It's Always Winter In Space

Go Down

2012-02-13T16:04:00.000-06:00

Brain Frame 4 happened last month, and it was the last time I'll be performing at Brain Frame in a while. Partially because I need a break from simultaneously orchestrating an entire show and composing my own multimedia extravaganza to reveal at said event, and partially because I've kind of run out of comics. The piece I performed last month was Go Down, from Chromazoid issue 1. I built the slideshow into a video file using Final Cut, and added a second projection - an oval of light, shifting and flashing colors, to be projected on me as I sat on a ladder in a white dress. I had a V20 looping pedal, into which I programmed about 12 different voices, to create layered soundscapes as well as voices for each character and magic crystal sounds.

I've posted parts of the comic before, but I was holding out on showing the whole thing because I wanted you guys to support Chromazoid. Now that Chromazoid is a reality, I'm happy to share the entire comic, and hopefully you'll like it enough to go out and purchase your own copy.

And, finally, here is the video (thanks Jenna!) of my performance.

House Fuck

2012-01-24T21:06:00.000-06:00

In 2008, I took my first film class with Thomas Comerford, and at the end of the semester I photographed this, my first seriously considered 16mm film. You can see (and read about) the raw footage in my original blog post.

In the following years, I worked on this film in almost every film class at SAIC. I used this movie to learn A/B rolling, working with ProTools, making an optical soundtrack, and contact printing a married final print.

House Fuck is a 16mm lust letter to the textures of antiquity, the sensation of home, and the sounds of my radiator. House Fuck is about touching surfaces. House Fuck is an erotic encounter with personal space. The full film runs 5.5 minutes long, and is not represented in its entirety here. If you really really want to see the whole thing, send me an email and swear to me you understand the difference between watching a film on Vimeo and watching it in a theater setting on celluloid and maybe I'll give you the secret password (you pervert).

•••

My friend Andy Roche invited me to be a visiting artist in his current class at DePaul. I showed four films and talked at length about my relationship to those works and my thoughts on film in general. Andy said some very nice things about me and his students were attentive and polite; I had a great time.

In other news, my friend Nicki Yowell is putting together a multiplatform, multimedia art book project thing that is cool and that you should know about. It's called Lightness & Darkness, there's a benefit party this Saturday, and their Kickstarter needs help as well. Art friends! Art friends!

Release the Chromazoid

2012-01-17T14:34:00.000-06:00

Chromazoid has been printed. Chromazoid has a new website. Chromazoid is having a release party in Chicago this Saturday. It's at Happy Dog Gallery, the same place that hosts Brain Frame, and it will be lots, and lots, and lots of fun. I drew this flyer.

(7pm, bands start at 8pm, Saturday January 21st, 1542 N Milwaukee, 2nd floor, $7 or more if you're feeling generous - proceeds go to cover the cost of printing Chromazoid #1, and to help start the ball rolling on Chromazoid #2.)

The Mystic

2012-01-12T19:09:00.001-06:00

Way back when, in the last months of 2009, I completed my greatest in-camera technical feat to date: The Mystic, a 100ft roll of color negative film that passed through my Bolex six times, bi-packed with sequins, shot through a matte box, painstakingly frame counted: basically the culmination of every intricate and tiresome film technique I had learned during the previous months, and a narrative (sort of) to boot. My original blog entry details these processes. But as proud as I was of the project's (almost complete) success, I knew that it needed something more.

In the ensuing years, I realized that what really bothered me about the original Mystic was its length. Each 'shot,' while carefully timed to an exacting plan, would flit by without the chance to sink in. I needed the film to take the time to overwhelm and hypnotize the viewer, the same way that the mystic hypnotizes himself. I decided to extend each sequence almost threefold, sometimes more, and I began to think about a soundtrack that would mimic the irregular strobe of the sequin, and assist in mesmerizing its audience.

The difficulty lay in extending the film without making it obvious that I was repeating frames over and over each other. I watched my workprint on a Steenbeck, making careful notes about which frame began and ended each shot, when the film was fogged or intense scratches ran through (jumping back and forth from fogged frames to black ones would be obviously unnatural, so I had to repeat within and around each faded section) and then diagrammed a complex, randomized route from which to create a new internegative, using the Oxberry optical printer at school.

Before I could make my internegative, however, I had to do a couple of other things. I wanted to add credits to the movie, make my own name more readable (the end of the film attributes one frame to each letter of my name) and fix the scenes in which Aj only appears on one side of the mystic's crystal ball. To do this, I photographed cut out letters onto HiCon using the animation stand, and colored two single frames with sharpie to use as bipacked mattes on the Oxberry (in order to rephotograph only one Aj into the scenes from which he was lacking). I took my titles, my mattes, and my workprint, and spent two whole days in the hot, hot, dark room that housed my beloved optical printer. The first time, I messed it up, so I had to do this process twice.

After I completed my successful internegative, I transferred it to make the video to which I synched my soundtrack. I collected laugh tracks, audience sounds, and applause from the BBC sound effects library and all over the internet, and cut them up in Pro Tools, rearranging and repeating them in much the same way that I repeated the frames of The Mystic. I gathered a different set of laughs for each shot, so that it sounds different when you're in his head than when you're watching the two of them. The tone over the flashing sequences was Ross's idea, and one I am incredibly grateful for. The clapping rhythm over the "I SEE" section was a happy accident, but it's one of my favorite parts of the film. I really like how it drives the film into epileptic overstimulation. I kind of think this is a movie about television.

The clip above is only a piece of the finished film, which is just under eight minutes. I'm only giving you an excerpt because I want to submit this movie to festivals and sometimes they're weird about it being online too. I also think, as most analog filmmakers do, that to really watch this piece you've got to see it on celluloid in some approximation of a theater setting. That being said, if you really, really want to see the whole thing and you can swear to me on your life that you understand the compromised viewing environment that is Vimeo, shoot me an email and maybe I'll give you the secret link.

Mr. Square at the Pit of Despair

2012-01-10T18:59:00.001-06:00

When I heard that some of the crew that formerly produced The Skeleton News were starting up a new publication called The Land Line, I was totally pumped. When Grant asked me to make a comic for it, I was even more pumped. I saw this as an opportunity to try out some new things, namely: a more classic cartoony style, and a more complex, stylized one-page layout. Having previously completed Go Down, and riding high on the fumes of conceptual color comics, the fact that this comic would be printed in black and white on newsprint demanded that I find more in that limitation than mere limitation.

I read this comic at a benefit for The Landline. I used the opportunity to work through an analysis of the layers contained within Mr. Square which, at first glance, is pretty inscrutable. Here's a video of me doing the same thing, but alone and in poor resolution. (Analysis starts at 4:30, if you don't want to hear me doing silly voices.)

UPDATE: I can't believe I messed this up, and I'm even more upset that I'm losing so much math nerd cred over this, but check it out: a line is the easiest way to define one dimension, and a plane is the easiest way to define two dimensions. My puns are all wrong, and I'm really sorry.

Speaking of The Landline, they've got a Kickstarter up to cover the cost of printing issue 1 (which looks, as you can see, awesome) and to keep the whole production going. It's free, it's free of ads, it's beautiful and remarkable and full of high-quality, funny, sexy, interesting, gross things. They've almost reached their goal, but they need more help! Please consider donating, and if you're in Chicago, pick one up if you see one, because these babies are golden.

House Portrait

2012-01-04T16:40:00.001-06:00

My friend Carolyn (and her siblings) commissioned me to draw this picture of their childhood home. It was a New Year's Eve gift for their mother, who is moving out of this house next month.

Compiled

2011-12-17T16:45:00.000-06:00

This is really exciting. I've been meaning to complete this compilation for two years, since I produced the cover for these comics in Offset class. This is really my first full size comic book, and most definitely the first thing I've been proud enough of and confident enough in to send off to publishers, for example, or drop at Quimby's. That's right, I finally have comics at Quimby's.

This book contains five comics and one prose piece. Four of the comics are available in full to read on my blog; the fifth comic is not online, will never be online, and yeah, if you want to read you have to get the book. The written story is the version of They Glistened that I read at Brain Frame 3.

You can see me talk about and flip through Compiled in the video above; here are some closer images of the cover design.

