Help Wanted

I know this is sort of a long shot and will probably result in tons of spam, but I thought with the surprising amount of people who read this blog, it might help.

I am looking for a job. I have a job right now, and have held the same job for almost 10 years. But working retail is not cutting it for me anymore, and I feel like for the good of my soul and my happiness, I need to get out.

Here is what I am looking for.

-full time

-art related including jobs in or related to: screenprinting, t-shirt or poster screenprinting, industrial screenprinting, letterpress, education, gallery work, or design. It doesn't even have to be hands on printing really.

That is about it really.

Here is what I have to offer:

-4 years management experience.

-BFA in studio arts with an emphasis on printmaking.

-Studio Assistant to the intro printmaking class. This included cleaning, coating, and burning screens for screenprinting classes, as well as troubleshooting and demonstrating printmaking processes.

-Internship at Hatch Show Print in Nashville, TN where I worked closely with clients to design and print posters.

-I was hired to teach multiple classes at the Melwood Art Center, including one that I had designed myself, but the classes never filled.

-Excellent attendance!

-Excellent personality, and work ethic!

-Some experience with Photoshop.

-I learn new skills very easily.

The Flaming Lips Screenprinting With Blood

My good friend and former Hatch Show Print intern Michaela Powell sent me this video of The lead singer of the Flaming Lips screenprinting a poster with his own blood. Happy Halloween!



P.S. Check out Michaela's blog AT michaelampowell.wordpress.com/

The Smallest Zine...In The World!!!

Here is something cool. It is a How-to about making the smallest zine in the world. It is essentially a book smaller than a fingernail that combines relief printing, and zine making. The designs for the zine are cut into the eraser on the top of a pencil, and then bound together. Very cool.

Banksy on The Simpsons

When I sat down to watch Sunday night cartoons this week, the intro for The Simpsons had a pretty cool intro. When I first watched it I just thought the word Banksy being written on a few walls was just a pop cultural reference thrown in just because that is what the Simpsons does.

Then when Bart was writing on the chalkboard it said something about how he must not write on the walls. Another Graffiti reference. I thought "Oh, since other episodes of the Simpsons have featured graphic novel artists, and other pop artists, maybe Banksy guest stars for some reason."

Then the "couch gag" happened, and it was very cool looking, and satirical and sad all at the same time.

It wasn't till the next day that I found out that Banksy had actually directed it. But why? He is known for his graffiti art, and his "appropriation" of Paris Hilton's album, both of which usually try to make comments about the society, or the way a certain institution is run.

It seems unlikely for a company to allow an outsider to come in and make something for them that ends up showing them in a negative light, it seems just as unlikely that an artist like Banksy would join forces with a Television cartoon show. So what was he trying to say about the Simpsons, or 20th Century Fox?

Part of me wonders if it was nothing more than to become a bigger part of pop culture? To get his name out a broader audience, while making a joke about the state of corporate branding? He did get everyone talking about the Simpsons again, and he did get his name out there to a broader American audience. Just google "Banksy Simpsons" and see all the news reports, and blogs about this 2 minutes of animation. It's win win. Here is a link to a page where the video can be found.
You can also see versions of it on Youtube, but the quality does not seem to be as good.

New Kanye West and an Older Passion Pit

I don't post too much about music really, or about video stuff that isn't a video showing a printmaking process, but I just googled "New Kanye West" to hear the song he performed on SNL last week, and this came up.

Kanye West, Power (New Album "Good Ass Job" 2010) from WE ARE FROM L.A on Vimeo.

I am pretty excited about the album, and this video(whether official or not) is also pretty cool. I think that the reason I like it is because of the same reasons I like the Passion Pit video "The Reeling". Both of these videos have a quality of printed material given life!

Craft Time!: Stickers to Magnets.

I have a pretty extensive sticker collection. The thing is though, that as a collector, I don't want to use these pretty printed things on just any old thing. So I have an album full of stickers that no one really ever sees. So the other day it hit me! Why not take these stickers I love to look at, and find a way to make them mobile, and reusable?

STEP 1. Go to an office supply store and buy a pack of magnetic paper. These business card sized magnetic sheets were on clearance at STAPLES so we will use them.
STEP 2. I removed the sticky paper on the magnetic paper and stuck them together in different directions to create a more sturdy and powerful backer for the sticker.

STEP 3. Remove the paper from the sticky tops of the magnets, and remove the paper from the sticker and stick them together making sure to smooth it out evenly and avoid air bubbles.
STEP 4. After the sticker is stuck to the magnet carefully cut around the original sticker design and slap it on the fridge, or your car.
OTHER USES.

If you are into the graffiti scene you could make sticker art, or small pieces that people could easily remove, or collect. Collectible street art.

Use magazine images or hand drawn images to create collages on the fridge or cars.

I Need Help Fixing a Vandercook.

Yesterday I went on a little bike ride to the University of Louisville with a side bag full of my work at Hatch Show Print to show my professor. We were all talking about the work, and letterpress printing and then he took me into a small storage room off the side of the Graphic Design rooms and under ceiling tiles and light bulbs was a Vandercook!

Another professor came down and looked at my work and the two of them began making plans to bring out the press, or at least uncover it, get it working, and make that little storage room a room for letterpress. They want my help in revitalizing the press, but I don't know where to even begin to look for resources. I checked out Briar Press a little bit, but couldn't find too much about DIY repairs of presses.

SO I thought that since 5 people at least are reading this, maybe one of you might know of locations on the web or otherwise, that would offer info about printing press repair. I did find a PDF of the manual that comes with a Universal I and a Universal III, but I think I might be working with a Universal II. It is just really hard to tell with it being buried under all that other stuff.

Win a Very Short Version of a Hatch Show Print Internship!

As a part of the Fossil collaboration with Hatch Show Print and other artists, Fossil is giving away a chance to go to Nashville and make your very own Hatch Show Print. I find it interesting that a place like Hatch is taking part in a contest, but I also love the fact that a chance to work in a print shop and make art is a prize. So I approve.

