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/

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.

"Brooklyn" by Nate Duvall

I would love to say that as a printmaker, I make at least one print a week, and do nothing but print all day every day, but I don't. I can't afford it and it's cold out and I don't have all the supplies to do it. I mean honestly I haven't made a print since my mono prints, and those were really just exercises in monoprinting and nothing serious. I need to put in more time and effort and experiment more with different layers and ideas.

I say this because whenever I see prints like Nate Duvall's "Brooklyn" I realize how far I have to go with my printmaking skill. When I look at this print I think about all the little windows, pipes, building facades, and fonts that all have to interlock like a puzzle when you do a screenprint.

One color next to the other, next to the other, all covered (sometimes) with an outlining color. The line work in this print is really shaken and imperfect, but the color work seems to line up perfectly with it all. I have tried to do work with fine lines and color patches and it is so difficult to master.

It seems that I have never been able to get one to line up just the way I imagined it. Its usually not bad, and I like the imperfections because it shows the presence of the human being in the production, but at the same time, I marvel at people who get their prints to come together in such a perfect way.

Death or Glory

A few months ago when I was wandering ebay in search of interesting screenprints to possibly add to my collection, I stumbled upon this print. At the time it was something like $25, and seemed like a real solid image. Like most things in life, or eBay, I thought that it must be too good to be true. The price was nice and so was the image, there must be something wrong with it. It didn't even have the name of the artist listed in the description. For whatever reason, I didn't buy it. I should have though. I found another one on eBay for somewhere around $170!

As near as I can tell, the print is called "Death or Glory 09" by someone named Parry Doogan. Heard of him? Me either, but I dig his style! If this were just a really well printed monochrome image of The Clash's Joe Strummer, I probably wouldn't have given it a second glance, but this print is different! The thing that makes this image go beyond a standard ordinary screenprint, is his simple use of varnish that gives this image a whole new dimension. Compare the top image taken straight forward, with the one below taken from the side. Can you see the lyric? "Death or Glory/becomes just another story" Still don't see it? Try the image below in red. Oh yeah, it also comes in red.

Print Collection 1

My Morning Jacket Plays the Tennessee Fire
Triangle Poster CO.
Pittsburgh, PA
Screenprint and/or Letterpress

When I was younger my friends and I would load up the car and head down to Bardstown Rd. where we would wander around and check out the stores, hang out and have a good time. During these days there were no social networking sites so if you expected someone to come see your show, you had to make real life flyers, and stick them to real life telephone poles. If I would see a really well designed flyer while walking around, I would sometimes take them from the poles.

This is where I got this print. I dare say it is the first print in my collection, even though I took less than great care with it. It has pin holes in it, and drawing on the back, but when this poster was printed I highly doubt it was created to be "high art" and the whole gig poster/printmaking fad hadn't yet arrived.

The band is one I had never heard of when I acquired the print, but recently had appeared on TV's American Dad, and I believe they also had a live concert on television for New Year's Eve 2008/2009. The popularity of the band as well as the trendiness of printmaking and gig posters makes me wonder how long a poster like this would have survived stuck to a pole these days. This same poster I took from the streets is actually for sale(or was at one time) at Ear X-tacy.

When I found this print I had no knowledge about printmaking. I didn't know who Andy Warhol was, I had never been to Hatch Show Print, and I had probably never even had any experience in my high school art classes, but this was a cool poster. The paper was thick, the colors were bright, but it had a certain hand made quality that normal posters did not. I could see the impressions in the lettering, I could see slight imperfections, and the ink seemed to sit on top of the paper more than normal posters.

Based on my printmaking knowledge I would say this poster is a combination of screenprinting and letterpress. The image at the bottom seems to be a generic screenprinted design that is available for everyone and the text at the top seems to be a letterpressed custom design. If you visit the Triangle poster company website they have pictures of pre-printed images that you ca use for your event, and this is one of them. This particular elephant image is "style #531" according to the bottom of the poster.

Zine of the Month Club.

Recently thanks to printeresting.org I discovered something called the "Zine of the Month Club". For $75 you get a different zine every month from Mark Price/Space 1026 in Philadelphia, PA. Each issue is by a different artist or by a collection of artists, and usually features lots and lots of unusual doodles and drawings.

The Zine of the Month Club is why God invented mail. The picture below shows everything that came in the mail with my first zine of the month. It included all the previously released zines, as well as 3 show cards for an art auction/gallery opening at Space 1026, the envelope with the pizza character printed in red, a flier for the zine of the month club, a full color pizza character card with a hand written note from Mark Price, and all the zines up to that point.
Even though I wouldn't be able to make it to the show in Philly because it is over 8 hours away (I'm guessing), it is still cool to get bonus stuff in the mail, especially if it is really well designed. The envelope could have been plain white, and he didn't have to send a note saying thanks, but he did, and it's cool to know that he is not just phoning it in when it comes to this project.
A few weeks later I got the October issue. Same thing. The envelope was printed with the pizza figure, a new zine inside, and a cool little flier telling people to "READ ZINES NOT BLOGS". I think you should do both. Read zines, and this blog...and printeresting.org...and worldfamousdesignjunkies.com...but that is IT!

A couple of weeks (maybe not even that long!) later, I got a new envelope from the Zine of the Month club. This one was in a plain white envelope, with a photocopied zine called "Puke".
Because of its size, envelope, and photocopied nature, I don't think it is supposed to be one of the "official" zines of the month, and is more than likely just another form of "Thanks for subscribing" from the Club. If it is one of the official months titles, it is ok with me. What it lacks in fancy colors, and size, it makes up for in hilarity. This zine is probably one of the funniest yet. While I am talking about this zine in particular, it would make sense to go into greater detail about a few more as well.

Almost every issue is screenprinted, or a mix of screenprinting, photocopy, and interesting paper choices.

By interesting paper choices, for example, I mean that "Some kind of way" has velum paper for the 1st and last page that makes the image of a woman falling, turn into an organic pink blob when the page is turned. The cover to this one also blew me away, and made the screenprinting part of my brain wonder "how did you do that?" The drawings inside are kind of psychedelic, and have a really nice variation of line quality.

"Draw Jams Vol. 1" has a harder glossy cover with photographs of fat cats all over it, and the inside is filled with various artists' takes on Garfield, Batman, and other unusual characters.

"First Casualty of Pom Beach Week" is full of drawings of women and pomeranians. This is probably what a bad trip is like, and judging from some of the smoke-filled drawings, that may not be too far off.

"20xx" is a very elaborate, very high quality zine that makes my photocopied zines, and my screenprints, kind of look like crap. It actually has a zine within a zine!

"Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorn'd" is the only one that has a straight forward narrative to it, and it manages to flip that on its head through the unique way in which it must be read.

"People Friends" is a full of small drawings of people, and creatures, just chillin' and saying unusual phrases out of context. Very fun, and lots to see and read.

The rest of the zines follow along similar lines. Each issue that comes in the mail has its own unique identity, and its own way of interpreting art of the zine.

At www.zineofthemonthclub.com you can see the issues so far, subscribe to this year (or next year for the discounted price!), or click on each issue down the right hand side of the page to get a quick flip through of the issue. Even if you don't want to subscribe, it is worth it check out the site just to flip through all of these great zines.