ELSEWHERE: My mother interviewed me about Tumblr! I didn't know she was going to put the audio online, I just thought she was using it to take notes. Oh well, I guess the sounds of me eating and knocking over things in the background aren't that noticeable.

Brain Frame 4

2011-12-01T14:33:00.001-06:00

The beat goes on, as they say. This collaborative poster was created by Grant Reynolds and myself, in a record amount of time.

Brain Frame 4, the first Brain Frame in the Year of Our Lord Apocalypse, will be a doozy. The multi-talented, faceted, tasking, and faced readers include:

Ben Bertin
Beth Hetland
Eric Rivera
Laura Szumowski
Jeremy Tinder
and myself.

This is the last time I'll be reading at Brain Frame for a while. I'm particularly excited about the comics I'll be performing (a newer, fancier version of Copulate, and Go Down). Additionally, we will have fresh, new copies of Chromazoid #1 available for sale.

Here's the video of me reading They Glistened at Brain Frame 3:

Trubble Club

2011-11-23T14:28:00.001-06:00

So there's this group of comics artist in Chicago called Trubble Club. They meet every week to make jam comics: one person draws a panel, another draws the next, so on and so on. The participants are all talented, productive individuals with whom anyone would be honored to associate. When I first started making comics in Chicago, Trubble Club was the coolest thing and a symbol of local success. My friends and I joked about starting a rival jam comics group, and placed jealous bets on who would be invited to the Club first.

So, last month my friend Grant Reynolds invited me to join. The freshman infatuation with Trubble Club had worn off, and I'm friends with a lot of the folks who participate, so it wasn't really a big deal (but it was kind of a big deal - or at least it still felt like one). Anyway, I've been attending for the past several weeks. Today Jeremy Tinder posted some new TC comics, and you can see my work in one of them:

That last panel says "SQUELCH" and I drew it.

Ya'll should check out Trubble Club's website and get excited about the upcoming (recently completed) Trubble Club Full Color Comics Spectacular Issue 5. I have one panel in it, and it's really, really dirty. (Disclaimer: that is not actually the title for the collected TC comics, I just made it up.)

Untitled (Times For)

2011-11-07T16:00:00.000-06:00

Ross and I had been joking about making an homage to the elusive, rigorous, and very very serious avant-garde filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos for ages. Markopoulos, who died in 1992, took all of his prints out of circulation in the United States in 1967, in order to create an 80-hour opus (structured in 'cycles') that screens partially (as it is completed) once every four years in the middle of nowhere in Greece.

Markopoulos's 1967 film Himself as Herself is [from the Harvard Archives] "based loosely on Balzac's Séraphita. The film consists of a shimmering, nearly plotless evocation of gender identity in flux, and it contains some of Markopoulos’s most haunting, densely interlaced images." It is also a particular favorite, and the film that Ross and I always dreamed of ripping off.

So, then I was asked to take part in the Chicago 8 Film Festival's 'Bride of Super 8' screening. Participants receive one roll of Super 8 Ektachrome. They shoot anything they want, editing in camera if at all, and return the roll undeveloped to the festival. Everyone sees their film for the first time on the night of the screening.

The films at these screenings generally fall into one of two categories: home-movie footage of dogs and camping trips, or general abstract fucking around. I thought it would be extra funny to present an incomparably overambitious film in the same context.

We planned out every scene and shot sequence in Untitled before beginning the shoot, and it took us five days (spread out over three weeks) to complete the roll. Each scene took hours to set up and get dressed for. The second scene (rolling on/with the carpet) was especially tricky, because we weren't sure if the camera movement we worked out would translate in the finished piece. That motion is copied (then repeated) from a single edit in Himself as Herself, when the whole film goes upside down for a moment. The staircase sequence is a reference to the moment in Himself as Herself when the main character, wearing this weird veil and representing both his masculine and feminine aspects, meets himself through cross-cut editing on the platform of a lush staircase. That's why Ross and I are in drag after that sequence, because we've crossed over the gender binary.

Because this entire film was shot in camera, and we wanted to make it without help, one can imagine the logistics that went into each take - I'd shoot a couple frames of Ross, we'd switch, he'd shoot, switch, etc. This was particularly trying during the staircase scene, since we single framed two seconds (36 frames) and had to have our fingers touch in the finished sequence; there's a penny taped to the wall high up behind us, and each time, before opening the shutter, the cameraperson would direct the actor in precise placement of their finger over this penny in the eye of the camera. This and the drag sequence were shot in my apartment building lobby. I'd like to thank my neighbors for humoring us.

At the end (when we become one, and, conversely, when we are seen together in a shot for the first time) we put the camera on a wheelchair, tied ropes to the legs, and looped them around poles in my basement. This was our way of fashioning a dolly that would require no additional hands, and maintaining the integrity of our 'pure' filmmaking experience.

Brain Frame 3

2011-11-01T14:51:00.000-05:00

I am very proud to announce the third installment of BRAIN FRAME! It's happening a week from this Thursday (that being the 10th of November) at 8pm, at 1542 N Milwaukee (on the second floor). Myself included, there will be five readers:

Krystal DiFronzo
Bret Koontz
Ian McDuffie
Grant Reynolds

It will be sooooo fuuuuuun! I'm serious. Look how excited I am, I'm so excited that I was too lazy to scan in the small version of the flyers, and took a backwards picture of myself holding them instead:

The poster is a collaboration between Ben Bertin and myself. If you can't tell, that's a turkey stuck in the throat of the snake (the snake that's winding through a face skin, a muscle mask, and a skull, and barfing out its brain up at the top there). The snake just ate the whole turkey because it's almost Thanksgiving. You might even say that the snake has Thanksgiving on the brain.

The big version of the poster is actually a seven-color-separation. Each layer (CMY, RGB, K) was printed separately. It's vomitous. When Ben and I finished the drawing, we propped it up on a table in my house and played some metal music, as a test. We nodded our heads and stroked our chins, mumbling "Yes, yes."

If you're on Facebook, there's a page for Brain Frame now. And, um, you should probably 'like' it.

If you attend BF3, you'll see me as a scientist, reading a field report (from the future!) about the squishsacks, complete with alien tissue samples and funny glasses. I'm going first, so get there on time. Here's the documentation, thanks to Jenna Caravello, of my performance at BF2. I'm reading Night City in character as Llama Man. I wrote monologues for him to insert into the narrative of the comic, and later realized that it's the first time I've given him a voice. It was louder than this video makes it seem. You get the idea.

Lyra Hill reads Night City from Lyra Hill on Vimeo.

Go Down Part 2

2011-10-28T15:30:00.000-05:00

Wuh-oh! What's happening here!?! This is the second part of Go Down, the comic I made for the first issue of Chromazoid, a comic anthology and mixtape that still needs help, so help us! These are pages 4 through 6. The end of this comic gets even crazier.

I really like how the panels in the 6th page are shaped like the crystals.

Go Down / Chromazoid

2011-10-18T16:04:00.000-05:00

So, what do you think about this special sneak preview of my newest comic? Do you like it? Does it pique your interest? Personally, I think this is the best work I've done to date, and twice as exciting - because it's in color. It's my first comic in color! (Well, not including these two, but let's not talk about embarrassing, ancient history.)

What's that you say? You'd like to know what comes next? Well, then why don't you consider donating to the Kickstarter campaign for CHROMAZOID, a brand new, full color, horror comic anthology put together by my dear friend Lale Westvind? Contributing a mere $25 earns you a signed copy of the book as well as two mini-comics and a mix tape! Give more, and you get even more cool stuff! There are nine artists featured in CHROMAZOID, including yours truly and a gang of other criminally talented fresh meats.

Seriously, this is an incredible project and I would really love it to get off the ground. If our first issue is successful, this will become a truly great series of compilations, full of art by people who really, really deserve to have their work seen and distributed. Don't you want to be able to say, years down the line, that you helped the first ever issue of CHROMAZOID hit the stands? I guarantee it will get you laid at that future party.

