I can has free market economy?

I admit it- I've been spending inordinate amounts of time working on screenprinting and typography jobs for clients and equally ridiculous amounts of time inventing new ways to take people's money in exchange for my art. Tweaking designs in Gimp. Prepping screens. Haggling to get the best price for my time and artistic energy. Giving discounts to friends and non-profits GOUGING EVERYONE WHO COMES WITHIN REACH OF MY GREEDY MAELSTROM OF SWEET SWEET EXCHANGE OF MY TIME AND ENERGY FOR THEIR COLD HARD CASH OH YES YES YES GIVE IT TO ME BABY.

Ahem.

So before anyone accuses me of creating art for my own sick capitalist gain, I would like to say- yes. God yes. I hereby brand myself before anyone else gets around to it. Dibs!

But yes, I've been doing all commissioned work lately and I loooove it. Nothing I can make public right now, but I'm starting to get more comfortable with Gimp and Photoshop for cleaning up logos and mocking up designs for folks. Most of the jobs have been for friends or local nonprofits, and those that haven't I've been able to pull out my shameless street performer mojo to make sure people know exactly how much my work is worth.

Here's to the system!


(If you couldn't tell, btw, my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek under that radical queer Bash Back! bandanna. Just so ya know.)

"Making" Letterpress assignment- now on 100% less newsprint!

I finally shot pictures of my finished letterpress print so I could satisfy my capitalist streak and sling 'em up in the etsy. The bottom one I did with a rainbow light-to-dark blue marbleized roll (which is really easy to achieve on the Vandercooks with the automatic rollers). I already got the rant about shimming and cheating done when I posted the first roughs I did on newsprint, so I'll spare y'all that again. However, I was saving these in the studio so I could screenprint a speech bubble over the text as a nod to Neil's role in comic books, but I just discovered today that I burned the image in reverse, and I took it as a sign that the universe didn't really want me to print it. Also I'm freaking tired of the print dungeon.

I had my last Printmaking and Modern design class on Saturday! We did a print exchange and went to the Wayzgoose festival at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle. I did both of these things highly exhausted and hung over, but incredibly it didn't take away from the COOLNESS of the Steamroller Smackdown at Wayzgoose. Artists printed huge linoleum and vinyl blocks (think 3x5 feet huge- and the average lino block fits in the palm of your hand) using a STEAMROLLER as a roller and PLYWOOD as a tympan. Here are some pictures I ganked from flickr to give you an idea:

They hung the posters on the side of SVC to dry, which is pretty frickin' brilliant when you think about how hard it would be to make a drying rack that big.

There were teams of artists inking each block. Each team got half an hour to pull as many prints as possible- when you know a little about how printing works, watching them go through the process under those time constraints is HELLA nerve wracking.

They used a carpet as a pusher blanket, plywood as the tympan, and then they put a goddamn steamroller on top of it. It was pretty incredible.

Pulling up the finished prints. Anyone who knows a little about printing- think about the registration on this thing. Just- think about it. I saw more than one HUGE piece of paper ruined by shifting it around to make registration.

So now I'm a little bit freer to work in the at home studio, although I won't be producing work at a furious pace to meet class deadlines anymore. Until metalworking starts up in October, at least!