In some ways it is like you are winning a very short version of the Hatch Show internship. Instead of sending a coverletter, resume, going through the interview process, finding a place to live for a few months, and using all your savings to work for free, you just go to the website, and fill out the contest form. I'm not dissing it by far, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I was wondering actually if I am eligible to win since I am a former intern. I was only there for 2 months, and had not yet begun to explore the potential of Hatch Show Print's extensive archive. I say sign up for this contest, and if that doesn't work, try to get an internship. You will not regret it.

One Page Artist Book.

Our friends at Firecracker Press (or at least our facebook friends, since I've actually never met them.) have just uploaded pics of their new posters for the Billiken Club. I don't know what that is or anything, but the new posters look pretty rockin, and turn into one page artists books! How cool is that? In Chicago during the Southern Graphics Council Conference a few years back they had a demonstration on how to make what they called "One page artist books". These books were made from one sheet of paper without requiring staples or glue, but made more pages than you would get with traditional folding, and didn't do that whole blank sided double folded pages thing you would get with traditional folds.

So when I went to see the demonstration, the room was packed and we were in the back. I couldn't see a damn thing!! So I didn't get to see the demonstration in full effect, but I bought one in the Shop Columbia gift shop. Anyway, here is a cool link that shows how you fold a piece of paper to get a book, and also shows off one of Firecracker press's new posters. Click the link if you canDIG IT!

AT&T Commercial and Signature Styles.

This is a pretty interesting commercial. I wonder how many college age art students were chilling at home watching TV when this commercial came on and made them recall one of the most talked about artist duos in art history.
Jean Claude and Christo, the artists who are known for wrapping things that are not normally wrapped, and The Gates(google it if you don't remember) in NYC a few years ago, seem to have collaborated with AT&T to create this commercial. But wait! At the end of it, they say that Jean Claude and Christo have no direct or indirect part in this commercial. Isn't it weird that they even have to make that disclaimer? I think that is the thing that is the most curious to me.

Should there be a disclaimer for something like this? I wonder if AT&T thought that they would use the same colors and techniques as Jean Claude and Christo's The Gates from a few years back to somehow connect to the collective pop cultural unconscious, by making us nostalgic for that one year where people who knew nothing about art, just talked about how stupid that whole thing in the park was. This memory of jokes from late night talk shows would some how influence us, making them able to sell a crapload of cellphones or something.

Did they have to put the disclaimer because Jean Claude and Christo's people tried to sue them, or was it a preemptive strike against suing? I like to think that AT&T made this commercial similar to The Gates (for some reason), and Jean Claude and Christo said:

"Hey, we don't sell out to people, and you are ruining our good names! Put a disclaimer on this commercial so art students don't think were corporate sell outs, and maybe we won't sue you!"

In reality, it could have more than likely been the opposite. Maybe AT&T did the commercial for some reason, and Jean Claude and Christo said "Hey, you didn't pay us for that! We're suing!"

I guess it doesn't really matter how it happened, but it is fun to think about. I like copyright laws, but I have mixed emotions. I enjoy the option of appropriation, and use it often in my work. Look at people like Shepard Fairey getting sued over his HOPE image, and people like Jeff Koons who I have heard gets sued all the time. Their work is hugely appropriation driven, but it is in a way which changes the original images, and removes the context, makes them barely noticeable.

Could this be a valid argument for the AT&T commercial? I mean Jean Claude and Christo never wrapped the Hollywood sign, or the St. Louis arch as far as I know. They just used the same artistic process. Yet the disclaimer remains. But do we put disclaimers on every advertisement that uses screenprinting, simply because artists like Lichtenstein, and Warhol used the same process? Or is the process of wrapping things in fabric, such a unique and clearly identifiable process, that it makes it unavoidable to use it without clearly referencing Jean Claude and Christo's copyrighted artistic works?

I was trying to think of other techniques by contemporary artists that used methods singular to that artist, but until we start seeing advertising using the same methods as the "Piss Christ", that dude who made a mold of his head out of frozen blood, the person who made paintings out of elephant dung, and a guy who, if I recall, nailed himself to a Volkswagen as a performance piece, we will just have to let our imaginations run wild with AT&T and Jean Claude and Christo.

Fossil's LONG LIVE VINTAGE campaign @ Hatch Show Print

I can't believe I didn't show you guys this sooner. During the internship we did some work for Fossil(the clothing and watch people). Since we were new, we kind of showed up at the end of everything, but if you look closely, you can see the other interns and myself, running super-speed in the pan of the shop. It was a very cool experience.

Right now at Fossil's website you can find out more about the Long Live Vintage/Long Live Art Campaign. You can also buy a Hatch Show Print poster, and some T-shirts and things like that also.

I < 3 Printmaking.

This video is selling Levis but that's ok. If you don't think about the advertising, and just think about the sound of printing presses, the smell of ink, the swipe of a squeegee across a screen, or the feeling of a blade cutting through a block of wood, then it makes you feel kind of warm and fuzzy. Or at least it does for me.

OBEY in Cincinnati and Print Collection Vol. 6

For months I have been wanting to see the current Shepard Fairey exhibit that has been making its was cross country, and this weekend I will get the chance. I thought about going to check it out at the Warhol,(since this past year would have been my 3rd bi-annual pilgrimage) but time and money didn't allow it. My family and I will be spending a day in the Newport/Cinci area to check out among other things, the Supply and Demand show at the Contemporary Art Center. It closes August 22nd I think, and I was afraid that with all of the things going on in my life right now financially, and personally, that I wouldn't get the chance to see it when it was going to be at its closest. So I am sure there will be more to report when I get back on Monday.

Did you see the image above? It is quite a coincidence that I am going to Cinci this weekend to see this show because according to the Obey website, Saturday the 7th is the release of a new print on the occasion of the closing of the show. It is printed on canvas too, much like the current string of Obey print releases. Hopefully it won't sell out in 24 hours and I can add another Obey print to my print collection, and have a nice souvenir of my trip to Cincinnati and seeing the show.