About the comic: Because I had to work in color for this project, I wanted that trait to be important to the story, and a definitive part of the world I'd be drawing. I've been thinking about crystals a lot recently. (When I told Otto this, he said "Oh, good, you're getting back to your roots.") An image of a multifaceted, ever-changing crystal in anaglyphic red and cyan keeps appearing to me, and so it became the catalyst in this story. I colored the rest of the comic with ink wash pencils, leaving blank space for the crystal. I made overlays with tracing paper on each page, using a pen and ruler to outline the crystal and its facets. After scanning each page and its overlay, I filled the facets with flat computer color, artificially misregistering the red and cyan layers (and setting them to 'multipy,' so they would combine as if they were printed pigments) to create the illusion of offset printing and three-dimensionality (not to mention otherworldliness). I left the crystal's outlines blank to emphasize its unique properties and make it seem even more out of context with the rest of the comic.

A lot more happens in Go Down (it's eight pages total). Please consider donating! I'm very excited about this work and I want everyone to read it.

Pizzaccoutrement

2011-10-13T09:12:00.000-05:00

I work at a pizza place. Whenever I work anywhere, I get asked to draw the signs. That's me with the new chalkboard we got at work (no one else is allowed to draw on the chalkboard now, according to my boss).

Whenever it's slow my mind goes hyperactive and I have to occupy myself. I could get a lot of work done, in this time, except I'm not usually allowed to sit down. This uncomfortable limbo yields a lot of quick sketches on Guest Checks.

Halloween is also a very special time of year for me. I love making Halloween costumes. This year, if I get my idea together in time (I'm going to be a shaman priest slaughtering a goat) it'll be awesome. Halloween, or Samhein, is also... THE WITCHES' NEW YEAR!! which is really exciting.

This is what happens when I get into the spirit while I'm bored at work:

The pictures above are ordered in the sequence I drew the pumpkin. I think each consecutive one is better. I used a Sharpie (actually several).

And, of course, more chalk. These two drawings are on either side of the sandwich board right now. Spot this sign in Chicago; you'll find me inside! I won't give you free pizza.

Brain Frame 2

2011-09-09T14:42:00.001-05:00

It is happening again.

At The Gallery Formerly Known As Happy Dog, that being located at 1542 N Milwaukee Ave, 2nd Floor, occurring on Thursday, September 22nd at 8 PM.

Reading:
Ben Bertin
Edie Fake
Robin Hustle
Mike Lopez

Otto Splotch

and me, duh.

The three-color at the top is the big poster - the grid above is all the smaller, two-color fliers. I drew the outlines for this poster while I was visiting Detroit, sitting in bars, hanging out with these guys. You can read it upside down too! See the '2' hidden in the image? Psychedelic. Can you guess how these were made?

Oh, and: brainframe.tumblr.com

Join Me On This New Vision Quest

2011-08-26T17:32:00.001-05:00

So Brain Frame #1 was a huge success. Somewhere in the area of forty people attended, each and every performer blew the audience away, the event was met with resounding enthusiasm. It makes sense, then, that I've decided to continue Brain Frame as a bimonthly reading series.

Look, so legit: a website.

And here's a sneak behind-the-scenes peek of some moments between me and Nick Jackson reading. I'll have videos of some of the readings up on the Brain Frame site too.

Brain Frame #1 (behind the scenes) from Lyra Hill on Vimeo.

The next Brain Frame will be at 8pm, Thursday, September 22nd, at Happy Dog Gallery, 1542 N Milwaukee, 2nd floor. Stay tuned for a sweet poster.

More Stepped Exposures

2011-07-28T12:28:00.003-05:00

More of this. You should really look at these up close. The image above is from Ventura, CA. Accidentally, the compositions here do wonderful things: look at the shape of the dock across the photograph. That lone surfer kills me. Those are our shadows waving at the beach.

These two are from inside my apartment. That's my brother's silhouette in the second set. Nice colors, yeah?

To take the cake, as they say: Ross, Sara, Bowen and I on the roof. There are plenty of beautiful things to identify here. Primarily, I'm a fan of the way the two-point perspective of the buildings in the landscape combine with the vertical breaks in differing exposures to create a really confusing medley of dimensions. Also, everybody looks so happy.

Brain Frame

2011-07-18T01:58:00.007-05:00

I am organizing a comix reading event at the end of this month. There will be slideshows, soundtracks, and a spaceship. I am reading along with four dear friends.

BRAIN FRAME: A PERFORMATIVE COMIX READING
THURSDAY, JULY 28TH, 8PM
AT THE GALLERY FORMERLY KNOWN AS HAPPY DOG
1542 N MILWAUKEE AVE, 2ND FLOOR

Sara Drake
Lyra Hill
Nick Jackson
Ian McDuffie
Otto Splotch

Otto and I drew this flier this weekend, and printed it using color copier color separation. We brainstormed (pun intended) the image and then took turns drawing it, first penciling and then inking. I'm totally flattered that you can't tell it was drawn by two people, because I think Otto is so good at comics. It's also great that Nick let us put his number on the flier, because he doesn't have a website for us to link to.

•••

My friend Sara Drake, who will also be reading at Brain Frame, is currently trying to raise money to travel to Cambodia this fall, and teach comics to young women. Sara is a dedicated, intelligent, warm and talented person and is the best candidate I know for this job. Please help her out:

•••

Josh Mabe and Jason Halprin, more friends, are also preparing an important, exciting venture: Chicago 8: A Small Gauge Film Festival. I'm planning on submitting to this festival along with several fantastic filmmakers I know. Josh and Jason are talented, tasteful individuals and master film technicians. Help initiate a hopefully annual cultural event:

Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

2011-07-09T18:12:00.006-05:00

Beatlemania. True story.

Matchbook Business Cards

2011-07-08T13:44:00.000-05:00

Back in offset printing class (these entries are just a post-graduation clearing house, aren't they?) I had some space left on the side of a print, so I thought I might as well make the most of it.

I had been wanting to make some business cards for myself. Predictably, the thought of just making regular business cards never occurred to me. Instead, I got excited about the possibilities of matchbooks.

I liked the thought of matchbooks with real matches in them. Because I didn't have the capacity to offset print that sandpaper strip that helps you light the paper matches in regular matchbooks, I had to use strike anywhere matches. For this version, I created a design with a stove on the front and a campfire on the back (two ways you can use the contents!) and 'STRIKE ANYWHERE' printed on the spine.

The reason I was able to fit these two pattens on the scrap edge of a larger print is because I made them very narrow (and, by virtue of the mechanics of matchbooks, the unfolded print is also very long). They are narrower than regular matchbooks, being 1" wide as opposed to the more standard 1.5".

The second pattern pushes the boundaries of matchbooks even further. I thought long and hard, trying to come up with another small, thin, disposable object that would be useful and pleasant to dispense in small portable batches. Toothpicks!

This toothpickbook unfolds to show a stretched out, weird face. The upper lip tucks into a reproduction of itself. The toothpicks are lightly glued to each other and then stapled inside, and easy enough to pull out one at a time (like the matches in the previous design).

I know they're decadent for business cards, but I'm also immensely pleased with them as mini art objects. The informative part of the card is stamped on the inside of the front flap. This stamp is one of those design-it-yourself types that come with lots of little rubber letters and symbols which you can then arrange to your liking. They're easy to buy at Staples or Office Depot, and not too expensive.

Stepped Exposures

2011-07-03T15:30:00.000-05:00

Last summer Andrew and I drove across the southern United States to move him to Los Angeles. I brought my Holga, which is broken more than Holgas are usually broken (primarily, the flash doesn't work, but other things are wrong too). I really appreciate my Holga for this reason. It's not a reflex camera, which means my framing will always be inexact at best. There's no way to tell if the light will be right, and the process of scrolling to the next spot in your negative can be completely arbitrary.

This is what I explored briefly during that road trip. The two exposures above are of my father and my grandfather walking the goats, and the one below is of Andrew at the Grand Canyon. It's the best one.

Clam Shell Box

2011-06-29T13:15:00.000-05:00

Here's another of my final projects from that artist's books class I took two years ago. This is called a 'clam shell box' because of the way it nestles together, and the broad flexible hinge. It's very similar to the hardback cover of a book with a flat spine, but instead of pages, there's more bookboard making up the sides of the box.

I wanted an interesting cover on the box, so I made two windows in the front bookboard panel, using them as frames for prints of old photographs. I was thinking about a refrigerator (no joke) when I mapped out the two photo-windows.

