructive on how to approach the work of Brothers Quay. Anamorphosis, a technique of perspective that produces a distorted image unless viewed from a certain angle, describes well how one responds to the Quay's films.  They have a liminal quality that makes one feel as if there are answers just out of sight.

At MoMA in NYC-

Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets  

(August 12,2012 - January 7, 2013)