The last time I was in Cincinnati, I was working, and ended up going to a great record store called Shake-It records. They were selling concert posters by a company called Powerhouse Factories (WWW.PHFDESIGN.com). It was a tough call because a lot of the posters were very well designed and printed, but I didn't like the bands, while others were bands I liked, but the design work was not as impressive as some of the other posters. I think I found a happy medium and got a Matt and Kim poster. It has a pretty basic-yet solid design and great colors. The layers are not too complex, and the colors are pretty much laid down one on top of the other without having to wonder how they will overlap, and what the sense of space will feel like. One of my favorite parts of this piece is that it fit perfectly into a frame without it being custom made. This so rarely happens.

Slacker!

I am sorry to the 5 people who actually ever read this blog. I was meaning it to be a constantly updated source of info and images, and over the past month or so life just kind of got in the way. I promise to update soon. There have been some pretty cool art related things going on lately that I feel are blog worthy, so check in with me from time to time.

WARHOL @ The J.B. Speed Art Museum

Hey gang! Sorry to the 3 people who read this about not updating in a while, but I have been working lots of overtime, and my mom got married this weekend. I am also trying to find out how to sell all my stuff on eBay with varying results. But anyway, enough about me, let's talk about art!

Today my mom called me to inform me about a new exhibit opening here in Louisville, KY at the Speed Museum. It is Andy Warhol's "Myths". This collection is a portfolio of 10 prints about myths. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense, like the Dracula, or Santa Clause prints, other prints are socially deeper such as the "mammy" print.

Like I said there are 10 in all. Dracula, Santa, "The Shadow"(a warhol self-portrait), superman, mammy, Howdy-doody, the wicked witch of the west, Mickey Mouse, Uncle Sam, and "the star"(which I think is supposed to be Elizabeth Taylor). It may only be 10 prints, but I have driven to Indianapolis, Chicago, and Pittsburgh to see Warhol's work, so the chance to see it in my own town is pretty cool.

For more info check out www.speedmuseum.org

While were on the subject of Warhol in Louisville, did you know that the University of Louisville has a Warhol? It is from his "10 portraits of jews from the 20th century" series. It is a portrait of Louis Brandeis. Pretty cool, no?

Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

Basquiat is one of my favs, so it really sucks that this doc. probably won't come near Louisville theaters. There's always DVD.

Furniture-ish!

I would post more photos of the work I completed in Nashville, but I want to get some really nice shots of them, and I am just not that good with the camera, or my camera just isn't that good.

But last week, as former Hatch intern Harry began his cross country adventure back home, he stopped by Louisville for a few fun days (minus the 2 days I spent on the couch with a stomach virus) and he gave me a few pics he took of some of my prints.

This job was for the California College of Art's Furniture design program. The senior show was called Furniture-ish, and the copy for the show stated that the students had been able to see Jim (Hatch Show Print manager) give a lecture and loved the way the posters looked so much, that they wanted one for their senior show. Very cool. At the time I did the poster I was not even 1 year out of college yet, so the feeling of putting up your senior show, and graduating was still pretty fresh in my mind. I knew how special this was for them, and I wanted to do something pretty special for their poster. (which I guess is true for all posters, but y'know...)

This was a challenge. It may have even been more challenging that all the posters I did with the tiny lists of sponsors. The reason that this was more difficult was because there are only so many of a certain letter in each size. So when I began, I not only had to find out what size would be best to fit all the information on the poster while maintaining my hierarchy of information, I also had to do it without running out of a the letters I needed in a certain size.
So I would build a couple of words, then realize I was out of N's.

Another problem I ran into often was that the names were too long to fit into one line. The two most challenging were the "Dorothy Bell" and "Smoke and Mirrors" line.

This was a little frustrating at first because I had to rebuild the first few lines of names a few times before I found a way of doing it that gave it the traditional Hatch look, but also didn't make it look like it was thrown together without any consideration to the desires of the client.

I maintained the letter height, but made the thicknesses of the letters vary. This gives it a cool funky look, that is only a slightly exaggerated version of something seen on tons of Hatch posters. Some of the people's first and last names have this look, but for the most part I thought I could maintain the birth names, but make the nicknames funky and fun.

Another creative way of fitting information into the poster was by using smaller font sizes, but stacking it. This helped solve the space problems I was having with "Smoke and Mirrors" and "With Special Guest". This was the first time I had done something like that in a poster and it worked really well. I think that it offsets the poster enough so that it wasn't 100% centered.

I sent the poster off and then a few days later I got this via fax.Yeah I framed it. I feel like this is what it's all about. Not necessarily having people stroke my ego, but knowing that I did a good poster and that the person who ordered it is truly happy with it.

The history of each poster from start to finish is pretty unique. In the case of most of them, you send them out and never see them again, sometimes you see them on a bulletin board, sometimes you see them hanging in a record store. In the case of the Furniture-ish job, I found this on the internet a few weeks later.I've been appropriated!! Someone designed a similar poster for the same show with similar colors, and even the funky letter thing has been reproduced. Interesting! Also they were giving away my design to people who came to see the show!

New Shepard Fairey Print

Shepard Fairey is releasing a new print on the 13th of someone very special to us Louisville folks. Muhammad Ali! Very cool image. It looks like Shepard is heading back towards a more rough style with his prints. It seemed like everything done around the time of the Obama poster was very clean and looked very digitally put together. This print has a mixture of both, the dripping background but still has the look of digitally separated cleanness. If I had $70 I would totally buy this print!

I feel like I kind of owe anybody out there who reads this thing an apology. I've kind of been out of it for the past few weeks in regards to keeping up with this blog. There hasn't been too much to report in my personal art life, and I haven't kept up with the art blogs much.

I pretty much moved back to Louisville from Nashville and went right back into working retail full time, and trying to recover financially from the 2 months of free work at the internship. I sold some comic books, my drums, cashed in some savings bonds, and worked about 40 hours a week since I've gotten back and I am still barely staying afloat with my bills. Student loans man, Student loans.