The rest of the box is made of more bookboard, covered in bookcloth and lined with found sheet music. The slot in the box's bottom wall is there so you can lift out its contents without turning the box upside down. I measured this box to fit the two hardbound books I had just made, but it is also the perfect size for 5x7 photographs, or drug paraphernalia or prophylactics, you know, whatever.

Carbondale

2011-06-25T14:32:00.001-05:00

These are old photos. They're from a camping trip I took with two friends, two years ago, in March of 2009, to southern Illinois, outside Carbondale.

You may remember this film, which was shot during the same trip. Here's Aj in action:

These are not all of the photographs, just ones that I think are particularly interesting. I take a lot of photos, but only because I'm on this vacation or that one, or someone is visiting, that kind of thing. I approach them as snapshots, which is a welcome relief from the lengthily and detailed planning that goes into most of the things I create. Photos are a way for me to document my life (like diary comics) without the pressure of premeditation or commitment, and any artistic merit that shows up when I get the prints back is an unexpected joy.

I like thinking about my photos in groups of three. Here are three closer examinations of the natural world:

And three pictures of Lale sitting on something far away:

And one picture that looks prehistoric:

This post has been short on discussion and analysis, so I'll throw in one more photograph that strikes me as particularly beautiful. I love the proxy-horizon-line here and how it tips you off the left side; the way that second rock is not quite strong enough to keep your eye in the image. And how the upper earth - the ground that is visible, somehow, on top of the mountains - is curved away from you like an exaggeration of the bow in the planet's crust. I find the perspective in this photograph discombobulating in the best, most breath-catching way. Aj's precarious position on the right side of the frame seems tenuous at best, and even he is leaning in to try and make some sense of the balance within the image. And, that rosy rust color of the leaves on the ground kills me.

Round Spine, Flat Spine

2011-06-21T11:06:00.012-05:00

Back in spring semester of 2009, I was in an artist's book class. Remember? These two books were the last editions I made, and the fanciest. They're real hardback books, with many signatures, stitched and bound traditionally and really nicely. The quality of these editions is something I'm very proud of. First, the round spine:

Both books' innards are 50% found paper (posters, wrapping paper, opalescent tissue) and 50% purchased paper. The paper I bought is soft and ribbed, good for sketching or writing. For the round spine book, I used this drawing paper, striped brown wrapping paper, tissue, and the remnants of an old water-stained poster for Guatemala.

And now, the flat spine:

This pages in this book are comprised of the same soft drawing paper and tissue, as well as found posters from the first Austin Powers movie, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

•••

OTHER NEWS:

This Friday, I'm participating the seventh installment of the EAR EATER reading series, previously curated by Cassandra Troyan and Sara Drake, and now curated just by Sara Drake (at least this time). Anyway, I'll be doing a performative reading of the prose version of the story of the Squishsacks, and it should be pretty exciting. I will be really nervous, come watch me try not to shake when I talk.

The other readers at the event are:
Halle Butler
Kristin Hayter
Nick Jackson
Anders Nilsen
and Sara Drake.

You should come. It's at 1622 S. Allport St. Apt. #1, commencing between 8-11pm, on Friday, June 24th.

4x4

2011-06-07T18:55:00.001-05:00

Color Tests and Obligatory Self-Congratulation

2011-05-09T21:02:00.002-05:00

You guys like color tests? Huh? Yeah?

Color tests are how you figure out what filters you need on an optical printer in order for your finished print to be the appropriate shade. These are a couple tests for two of the four films I'm currently finishing (you may recognize The Mystic and House Fuck.)

•••

OK SO IN OTHER NEWS, I uh, I'm graduating after this week, which means three things:
     1. The URL for this Blogspot will no longer be correct (currently it's I am an art student what am I doing, but I won't be an art student anymore! Should I change it to I was an art student? Or leave it, in anticipation of educational purgatory such as graduate and doctoral studies? Does it matter? The answer is no, ergo the URL (while factually inaccurate) will remain the same, no need to update your bookmarks.)
     2. OMG I'm going to be done with school what the hell
     3. I can't remember the third thing because I'm completely exhausted, up to my old shenanigans (see bottom of linked post) again.

ALSO GUESS WHAT
     4. I won the top prize SAIC Excellence in Student Leadership award, which is pretty cool. They're going to feature me on the SAIC website, and interview me for SAIC Student Association's new website as well.
     5. I am also the recipient of one of the SAIC BFA Fellowship Awards, which means I submitted a portfolio and artist's statement and resume and a bunch of important people who run prestigious schools and museums were like, "yeah, this girl is alright," and then they gave me a bunch of money. So I can actually fund the films I was planning to make this summer, now. Thanks SAIC!

I'M STILL SHOWIN' STUFF
     6. On Monday night, May 23rd, ExTV will be airing the second of two (identical) episodes of work by yours truly. It's playing on CANTV, Chicago's public access station (channel 21!) at 11pm. They wrote some nice things about me on the poster; I'm honored.
     7. This is not really an official event, but Ross and I will be showing several finished 16mm prints for our family and friends at 8pm on Friday, May 20th, in room 1307 of 112 S Michigan Ave. Anyone is welcome to come, just tell security that you're there for a screening and they'll let you up. Both Ross and my families will be there (it's the night before graduation) and it will also be the unofficial premier of a buttload of stuff I've been working on for years.

AND FINALLY
     8. Here are some pictures of me installing Llama Man and Night City in a glass case at the Flaxman library. The show was called Object Relations, and featured three artists (including myself) who work both in film/video and the physical realm. He lives!

Film Frame

2011-04-29T00:05:00.002-05:00

This event is past. Actually, all of the Experimental Film Society events (except one special one) for the spring semester have passed. I am relieved as well as saddened to be done with the constant barrage of minute, mundane tasks that were the running of EFS. (As well as larger, more interesting but similarly time and energy consuming tasks.)

This was a special screening for me. It wasn't the last screening, nor the second to last - those two spots were held by programs of work by Betzy Bromberg, an incredible filmmaker, teacher, and woman in general - but it was the last that I made a poster for. It was also the screening that I had the most to do with creatively. This was one of the few screenings Ross and I programmed that had more to do with a conceptual or stylistic idea as opposed to a convenient grouping of films we wanted to see. As such, it almost feels valid to say that I... curated... this screening.

Anyway, you don't care about that, you (ostensibly) care about the poster. Well, the poster is, you guessed it, more color copier color separation, this time using the technique to separate the different levels of frames-within-frames, avoiding overlapping colors and the combinations that result thereof. The only exciting about this specific instance was the color/frame layer made of two hands.

Most of the images that make up the poster were pulled from Google Image Search, but for the hands I used my MacBook's built in camera to take photos of my own hands. When blown up to 300dpi and 11x17 inches, however, the photos looked pretty shitty. So I printed them out at this size, then drew over them with a mechanical pencil to highlight the shading and creasing in the hands, as well as create a kind of faux-realist crisp resolution and increase visual interest. Then, I scanned the printout back in to the computer and composited it with the rest of the color/frame layers.

I know this story is not all that exciting, but I thought these photos of my hand over-drawing looked kind of nice. Enjoy.

Bong Hits for Voting

2011-04-24T22:20:00.000-05:00

So I'm in a class right now called "Sound and Image" and for the most part I've been finishing soundtracks for House Fuck and The Mysic (both of which have been edited/altered since I posted them here) as well as another movie I'm working on called My Sister At My Mother's House. In the meantime, though, I still have regular assignments.

One of those assignments was to ADR some footage. ADR stands for Automated Dialog Replacement, and it basically means dubbing over something. So that's my voice that you hear in the video above. Actually, every sound in the video above is me doing something (the original video had a Tool song playing the background; I chose not to recreate that). I picked the original video because Marijuana Man seemed like a nice guy and I like his videos. I hope he's not offended. Thanks, Marijuana Man!

Are You Lonesome Tonight (Color)

2011-04-16T16:25:00.004-05:00

Hey, remember this comic? I recently tabled the second annual Chicago Zine Fest, and I wanted Are You Lonesome Tonight? to be one of the comics available. (I also sold a considerable number of Dock Ellis comics, bike accident comics, and Motion Sickness posters.)

But, since I hadn't yet produced a nice run of Lonesome Tonight, I thought I'd add some color before doing so. Furthering my intimate relationship with color copier color separation, I experimented with paper towels, a pencil, and a light table to create textured, two-tone washes in the background of the comic.

The whole comic fits on two sides of one page (I drew it on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, but printed this run on a 11 x 17 sheet). I wanted to have two overlaid, misregistered washes of color on each side of the original B&W sheet, so I had to color in four different paper towel overlays, two for each side. I laid the original sheet (not seen above) on the light table with a clean towel on top, and used a soft graphite pencil to color around the Elvis impersonators and their word bubbles. While I was drawing each two overlays for the same side, I didn't compare, preferring to create the shapes from memory, and contributing to the inexactness of the shaded areas once the overlays were combined. You can see in the second picture above that the drawings do not perfectly match.

The other advantage of drawing this way on paper towels was the texture from the quilted pattern.

After I finished shading the paper towels, I took them to the color copier and made a photocopy of each, setting the printer to 'single color.'

You can see how the texture of the graphite and the quilted towels made its way through the copying process, ending up looking a lot like crayon drawings.

Finally, I copied these differently colored overlays onto my original B&W photocopied pages of line drawings. I placed the blue and green layers together, and the red and magenta layers together as well. Because I couldn't decide whether I liked the combination of red and magenta or red and yellow better, I made half of the comics one way and half the other.

A lot of people at Zine Fest told me they were impressed with my crayon drawings. I didn't know it would turn out with that identifiable of a texture, but I think it's pretty cool and it works well with the weird, melancholy attitude of the comic.

By and About: Jack Smith

2011-03-23T00:08:00.005-05:00

Another day, another poster. Variations on a theme. The natural evolution of practicing printmaking on the color copiers. The next EFS event is a screening of four films, all starring Jack Smith - two by the man himself and one each by Ron Rice and Ken Jacobs, some of the other unknown Warhol Superstars.

Jack Smith is the most important underground filmmaker you've never heard of. Some quotes:
"The only artist I would ever copy" - Andy Warhol
"He was the king of the underground." George Kuchar
"The godfather of performance art." Laurie Anderson
"The only true underground filmmaker." John Waters

Come, if you're around.

In other news, my friend Francisco recently interviewed my other friend Matt O'Shaughnessy and myself on his radio show, GRINGO with Francisco Francisco. We talked about filmmaking, and what EFS does, and all kinds of other fun things. If you'd like to listen to the episode, go here. You can hear my dumb laugh a lot. The music is really loud in the beginning but it gets fixed, don't worry.

Screenprinting: Christmas Presents

2011-03-19T23:23:00.019-05:00

Ever since voluntarily (and happily) becoming unemployed in August of last year, I have been totally broke. But I still wanted to make some kick-ass Christmas presents. I've already written on one example. This is the story of me using all of the people I know in California to help me make two presents for Andrew.

I had a couple ideas. I wanted to make him a t-shirt using an image he had me draw last year, of a bunny holding a drumstick. At the time, he insisted that if he ever got a tattoo, it would be of a bunny holding a drumstick, and that I should draw it for him, just in case. Of course, he's never going to get a tattoo, but I knew he really liked the drawing and figured putting it on a shirt would ultimately be more useful.

I also know that Andrew really likes Carl Sagan, and thinks that the Gold Record project is incredible (which it is). So, since he had just moved and didn't yet have much large wall art, I decided to make a poster of the Gold Record as well. So, while I was in San Francisco, I stopped by Thrift Town, which I visit whenever I can because I miss getting all my shoes there, and picked out the biggest, goldest, most awesome frame I could find. The one I got came with a really cool print in it, a fine line drawing with watercolor washes of this monster scene of humans doing a wide variety of constructive and creative things, like building a boat or practicing ballet or attending the opera or sitting in an office. I went to Thrift Town just looking for a frame, but I ended up using this print as well. It was thematically appropriate.

Obviously screen printing was the best method for both of these projects. Screen printing is the best way to make t-shirts, and I didn't have the capabilities to have a large printer posted any other way (plus screen printing looks way better than some stupid laser printer or something). And, my best friend Zella's boyfriend Dewey has a screen printing-equipped studio in Sacramento. So I started by blowing up each design in Photoshop, then printing out sections on my mom's inkjet, then taping them together to reform the designs.

The Gold Record was more difficult than the bunny. Since the only image of the Gold Record is the relatively low resolution one on the NASA website, I had to do a lot of painful selecting on Photoshop to get a clean black and white stencil image large enough to print 22" in diameter.

Once I had the large images, I had to transfer them to acetate in order to burn the screens. For the bunny, this was easy; I wanted to end up with a simple line drawing, so all I had to do was trace my printout onto acetate with an opaque pen.

For the Gold Record, again, the process was more difficult. Because the positive area of the image was so large, it made no sense to color it with a pen. I considered making a cut-out stencil, but because there are islands areas (unconnected from the rest of the positive image) this wouldn't work either. Dewey ended up having some Rubylith, basically a clear acetate base with a thin red or amber emulsion coating. I'd never heard of it or used it before, but it's great. You can trace your image with an exacto and peel off the emulsion, but still have an intact singe sheet as a base. The emulsion is clear enough to see through, but the right color that it completely blocks the light on the light table when you burn a screen.

Once I'd finished cutting out the details on the Gold Record stencil, I cut the entire thing into a perfect circle. Then I gave Zella a haircut, and we tried to dye her hair with cooked and mashed beets, which didn't end up working out, but looked really gross and cool during the process.

Before burning the screens, we had to stretch them (this part actually happened way at the beginning, before I made the stencils, but anyway). Dewey didn't have any screens as large as I wanted, so he very kindly made some frames and I bought some screen material and we proceeded to make our own.

After stretching the screens, Dewey coated them with emulsion. They took a really long time to set (during which I made the stencils). When they finally hardened (it was really cold and wet in Sacramento last December) we put them up on the light table and burned each screen.

I've only ever screen printed in the school studios before, so this whole process was pretty novel to me. I was incredibly impressed by Dewey's set up and the things he managed to do in a relatively small, not-fancy place. At school we have dry rooms with box fans and chilled emulsion and fancy tubs and sprayers and stuff. Dewey has a used light table and a garden hose, and he manages to accomplish the exact same thing (if it did take a little longer, being as we were at the mercy of the weather). This is a lesson I'm learning in regards to filmmaking as well, and a very useful one considering I'll be graduating in less than two months and won't have access to fancy school equipment after that.

After we burned the screens we sprayed them out and left them to dry.

Next came making the actual prints. We tested the bunny one quite a bit before actually printing the shirt I had picked up. There were some difficulties with the cleanliness of the image, but we managed to get out every bit of emulsion that wasn't supposed to be there, and cover up the places where it was supposed to be, but wasn't.

For the Gold Record print, we ran a couple on blank, dark blue paper before printing the actual image. We printed directly over the poster that had come with the frame I picked out. It had a wonderful effect: the gold ink is about %50 transparent, so it created this big glistening shape that is easily distinguishable from the complicated background, (and recognizable as the Gold Record, if you're familiar with it) but it's still possible to look up close and see the original image.

But the task was not finished! I drove Dewey and Zella back home, and then sped back to San Francisco to accompany my mother to a taping of Retro Night, a weekly show on KOFY TV, a local San Francisco television station. We hosted the It Takes a Thief episode.

After a similarly nostalgic meal, my mother left the city and my little sister Jojo and I went to stay at the house of a family friend family, Marian and Bob and their son Aidan, who helped Jojo and I re-frame the Gold Record print and wrap each present.

You can see a clearer picture of the finished and framed Gold Record print in the photo at the top of this post. That's Andrew, pretending he's not so, so thankful and amazed to receive such nice presents.

Thanks Anne, Zella, Dewey, Dewey's family, Jojo, Marian, Bob, and Aiden! You guys are the best.

WATW: SIAL

2011-03-18T10:41:00.001-05:00

I don't know if you guys are ready for this poster. There's a lot going on. It's pretty terrible, mostly in an intentional way. (But look! It's an eye, and the center of the earth, and the aperture of a lens!) Anyway, if you're around you should most definitely come to this show, it will be killer.