But in art news, I did go to the grand opening of Louisville's own local letterpress shop Hound Dog Press. Very new looking materials and they had a show of contemporary letterpress work which was very cool. They have a couple of small presses in the shop and I don't think they do too much other than invite sized work, but it is still exciting to think that the move to the new location could bring them the business they need to upgrade to a Vandercook proofing press.

The Nashville Flood of 2010

Nashville is in trouble right now. Recently it rained so hard that major flooding occurred all over the city. Because of my internship I have a special place in my heart for Nashville. For those of you who read this blog often, you know that I lived in Nashville for 2 months and got to know the city better by bicycle, than I know my own city. Nashville is where I really got to live on my own for the first time, and got to meet some amazing people along the way. Nashville is my second home and it is terrible that they are going through this right now.

A recently Facebook post from a friend who currently lives in Nashville states:

"Temporary shelters are at capacity, missing people unaccounted for, many homes
are under water, we're in a water conservation emergency, much of
Nashville's economic base is threatened by flood damage, etc, etc. In
other words, we're going to need help. Text 'REDCROSS' to 90999 to
donate $10 to disaster relief."

It is a good idea, and it is only $10! Also, if you live in the Nashville area there is an art auction taking place on Saturday May 8th which benefits flood relief. Check it out here. http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=120105011341130

The videos below were taken from youtube, but both are places that I have been in Nashville before the flood. The first one is of the Opryland Hotel where me and the interns once made a trip to find a stamp and postcard convention. It turns out it wasn't there, but somewhere else nearby. Instead we walked around through the hotels large open spaces walking through the plants, and over bridges, and past the indoor river. Now the whole place is underwater. You can't tell where the indoor river once was, and the walking paths through the plants are gone!





This second video is where I used to buy y groceries. It is about 3 miles from my apartment in Nashville. Which means it is also 3 miles from the one thing I left behind in Nashville. My car. I hope it didn't get carried away.


I talked to one of the interns earlier who said the country music hall of fame was flooded, but that it hadn't reached Hatch Show Print. He said that they were closed for now, and that everything of value was lifted 6 inches off the ground as a precaution.

Good Luck Nashville!

Famous People.

Today one of the Flaming Lips came into the shop. Pretty exciting stuff. Back in my pre-intern days I wondered what it would be like if someone came into the shop to pick up their posters, place an order, or just visit, and it turned out to be a celebrity. Would people make a big deal out of it? I don't know who I imagined coming in really, but someone should right? I mean we are a famous print shop, we make posters for famous people, and we are right next to one of the most famous venues in the history of music.

At Hatch we have 3 presses. The "mid-press" is also the celebrity press. It has autographs of all the famous people who have made their way through the shop. It's kind of cool, but I can't really read or recognize a lot of the names on it. Right above that is an autographed Weezer poster that was designed by Hatch Show Print.

There is a superstition at the shop where if you play a certain musicians music all day while they are supposed to be in town to play a show, then they will stop by. For example: Tegan and Sara played here a few weeks ago, right around the corner from Hatch at the Ryman Auditorium. So all day we listened to nothing but Tegan and Sara. They didn't come in, but if the myth was true, then they would have. The reason has something to do with how embarrassing it is to be caught jamming out to a band when the real band is in front of you. The awkwardness, and unlikeliness of the situation, makes it more likely to happen. We tried the same thing for Vampire Weekend a week later, but we only had one of their albums at the shop. We listened to it once, and no one showed up.

That isn't to say that we never get the famous visitors. In the two months that I have been there, we have seen our fair share of famous-type people. Designer Stanly Hainsworth came by before giving a lecture at nearby University, the director of the documentary "Helvetica" Gary Hustwit stopped by, the Bassist (I think) for the Flaming Lips, some people from American Routes, and I think maybe some soap opera people have stopped by.

As fun as it is to see people like that stop by and have access to those bragging rights, Jim's philosophy is sort of different when it comes to celebrity. In essence, it is about all the posters on the walls that are for people who have had their time come and go, or the people who never got their time. For every one poster of Johnny Cash, there are 20 posters of people nobody knows. This is supposed to keep you humble and grounded. A common saying around Hatch is that "It's just a poster."

That is great advice, but in the two months I have been here, very little of the magic has worn off. I still feel like I have become a part of the history you see in books, read about in magazines, and listen to on the radio. I have made posters for annual events, indie bands, and even 40th birthday parties, but I have contributed to something larger than myself, and more personal and less corporate than the retail world. So while I agree that I am just and intern, and it is just a poster, I am going to enjoy my few remaining days soaking in the specialness of this opportunity that I have been given.

Tonight! Live! On Stage!

I recently designed a poster for a client called Music City Roots. It is a weekly live radio show/concert from the Loveless Cafe in Nashville TN (which is a pretty famous spot). The show features lots of musicians, and is broadcast on WSM-AM 650 every Wednesday.

The poster I created was to be used for the opening of their spring season. It's a pretty cool thing to be a part of. Today I went to the Loveless Cafe for breakfast and they had one of my posters hanging behind the counter. Also they sell the Music City Roots posters that Hatch Show Print has designed. It is interesting to see something that I have designed and printed being for sale right next to the preserves, biscuit mixes, t-shirts, and key rings.

Something else cool about my poster is that it was right up on stage with all the musicians. If you click the link HERE you will see a gallery of that first spring season show. My print is orange and green and is right on the wall with the other Hatch Show Print designed posters. On stage in front of a live studio audience.

You Can't Always Get What You Want.

When designing this print(which I believe was my third) I wanted to do something that was visually stunning. This was my chance to do the "Ryman Style" poster. So I decided to incorporate one of the traditional Hatch images that I love, and wanted to do something that also embodied the spirituality, mysticism, and sexuality of the "Hendrix Experience".