This poster is another, more complicated, take on my new favorite thing: color copier color separation.

8 Films by Robert Breer

2011-03-08T18:42:00.002-06:00

Hey look, another EFS poster! This one is for a screening this upcoming Sunday, showcasing the work of Robert Breer, one of the most influential, important experimental animators ever. If you like experimental animation, check it out. And, if you're in Chicago, you have no excuse not to attend this screening.

This poster was made using a technique Alexander Stewart suggested to me: color separation using the school's color copiers, set to 'single color' output. I hand drew each different color layer with a sharpie on printer paper, then copied each, set to either red, green, or blue, onto the original black printouts. It yielded really rich, mis-registered results, which is exactly what I was looking for. I often find color copies to be super ugly, but I love this method.

The design is a play on Breer's style, as if you could condense his immense body of work into any kind of succinct aesthetic (you can't). Anyway, I tried.

Dick Pipe

2011-02-19T13:49:00.001-06:00

I made Justin a dick pipe for his birthday this year.

I used liquid latex (to which I am no stranger), liquid acrylic paint in some simple colors, and, of course:

Andrew and I picked out the pipe at a head shop in Los Angeles, giggling a lot. Walking into a smoking utensil dispensary with the express purpose of finding the most phallic one is really fun. Those places are full of potential.

I started by coating the entire pipe in a thin layer of latex, leaving plenty of room around the bowl, the carburetor, and the tip of the stem. I was going to build the shape of the pipe with carefully sculpted pieces of toilet paper coated in latex, and they needed a base layer to stick on. I also wanted to get rid of the texture of circles pressed in to the glass.

For these early coats, I used a makeup sponge to apply the latex. Later, when I needed greater control over the texture and smoothness of the layers, I used my fingers.

You can see here that liquid latex has a natural sickly yellow tint to it. This cork contraption was made by Andrew so the dick pipe would have a place to dry without mussing up its coats.

The first layers of toilet paper were the most important, for creating the overall shape of the penis. I wanted the eventual piece to have a slight bow in it, and maybe the hint of a natural curve; I was going for a 'near-erect' look, not a 'rock hard' one, so I had to give it some built in flaccidity. I started by sculpting the head, and then spent a lot of time building up the testicles with bunched up toilet paper - going for realness, again, one ball is bigger than the other.

This process lasted through the duration of my visit to LA. Between each layer, the pipe had to dry. I didn't start adding color until I had the shape almost complete.

These photos don't really do justice to the work. While latex has a tacky, fleshy give to it, the use of the toilet paper between layers added enormously to the feel of the object; the ballsack, especially, has a pronounced squishy quality. My last additions were a couple veins and rippling skin flaps, especially on the bottom of the shaft where the testicles pull together and up, and where the glans meets the stem.

I started the painting process by coloring the veins, balls, and head darker blue and purple than the rest of the organ, giving these areas a nice pink blush as well. I then painted over the entirety with latex tinted with flesh colored paint. In its early stages, the veins were way too intense and the whole thing looked too purple to be healthy.

But it was certainly coming along. I did a little more painting, and layered clear latex over the top to give the skin a transparent quality and lock in the paint. Finally, I textured the last layer of latex around the balls to give them more grip and the implication of wrinkled skin and possibly hair. I finished this piece in the car in the airport parking lot, about to fly back to Chicago.

Color Separation Test

2011-02-05T20:05:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking about this project for a while. I find that often, after figuring something out either as an in-camera technique or as a printing technique, I get excited about figuring the same thing out, but in the opposite situation. Sometimes this is a natural progression, like when we moved in class from learning about matting in camera to matting using an optical printer. Other times it moves backwards, as in this instance.

I'd been thinking a lot about color replacement in black and white images, and color blending through multiple exposure - all on the optical printer - when I realized that I could very easily, and using the same filters, do something similar in-camera. It would work like this: make sure you have a tripod, close your f-stop by 1.5 stops for a triple exposure, place a color filter over the front of the lens, (and compensate for that as well,) shoot, rewind, place a second filter over the lens, shoot, rewind, third filter, shoot. If I wanted the colors to combine realistically on top of one another, I would have to use either red/green/blue or cyan/magenta/yellow combinations (I use both variants in the film above). Hypothetically, this would leave you with an image that looked completely normal wherever the subject matter was standing still, and ghostly and psychedelic wherever it wasn't. If there were objects in a different place during each exposure, they would appear multiple times in different colors.

That's pretty much what I did to make this test film. It's 100ft of 250D, shot on my Bolex Rex-5. Some things that didn't go as planned:

-First of all, and this is glaringly obvious if you watch the footage, the tripods I was using totally sucked. I was home for the holidays and borrowing tripods from very generous friends, but the tripods were meant for small digital cameras and couldn't handle my fat fatty Bolex. That's what causes the rampant misregistration. I was aware during the shooting process that the image probably wouldn't register very well, and I'm glad I did it anyway, because in certain shots (the chairs I like especially, and the goats) it works very nicely and actually adds some interesting compositional qualities - like the multiple arms of the chairs on their sides.

-Secondly, the filters I was shooting through were filthy. That's what causes the ghosty blurs you see moving lumpily around. I borrowed filters from the optical printing room before break (shhh, don't tell) and they are full of crap from grubby fingers and warped from the heat of the bulb.

-Thirdly, the lenses I was using were all old, some in more questionable condition than others, and all non-reflex. As of now, I'm educated as to what to do in such a situation, but at the time I still believed the myth that non-reflex lenses will work on a reflex camera as long as you compensate for the light loss by opening up 1/3 of a stop. So, I was compensating for this myth, the filters, and my triple exposure (which actually ended up working out nicely: in the end I had to open 1/2 a stop from the standard reading for each exposure) and the result was a roll with wildly varying exposure. I feel like I'm usually really good at proper exposures, so that kind of stings.

-Lastly, and this I didn't anticipate: 250D is a relatively low-grain stock, especially Vision 3. But my film turned out exceptionally grainy. I assume it's because every time I exposed, I was underexposing, and the slight grain increase this causes was multiplied by three. You can't really see it in the YouTube upload (sorry) but it's there.

In summary: I am planning on doing this again, but with a really, really sturdy tripod. I'm also planning on trying the same experiment with hand cranking (on a really, really sturdy tripod). The first exposure would be cranked forward, the second back, and the third forward again. Hypothetically, this would lead to really interesting light wavering - not only would the exposure waver with the speed of the crank, it would waver different colors depending on the speeds of the combined cranks - and if I were shooting cars, for example, one color of cars would be driving backwards. The frameline would get fucked up, too. How exciting!

16mm Films by The Man

2011-02-01T15:14:00.002-06:00

Welcome to my last semester! As is fitting in relation to the allotment of my time, the first blog post of spring 2011 is about EFS. The amount of work put into this poster far exceeds what went into the process of drawing (with two Rapidographs, a Pentel Pocket Brush, and ink washes!).

If you're around Chicago for these dates, and you're not dead of a heart attack from shoveling snow, come on by.

Motion Sickness (Redux)

2010-12-04T15:47:00.001-06:00

I drew this a while ago. Last fall (2009) in Offset class I made some posters. It's a three color print, blue, green, and black. I particularly like how the blue mis-registers with the green in the vomit. It adds dimension.

They're really nice, around 14x17 inches, and on thick, sturdy paper - 'desert sand,' it's called, and is the same paper these were printed on.

A Portrait of a Gentleman

2010-11-29T07:34:00.001-06:00

Andrew's little brother Justin wanted me to draw a fancy portrait of him with his dog, Lieutenant Gibson. I finished this in the late summer, and last Saturday we all went to Michael's and picked out a ridiculously fancy custom frame/matte combo. I hope Justin trains a light on it once he hangs it above a fireplace somewhere. Or surrounds it with candles. Something like that.

Dock Ellis

2010-11-27T12:41:00.002-06:00

These mini-comics tell the story of Dock Ellis, famous for many things, but mostly for pitching a no-hitter on LSD. He has been immortalized before. This was my attempt.

That wide panel is a splash page in the middle of the book. This comic was made last semester in Surabhi Ghosh's class. The assignment was to write a historical comic.