I decided to base the poster around the image of the Gravy Girl with a lightning bolt over top of her. It didn't work out that way. The lightning bolt just didn't fit right. SO I changed it. Instead I used the icons of love, religion, superstition, etc. Keep the girl, but lose the bolt.Here is the image all ready to be proofed.
This is the proof. I sent it to them and they said that they already had a poster with the gravy girl on it, so they wanted a guitar instead. I was trying to be careful to stay away from images like the guitar, because it seemed like the obvious choice for a Jimi Hendrix poster to have a guitar, but the client makes the rules. So I changed it.

The end result is an amazing poster that came out very clean, and very well put together from concept to color scheme. I may be a little biased though.

Hatch Show Print On American Routes

We were in our first or second week of the internship the day that this segment was recorded.Click here, and scan about 40 minutes into the show to hear the Hatch section. It was very cool to be there when something like this was being recorded, and it is very cool to hear how the hours of people wandering around with microphones and cameras, have turned into a 15 minute segment.

Old Pictures of Hatch Show Print

You've seen all of my pics of Hatch Show Print at its current location, but here is something you may not know. Hatch Show Print has had other locations before its move to 316 Broadway.

First there was the location at 22 North Cherry Street which is now called Fourth Avenue South, then they moved to 116 Fourth Avenue North. Here are a few pictures of Hatch Show Print at that location which is right around the corner from its current location at 316 Broadway.

All of these photos are from Hatch Manager Jim Sherraden's collection, I am just helping put together a Powerpoint presentation for a lecture he will be giving later this month. In other words, these photos are not mine, I just scanned them. I have permission from him to use them here.The front of the shop used to face the Ryman Auditorium. The AT&T skyscraper now resides where Hatch Show Print once was.
inside
inside

The reason the interior looks so clean and organized in these photos is because it was not the thriving print shop/working museum that it is today. When Opryland bought Hatch Show Print they were doing mainly restrikes, and postcards. Jim was brought in originally as an archivist for Hatch Show Print. This article is from the Tennessean January 8th, 1986
Hatch Show Print after being torn down.
Invitation to the grand re-opening of Hatch Show Print at its current location.

West Meets East, and Back Again

My normal day is waking up at 8, eating a blueberry bagel with nothing on it, drinking a Dr. Pepper, taking my vitamin, watching 30 Rock on DVD, making my lunch, and then riding my bike about 2.3 miles to Hatch Show Print.

At Hatch I do all the stuff that you have seen pictures of or read about. After that, I usually end up riding my bike to one to 3 places. The first is to Grimey's record store for a free concert. The second, is back to my house, the third is to the east side.

I live on the west side, but all the other interns live on the east, so instead of having 3 interns ride their backs to my side, I ride my bike to theirs. I don't really mind though. I believe that I ride around 10 miles a day this way, and as a result I am a much stronger rider. Usually when I go to the east side, I don't end up riding my bike back to the west side till around 11:30. Tonight, I got home around 1:45am. This gives me a nice peaceful quiet ride home(with the exception of Broadway, and Church Street bars.). It also gives me a nice view of the city at night from the top of the pedestrian bridge (almost) all alone. Here are a few quick pics of the city from the pedestrian bridge at around midnight, and Hatch Show Print's neon sign on Broadway around the same time.

Jammin' to Beat the Blues

Here are photos of one of my prints completed here at Hatch Show Print. It is for an annual benefit concert put on for the Mental Health Association of Middle Tennessee. It was one of my hardest prints to complete. There are a few reasons that I say this. For one, the amount of type used on this print was more than I had ever had to set before. The sponsor list alone took me hours to set. The second reason is that I destroyed the hours of work it took to set the type because I didn't "wipe my ass" as Jim calls it. This means that I forgot to check and make sure everything was ok before I started printing.

What had happened was that I unlocked everything, asked Brad a question, and then went back to printing. Since it was all unlocked when the drum of the press rolled over the loose type, it just crushed everything and pushed it all over the place instead of keeping it nice and neat. Essentially, I had to reset the poster, but this time I didn't have to pick out the letters because they were all piled at the end of the bed.

The picture above is the finished product.The third reason this poster gave me such a hard time was because of work-ups. A work-up is when a piece of furniture works its way up out of the type causing it to accidentally be printed, when all it was supposed to do is stay low as a spacer. In the picture above you can see the mysterious purple squares that have worked their way into my design as work-ups. Because of the amount of work-ups in this poster that I didn't catch in time, I only had 3 extras after the whole run was finished, and the 150 quantity order was filled. That isn't even enough for the collectors.
The other day as I rode my bike to work, I noticed this on the door. It's my poster in its natural environment!! Michaela says she saw them all over the place this weekend while she was walking around downtown. It's a pretty cool feeling to see something you have created hanging on doors, or windows, or to hear about how much people like it, or how well it is being sold. Even with all the trouble this print caused me, I feel like I learned a lot from it, and I am proud of the finished product.

How to Make a Poster/My First Poster

I know that this is about a month too late at this point, but I lost my camera for a month which means these photos are just now seeing the light of day. This is a step by step of the poster making process and by coincidence, they are also pictures of my first poster.

After you get the client you give them a call and check in with them to let them know whats up. You talk about colors and the plans for the poster, and bounce any ideas off of them to see what they want or don't want. Some people really don't care, and trust you completely, other people want very specific things.

After you call them, you sketch out a few thumbnail type sketches on index cards. Once you get one that you think looks the best, you get a board to work on and you build it one letter, or block at a time.
When that is finished you hand brayer it with ink, and transfer it onto tissue paper. It is very similar to making a relief print.
Once you do that it is no longer backwards and you get a good idea of what you should look like or change. In this case the words "the" and "Low" seemed to be too awkward, so I changed it around and did another proof.
Most people want to see what the proof looks like before they have 100 or so of them printed. This is where the fax machine comes in. Since most of our clients are out of state we send a fax instead. We don't do email because we're living in the 1800's over here. You go down to FEDEX reduce the size, photocopy it, and then go back to the shop and fax it to the client. Once you get approval you break down the color separations by hand onto separate boards. In this case I had 2 colors. One board had all the pieces that would be blue, and one board had everything black.
This is what the print looks like after running the blue. My edition was for 250, so I had to run the press 250 times for blue, then run it all over again for the black.

Here is the final product(before being trimmed down) after the black as been run. For this design I had to carve the windmill block by hand from a design submitted by the client.

I am pretty happy with the result, and the manager of the band said that the posters are selling really well.

Barack Obama Looking at Awesome Things

Here is a link to a collection of photoshopped images by Dean Trippe. It is Barack Obama, looking at awesome stuff.

Just a perk of being president.

Hatch Show Print on American Routes.

Way back in the first or second week of the internship te radio show "American Routes" came into the shop and did some interviewing and recording. So tune into American Routes the week of April 7th, and listen to the sounds of a 131 year old letterpress print shop in action!! You might even hear me describe a problem I had with the registration of a print, or the sound of me printing( I think I was the only one who was printing that day). Then again, it might have been cut.

FACT!

Letterpress printmaking started a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
J/K ROFL!

Speed? Baloney.

By now this is pretty much old news, but every time it somehow wanders back into my consciousness via facebook, or Leo weekly it just infuriates me. I wanted to kind of keep it to myself for the most part because I am not a part of it, and I don't live there, but I was a Louisville artist, and I will be again in about 3 more weeks, so it kind of impacts me.

For those who don't know, or need a refresher click HERE and HERE.

I may just be a simple printmaker, but I think that if these artists were so concerned about how much art supplies they could take off their taxes then they were doing it wrong. It is a donation because you don't get anything out of it except for the satisfaction of helping the cause, which in this case was art education related programs. You know them right? The ones that get cut every year when the schools have to cut budgets?

My understanding is that this was an open call, not a mandatory exhibition. Meaning you didn't have to do it!! C'mon artists, I'm sure most of you grew up during, or at least existed in the '80's. When you don't want to donate your artwork to art education programs do like the Reagan's "Just Say NO!"

Is selling baloney really going to change people's minds about...wait...what is it you want from this? Different tax laws for artists, or to force people to charge more for donated pieces even though you see none of the money, or to not be solicited to as much? I guess it will keep people from asking you to donate your work to causes. I mean if there is one thing that artists hate it is being a part of social change, and helping people. It's all about cold hard cash, and tax breaks! "All for one and one for none!!" I should make that into an 8 1/2 x 11 one color print...and then sell it for 300 dollars, because I'm worth it.

That's why I got into art. Who cares if a bunch of kids won't have the chance to experience a better art education. My 5 X 7 work is worth more than $27 dollars, and I can only claim a small amount on my taxes, and sigh, so many people are like, making me read emails about donations!

To me it just sounds like a bunch of whining stuck up artists who apparently can't say no, and don't care enough to donate to a cause that sounds like it is pretty much directly related to what they want to do for a living. I guess having a bunch of kids who never get to experience art will thin the heard out a little when they get older. The less art education that children have, the less educated artists there will be in the gallery world 2 decades from now.

This isn't Duchamp's "fountain" questioning what art is in the gallery world, this is a fundraiser for children who would could have had the potential of an extra $2025 in art education money raised if a group of artists submitted the actual artwork that they seem to be so proud of instead of lunch meat.

I just wonder how many of these artists will be willing to boycott/protest/lunch-meatify one of the many $20 and under shows that spring up over the year.

LETTERPRESS POSTCARDS!

Here are some post cards to make up for my lack of posting lately. The thing is, about two weeks ago my family came to visit for my birthday and I inadvertently sent my camera back to Louisville, KY. Sure its only a 3 hour drive, but its just for my camera, and besides I will be back there for a visit in a week anyway.

Oh! The things my camera could have seen!! Maybe I will write all about when I have some down time.

1 month in Nashville

Today is the 1 month mark for my time in Nashville, which means that there is only about a month to go. Time flies when you are having fun!

Sometimes its still a little surreal that this is my life right now. Its amazing how smoothly I transitioned from living with my mom and brother, driving my car everywhere, and working retail to living with a guy I met on craigslist, riding my bike everywhere(something like 5 miles a day average), and working in a job that I love pretty much every aspect of. I miss home, but surprisingly not as much as I thought I would. I think the time I miss home the most is when I am alone.

It seems like there is always so much going on in Nashville all the time. Always somewhere to ride to, always something to see, or someone to hang out with. The weekends are another story. I usually spend at least one day a weekend completely alone. That isn't necessarily a bad thing I guess because it gives me time away from the constant "go go go" and lets me take care of chores and errands, but back in Louisville I worked all weekend, every weekend, or I always had my brother to hang out with if no one else.

Today I did the laundry, fixed my air mattress again, went to Qdoba for buy one get one free burritos(where on the way I met a man claiming to be one of god's prophets, and trying to get me to go to the liquor store with him so I could use my credit card to buy him booze), Kroger, and World Market(where I got 3 pint glasses for $2.15 because it was my birthday) before coming home and cooking Twisted Mac n Cheese for 1, playing solitaire and watching TV the rest of the night.

People often ask me "If they(Hatch Show Print) offered you a job will you take it?" The answer used to be "maybe" because it would be a dream come true, but it would be hard to go without my friends. But the more I think about it the more likely the answer would be "yes". I love that I can ride my bike, and that I get to work on cool art related projects all day. I think that the hardest part of leaving Nashville will be that the alternative is going back to the corporate retail environment where there just aren't enough small streets or bike lanes.

It recently occurred to me how much of my "previous life" in Louisville was consumer based. We used to drive to Target a few times a week, check out the book stores, or the record stores, but miss the gallery hops, the lectures and concerts. Part of this probably has to do with the hours that we keep here as opposed to there. 9-5 allows for a lot more free time in the evenings, especially when the people I am with keep these same hours.

Here I watch less TV, drive less, eat out less, and shop less. I drink more beer, play more chess and cards, and ride my bike more. I think that if there is something I want to bring back from Nashville besides new and improved printmaking skills, a kick-ass resume, and portfolio, it is that I want to go to more events, play more games, and ride my bike to more places even when it is cold out.