There is no title to this comic. The covers are made of Thai marbled paper and colored rice paper. There's a window cut out of both covers, creating a frame around the lines, "She said, 'What's wrong with you?' He said, 'I'm high as a Georgia pine.'" It's a nice effect because the color of the rice paper matches some of the swirls in the marbled paper, and the look like they blend together a little bit; the rice paper is also slightly transparent, so after you turn the first cover page, you can see the shadows of emergent words.

Dirty Birds

2010-11-10T19:51:00.004-06:00

So I'm co-president of the Experimental Film Society this year, as well as Xerox Candy Bar, a zine-publishing student group that I've mentioned before.

We're putting out our first issue for the year next week. This is my submission. I've placed it on the page opposite my friend Nick Jackson's first comic, which is breathtaking, and so I feel pretty lucky about that.

In other news, Pop Serial just made its deadline for funding! Thanks very much, everyone who helped pledge and support. There will be a reading for the coming release (haha coming release) of issue #2 on Friday, November 19th at 8:00 PM at 1622 South Allport St. Apt. #1, which is Sara Drake and Cassandra Troyan's apartment. Sara and I, as well as Ben Bertin and Ingrid Olson, will have artwork up at the reading. So stop by, if you're in town.

Merry Christmas Bike Accident

2010-11-03T08:01:00.001-05:00

It must have been a year since I made this run of high-class mini-zines. In my offset printing class, fall 2009, our first assignment was to make a one-color one-off project. I decided to use the opportunity to create a terrible Christmas card.

The last page shows me (this is a true story, about me!) sitting at a table with a bowl of lumpy something, stitches all over my face, eating through a large straw. One word bubble emanating from off-page asks, "is that straw big enough for you, sweetie?" while another, crossing tails with the first, says, "pass the turkey, please." At the bottom of the page is a large message: MERRY CHRISTMAS 2009.

As you can tell if you read the book, this is about the bike accident I had right before Christmas when I was eight years old. I skidded down a hill on my face and it really messed me up and totally ruined the holiday. There's still a chip of cement embedded in my nose. Gruesome closeup:

(Admittedly, slightly hyperbolic. Slightly.) I distributed this along with regular gifts to my friends and fellows last year. Because it was an offset project, I had to do a large run of prints, so I still have about 60ish copies left. I'm thinking of covering up the 2009 part and just giving them out as sick jokes, or selling them as sick jokes for other people to give out.

Pop Serial #2

2010-11-02T00:42:00.000-05:00

HEY GUYS, HEY! My friend Stephen Dierks, a poet and writer and small-press publisher, is trying to make the second issue of his art/literature print magazine, Pop Serial, happen. He has the ambitious and wonderful idea to publish Pop Serial #2 as a perfect bound edition, because, in his own words: "I like visually appealing art objects, and hopefully you do, too. Also, I want the magazine to be more durable and nicer to hold and turn its pages." Amen. Stephen has initiated a Kickstarter fund-raising project to make this happen. If you pledge $10 to the perfect-bound cause, you are guaranteed a copy of the magazine, and if you pledge more, then you may receive a variety of additional printed prizes.

Lots of wonderful artists and writers will be in this edition, including yours truly. Now is your chance to own the first officially printed and published copy of any of my work, ever. Jump on it. Also, help a brother out.

Birthday Cake

2010-10-31T22:30:00.002-05:00

Back in April (around the 26th, to be exact) Andrew had a birthday and I made him a birthday cake at his parent's house in Grand Rapids. Andrew likes dinosaurs.

It was supposed to be a surprise but then the time spent making the dinos became too long of a period to exile Andrew from the kitchen. They're built around tin foil armatures, covered in butter frosting mixed with food dye. Andrew's cousin Donny helped decide on the right prehistoric skin/scale tones.

The blood is made from that colored gel stuff you can buy at the cake-decorating section in any big grocery store. The nails and eyes and stripes are black gel stuff, applied with a toothpick. In some pictures you can really see the dynamic, violent action and exquisite pain in the face of the green dinosaur. You really feel the cake.

I got the candles at that fancy-ass pastry counter at Whole Foods. And the cut up strawberries are supposed to be exotic plants.

It is a chocolate beet cake with cream cheese frosting, and gluten-free for my crippled celiac self.

Monster Mash

2010-10-30T02:23:00.003-05:00

Another EFS screening poster. This time the figure's head is a cement splicer with teeth. Spooky.

Promotion

2010-10-18T00:04:00.004-05:00

What have I been doing? I hear maybe one, maybe no one ask. Well, here's the answer: I've been planning for bigger and better things! I've been working on finishing not one, not two, but three films! I've been reorganizing my house! I've been reading a lot of feminist literary theory. This has been the main activity. And also... I've become Co-President of the Experimental Film Society!
Ross, Randy and I have organized a tight schedule of screenings and meetings throughout the semester. Every alternate Monday we're screening an hour-long series of 16mm experimental films, and the Mondays between those we're meeting with fellow students for workshops on shooting, hand-processing, and other ways of manipulating the materiality of moving pictures. One of the tasks that I have volunteered for specifically is creating fliers and posters for each of these events. Observe:

I'm attempting, with the fliers for the workshops, to project the absolute friendliest face possible. I think the cheesy wording and pictures of kids having so much fun is really funny in an approachable way, which is constructive considering the reputation for purist elitism that haunts the tired argument between film and video.

With these posters, I'm exploring different styles purely for my own interest and pleasure, with the consistent thread of camera/projector-headed figures. I'm not actually a fan of the Are You Experienced poster - the design ended up muddled and confusing, with too much black and too much in general. While there are good things about it - I really like that font I made up in the lower right corner - on the whole I wished I had turned it out completely differently. The second poser was an effort towards lightness and legibility, without losing any of the interest.

Zoo Gradation Separations, Color & Cross Dissolves

2010-07-05T13:00:00.000-05:00

Remember this? The footage I shot at the zoo, which I then created several HiCon mattes of, isolating the blacks, whites, and greys? Well, after my experiments recreating the image from the original negative as well as different textural stand-ins, I decided to move on to recreating it with different colors filling in for each gradation. The images you see above are two of the very few successful frames resulting from this attempt. Again using the Oxberry OP, I photographed each gradation separation matte in conjunction with a mock orange mask and various color filters, transitioning between colors with cross-dissolves, three times onto 3383 color print stock. Had I not overexposed everything, (or, really, underexposed by overlighting) I would have ended up with an awesome version of the same footage where each restricted gradient of zoo footage gently oscillated between random colors in beautiful psychedelic tandem.

Before I attempted the above experiment, however, I did fuck around with some other techniques, namely bipacking the original negative with the gradation separation mattes and a fake orange mask and cross-dissolving color filters. Probably because of the extra film strip (the negative), this attempt was (kind of) properly exposed and turned out some beautiful results.

This video begins with a straight up positive print of the footage, which I included to see how my orange mask was working out. I underestimated the amount of orange I needed, which is why everything looks sepia-toned. This becomes irrelevant as soon as the multiple exposure (due to cross-dissolving) kicks in - as soon as the ducks come out you can see me switching around the color filters. I had not yet added the gradation separation mattes, and at this point it's still a straightforward, though colorful, positive print.

Of course, none of it looks straightforward at all, because the film is out of focus and the frames are jumping all over the place. This is because I made the amateur mistake of forgetting to close the gate in the camera, so the print stock was sliding all over the place. I remember being confused because the frame count kept getting out of whack on the camera and the projector, and now I know why, and what to do if it happens again. In these still frames you can see how I intended the cross-dissolve colors to combine, and how they look when they're separated by misregistration:

I also love it when all of a sudden there's a frame that found its place in the gate, and managed to be in focus:

Ultimately, in this instance I'm happy I forgot to close the gate, because it gets really cool when the zebra comes in. At this point in shooting the print I locked into one frame of the negative, and began combining it with its black/grey/white mattes. I exposed each separating matte with the still frame and plenty of cross-dissolving color filters, rewinding the film each time to shoot the next separation. In the end I had exposed the same strip of print stock about six times, accounting for each gradation and the cross-dissolves included in each of those runs. Of course, I didn't know my film was helter skelter inside the camera. Here are some nice stills of that crazy shit:

At the end of the video the zebra image fades out and you start to see just the shape of the misregistered frame. I was continuing with the filters and dissolves, but because I took out the negative and the mattes I ended up over(under) exposing everything and all there is the shape and a slight glow from the changing filters.