The "Ryman" Style

I just finished a poster for an event in North Carolina called "Experience Hendrix". The poster looked great and I have got a ton of positive criticism for my use of color as well as the use of negative space, and the cleanliness of the image. The person ordering the design wanted a poster in the style of the Ryman Auditorium.

The Ryman is a place that was originally created for religious sermons, but eventually became the home of the Grand Ole Opry. Hatch Show Print has a long history with the Ryman, and the Ole Opry. In fact, there is an entire case at Hatch dedicated to Grand Ole Opry images. Last weekend when my family came to town, we toured the Ryman and got to stand on the same stage that country legends-and a bunch of tourists-have stood on.

Upstairs at the Ryman is a hallway of Hatch Show Prints. Most of them(or maybe all, I forgot)are signed by the artists they promote. Some of them are really great prints, some of them are mediocre, but they all have the "Ryman Style".

What is the Ryman Style anyway? That is the same thing I asked myself as I opened the folder for the Experience Hendrix assignment. The difference is that a traditional Hatch poster is very wordy, little negative space, and is usually used to advertise something in particular, while a Ryman show poster is more about art, and is used as a collectors item or souvenir bought at the event instead of advertising the event.

My next assignment is to design a poster for the "Jammin' to beat the Blues" concert. It is a benefit for the Mental Health Association of Middle Tennessee. This show is at the Ryman, but they did not ask for "the Ryman Style". This is because it is less about the souvenir, or artistic aspect of the show and more about the advertising of the event. It is a very basic, 2 color print, with a lot of text like a traditional Hatch Show Print poster. Because of this it may not end up on the wall of the Ryman with an autograph on it, but it is still cool to think about the long Ryman/Hatch tradition that I am becoming a part of. To see more of the Ryman's Hatch collection click here

Keeping Track of Everything

I am learning a lot about Nashville during my time here. For example: If you threw 2 rocks anywhere in Nashville, there is a pretty good chance you will hit a Musician, or a Hatch Show Print poster. Tonight we saw a man wearing a shirt at Burger King that had the same image as one of the posters in the back. There are prints in the restaurants, the bars, the shops, the museums, EVERYWHERE! The same with musicians, only replace museums and shops with street corners.

In addition to learning a lot, we are also doing a ton of stuff! There is always something going on, and 9 times out of 10 I can bike to it. Because there is so much going on I have decided that I would keep a pocket journal/sketchbook, of events of interest during my internship. It is so small that at the end of the night I can whip it out and write down the days events without having to log into blogspot to do it(sorry blogspot, I'm sort of a Luddite!).

The above image is an example of what kind of stuff will be going into the book. I think that is will be a nice reminder of the time spent in Nashville. Maybe someday when I am old and out of my head I will look at the page posted above and have my memory jogged about the wonderful day I spent with my family and friends doing cartwheels at the Parthenon in Centennial Park, or maybe I will look at the chicken scratch on the page and say to my grandkids: "What the hell is this? Can't you see I'm watching the Price is Right?!?!"

Either way, so far I have a pretty good list of the places and things I have witnessed while in Nashville, as well as sketches, and lists of the prints that I have printed while at Hatch.

Appropriation.

This image taken from World Famous Design Junkies is a part of a larger post that explores the ideas of appropriation. Appropriation is a beautiful, and confusing thing. Sometimes it is good to borrow the ideas of others when you share a similar view. Sometimes, you are just a rip-off artist.

In the case of the above concert poster, it is a playful tribute to the history of the concert poster. Why did I choose this image? Because the Silas Green poster is a Hatch Show Print poster. This image has a lot of history, and it is interesting to know so much about the origin of this image in particular, and see how it is appropriated. Be sure to check the link above and see the rest of the appropriated images, it really is cool to see the way people are influenced by certain aspects of print culture.

The Future of Letterpress.

Hello. Long Time no See!

I realize I haven't posted in a while, and for that, I apologize. Things have been busy! We have been making prints and seeing the sights. I would love to tell you all about everything, but I have to go to work soon.

Here's a quick breakdown without pictures. Please forgive me! I will try to make it up to you!

Went to the Road To Bonnaroo concert @ the Mercy Lounge (the bands all ended up getting crappy reviews in the NASHVILLE SCENE

Went to the Art Of Protest show at Vanderbilt University

Saw Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore perform and in store @ Grimey's record store

Saw a lecture by Stanley Hainsworth @ Lipscomb University

Had a drink @ the 12 South taproom and grill. Which had an entire wall of Hatch posters.

Friday I went directly from Hatch Show Print and back to Louisville. Celebrated Kara's Birthday

Saturday and Sunday I worked at my retail job and then tried to hang out with as many people as possible. I mostly succeeded. Sunday driving back home, I was pulled over for going 81 in a 70. Also I was sick all weekend.

Monday we went to Beyond the Edge to watch the Blazers beat Memphis, then to the 5 Spot for their monday dance party "Keep on Moving" People were dancing, I was listening to the music. 50's & 60's rock and soul.

As far as the internship itself goes, we got our first real clients! I was excited to find that mine was a band called The Low Anthem. I have never heard of them, but watch the video below, and get a feel for their sound. Sometimes it sounds real rough like this, which I love, but they also go to the other extreme with real nice quiet smooth vocal folk stuff. I believe they were described to me as being a "folk rock trio"



They loved my design, but the color scheme was the hard part to pin down. It started with red or brown and ended up being yellow or blue. Then I had to do a linoleum cut of a windmill which was a lot of fun! Yesterday I proofed everything, and it looks great. I mixed up a nice blue similar to the one seen on the cover in the video, and the text will be black. Don't worry. I'm taking pics of the entire process so I can show you guys after the client gets to see it and sell it first.

My next project is for an event called Experience Hendrix. Yeah, that's right, a Jimi Hendrix poster. I think I will be a little less traditional.

Art of Protest: A Review

One time at UofL we had a show that I am pretty sure was simply called "Dissent". It was a good show. Tons of political works wheatpasted to the walls. They even had some stuff by Shepard Fairey in the show.

Well tonight, I thought that I would be treated to a similar experience at Vanderbilt University's Divinity School. The Divinity School had an opening reception tonight for a show titled "Art of Protest". I didn't know what the Divinity School even was, but I just assumed that was the name of their art building. It isn't. It is a school for religion, and houses their religion grad program. What this has to do with art I do not know, especially the art of protest.

Thank goodness it wasn't in the school's art department. The exhibit could have been called "Art of Art" because while some of the work was politically charged, a lot of people's art is, but I wouldn't call it "protest art".

Many works, such as the George Bush portrait made out of matches and matchbooks, would have fit in great during the 2004 election, while others seemed like fine pieces of art, but hardly seemed to protest anything. Some dealt with race relations, some dealt with consumerism, some dealt with the way/the things we eat, but I never really got the Protest vibe.

These were just the way these people feel about the subjects. That's what most artists do. Externalize the internal. I guess when I hear "Protest" I think sit-ins, fliers, t-shirts, and giant signs, maybe a folk singer. It's as if the curator(s) of the show had lumped protest work with general artistic emotion. That is to say that any work that strayed away from technical skill to that place of conceptual thought, was considered protest.*

I am not critiquing the artists in the show at all though. Every artist there brought their "A" game. Everyone's work looked very solid technically as well as conceptually, and the works ranged from very traditional paintings, drawings, a few video works, amazing print work by Sue Coe, as well as some work that incorporated found objects.

I think that the best way to remedy the lack of a "protest vibe" would have been to include an artist statement, or a short description of the particular piece. When Bob Dylan started singing protest songs, he used powerful imagery, but it was catchy enough and easy enough to read that you got the message. With these works the meaning behind them often seemed so esoteric, that it was impossible for me to decode what exactly the artist was protesting. Was the explosive vest made from crayola crayons a statement about child soldiers? Was it a comment on the loss of innocence in war-torn Countries? I don't know.

Its a really nice show, but if you go, don't go in thinking "art school protest show". The work is quality, but the organization of the show under the banner of "Protest" was just bad marketing.

*I guess thinking, could be a form of protest(1984?), but that means every art show would be a protest art show, so as deep as that may be getting, I don't think that's where they were going with that.

Images From My First Week @ Hatch Show Print

The first week has come to an end, and what a week it was. I learned how to spot Franklin Gothic and other fonts, how to use a pantone book, run a vandercook letter press, how to measure in picas and points, what a serif is, how to read type upside down and backwards with no problem, and all kinds of other printmaking and design oriented stuff. On an un-printmaking related note, I also learned how Jack Daniel's is distilled while touring the distillery in Lynchburg.
This image shows a typical job in progress, or a job being dismantlement by interns. Since we have not done any jobs ourselves, this one is probably being put back. Each letter, and piece of metal or wood (rigglets)must be put back into their original drawer. There are drawers(cases) and shelves of type everywhere in the shop, and a lot of it is very small.
Here, intern Harry runs a Vandercook press to do a re-strike of the Hatch Cats Poster. A re-strike is when an existing poster is reprinted. Usually this is done with the older posters that are used for sale to the general public one at a time.
On this Vandercook press, ink is aplied to the top vibrating roller which distributes the ink to the other rollers. When the wheel is turned the ink is rolled onto the block (seen here already inked) then the paper is locked onto the drum and rolls over the image creating with enough pressure to create the print.
The final product. These posters seem to be quite popular. Between 4 interns we printed over 400 of these.
Michaela and David were assigned to decorate this birdhouse for a charity auction. All the images on the house were made from print proofs which are called make-readys in Hatch speak. I would let my birds live there.
100 print order+2colors+the start up fee=$350...I hope she said "Yes"
Oh you can use GOJO, and soap and water, but sometimes that ink just doesn't come off! I still have blue under my fingernails from Friday.
HUEY THE HUGE!! He is fat, loves attention, and drools. He reminds me of my cat Danger back in Louisville.
Bethany Taylor designed this poster and printed the orange/yellow background. I printed the black.
I forget who did the blue, but here is the final product.Friday was an interesting day. We put up lots of type, I printed re-strikes for Alrico stunt shows, and the radio show "American Routes" came in to record. I think that I messed up the Alrico assignment.

The colors were inconsistent, either because I had to mix up a new batch of ink which was not quite like the other, or because the ink was running low on some of them and they turned out lighter. The colors printed for the background before we got there were also inconsistent which led to the borders being off on some of them. Instead of resetting the furniture(pieces of wood used to keep the plate in place on the press) I decided to print straight through them all because the 2 colors still lined up at the same border which would have still made it the same size poster when we trimmed them.

Speaking of borders! When NPR was doing their interviews with Jim and touring the shop recording we decided to step out for a long lunch next door at a place called Bailey's. We played ping pong, pool, and watched the Olympics for a while just to stay out of their hair.


After lunch we walked back and they were still recording. Jim and the NPR people walked over to me printing (the only one printing at the time)and Jim asked me how the re-strike was coming along. As soon as I opened my mouth to talk about the way in which I had to adjust the border about 1 pica to the left, this fuzzy microphone was there in my face. They cut, and Jim told me I needed to say it again, but really describe it for the radio audience. No pressure or anything. I tried again and probably sounded a lot more nervous than I did the first time. It threw me for a loop, and my smooth moves at the press where thrown off. The lady kept recording the sounds of me applying ink, and the sound of me making prints. It was pretty cool. I am excited to hear the show. Brad says stuff like this happens probably once a month.

In addition to the NPR people, tour groups kept coming through the studio and taking pictures of everything, including me printing. It is interesting, and also a little unnerving to be the center of attention like that. With all of this excitement around all the time, I wonder if it ever gets old.

The rest of the time spent outside of the internship was spent hanging with the other interns, or hanging at home mostly. I ride my bike almost 4 miles a day 5 days a week and yesterday we went to the Jack Daniel's distillery and then saw a show at The Basement on 8th st.

Having a wonderful time, wish you were here.