Technically this project pretty much resulted in disaster, but I still love some of these images and the things I learned from my mistakes are incredibly valuble. Next up: intentional psychedelia and sci-fi themes. I'm done with zoo footage.

Like My Mother

2010-05-30T14:04:00.001-05:00

One panel memoir comic.

It's Tearing Me Apart

2010-05-28T11:05:00.002-05:00

Another assignment from last semester: create two one-page comics, both telling the same story, one very quickly and one very slowly. This was my twofold interpretation of a colloquialism. It turned out really emo. Here's the second comic:

There was another row of panels on the bottom of this page when I originally drew it, but I never got around to inking them and then I lost the original (which sucks so hard- I think I left it in the copy machine). It showed the second girl (the head on the right, above) walking up and reinserting the first girl's eyeball into her socket. Without that piece of this brief narrative, the two comics don't relate quite as well to each other, but on its own I like the second comic better sans the final row. As a portfolio piece I'm very happy with the drawing styles and composition of both of these comics, but thematically I cringe when I look at them; as stated before, totally emo, and also that chick on the right looks like an anime character.

Zoo Gradation Separations, B&W

2010-05-24T12:00:00.002-05:00

Another step in my exploration of matting in and out of camera. I now am familiar with the school's optical printers, which is an ecstatic experience to rival that of being born again (not that I can speak personally to that, at all). Here's what I did to the footage above, of which there are three segments:

The first segment is just a positive print onto Hi-Con of my camera original, shot on Plus-X negative at the Lincoln Park Zoo, tape spliced together and timed for printing on the Oxberry Optical Printer. I hand processed the negative and positive and all other generations and variations of this film in my Lomo Tank.

The second segment gets into the point of this project, which was to create traveling mattes. What I did with all the footage was photograph it onto Hi-Con using various ND filters in order to achieve a very dark and a very light version of the image. I then rephotographed these films onto more Hi-Con in order to have the negative of these versions. I then created another strip of film by double exposing the positive, under-exposed matte and the negative, over-exposed matte (both hi-density, emulsion-wise, so that those grey areas of the camera original were blocked from being exposed) to achieve a matte which isolated the middle of the B&W spectrum. Then, I took three of these mattes - the grey isolation matte, the positive under-exposed matte, and the negative over-exposed matte - and rephotographed the negative three times, triple exposing another Hi-Con film strip so as to re-create the original image, but all jacked up by being separated into its varying gradations.

The third segment was created through the same process as the second, except instead of bi-packing the camera original with my three gradation mattes, I bi-packed a still frame of three different cloths of varying shades with each matte. So, the image is still there as well as the movement, but it is created entirely through three different still pictures whos shapes are morphing into different animals.

One Panel Comics

2010-05-20T11:37:00.001-05:00

One of the very first assignments in my most recent comics class was to create a ton of one panel comics. (We started here, then moved to strips, then one page, etc.)

We had to make ten different one-panels, using five characters and five settings that we also had to do multiple drawings of.

I came up with a little boy, a skinny girl, an old man, a mermaid, and a gross blob thing.

I left out a couple of my ten one-panels because they were really terrible, but these ones I thought were ok, and I was pretty amazed that I got them all done in one week.

Four Panel Comics

2010-05-17T13:31:00.002-05:00

This last semester, I took my last comics class at SAIC, Advanced Writing: Show and Tell Comics. It was a comics class in the writing department and was structured mainly around workshop time, talking to your classmates about each other's comics. The pace of this class is intense and a lot of work is required, which is why I took it: I wanted to get better at making comics faster. The four comics here were from one week when we had to make four four-panel strips. One had to be a monologue, one a conversation between one person and an inanimate object, one a conversation between two people, and one a conversation between three. Here they are, in order.

I like these guys at the end. I don't know what they are but when I drew them I was just thinking of them as 'angers'.

They Glistened Above All Else

2010-05-14T13:06:00.003-05:00

I finished this comic. Remember the SquishSacks? There is a beautiful cover as well, which I will post about later, with versions made on the Xerox machine as well as in Offset. I may tamper with this comic a bit more in the future - mostly I need to put some images on the television - but for now I'm exhausted.

Matte Box Experiments

2010-03-29T14:32:00.001-05:00

Before filming The Mystic last semester, I was experimenting a lot with the Bolex mattebox, cutting my own mattes with different flaps in them so I could expose different parts of the image at a time. I worked on creating composite images and multiply exposed images in camera. These trial runs helped me immensely in figuring out how to complete The Mystic.

This was my first experiment. I exposed one v-shaped section of the frame at a time, keeping the camera in roughly the same place (this is filmed from a concrete wall at the intersection of LSD and Monroe) and letting each shot run for about 30 seconds, a full wind on the Bolex. Those dark shapes at the top right of the frame are my fingers holding the flaps up, one at a time. I had to rewind the camera between each exposure, so this strip of film was exposed six times.

This was actually my last experiment that day, in the darkened cafeteria of the Columbus Building. I wanted the shapes to look like they were traveling across the frame, so I used the frame counter to rewind between each take back to the middle of the previous one.

This was my second try (and first success) at making triple exposed matted images. For this shoot I planned out a series on my stright-cut flap matte. I wanted each section of the frame to be exposed three times. I wrote out the sets so that the whole film would be run through the camera six times, with a different organization of flaps open each time.

Your Stripes

2010-03-01T14:12:00.001-06:00

Is this funny?
(For Xerox Candy Bar.)

The Mystic

2010-02-04T12:21:00.003-06:00

This is a film called, obviously, 'The Mystic'. It was my final project for my Image Making class last semester. I made it over one weekend on one 100' roll of 500T color negative film stock, completely in camera. Following is the long complicated explanation of my methods for those of you geeks actually interested:

The first run of the film through the camera was the most difficult one, since it included bi-packing in the bolex this srip of sequined film every six feet or so. The strip ended up (after splicing only the sequins together, cutting out the empty sewn parts) ten seconds long, and I had worked out that my film would be about two and a half minutes (giving me ample room on either side, since the entire roll is almost three minutes long), meaning I had to pack the sequins into the camera and run it for ten seconds exactly fifteen times. Because this process of loading and unloading the camera had to be done in the dark, I physically marked my film by punching three holes with a hole punch at the very start, and one small thumbtack prick between each run of sequins. I would set my two daylight spools up on the rewinds, in the dark, and then actually tape the sequined strip to the most recent punched hole in the film, roll it up on the spools, and then re-thread the camera being careful to place the taped frame in the gate. When ten seconds had been shot, I carefully wound the camera to the exact frame count, turned off the lights, opened the camera, used a thumbtack to punch through whichever frame was in the gate, unthreaded the camera, set up the spools on the rewind arms, untaped the sequined strip, and started again from the pin prick that I could feel for in the dark.
When I was shooting this bi-packed part I had a lens on the camera (10mm to be exact) and was shooting a blank white wall I had illuminated. I had a matte box attached to the front of the Bolex and on it, a circle matte I had made. The black letters in this film (the dialog, as it's supposed to be understood) were accomplished by cutting out letters from black paper and taping them over the front of my circle matte for specific frame counts.
After all of this I rewound the film again, removing the sequined strip, and synced up my hole punches, then wound the film to the specific frame counts (there was a lot of math and charts and frame counts drawn out before this process started) in which I wanted the glowing white letters. Here, I placed over my circle matte more mattes I had cut out, this time with the negative space being the letters. Then I shot all of the letters I wanted in white as well as the flashing sequences towards the end.
The next step involved rewinding again, recruiting my friend AJ (thanks AJ!), and setting up a simple little set in the shooting space. We put a cloth on the ground and made this crazy light-box thing with brown paper and some chairs and plywood we found lying around, so that there would be a circular light in roughly the same spot as the sequins would have been flashing, so that in the finished film it would look like a crystal ball or something that was illuminating AJ. I made another matte for the camera, this one being the opposite of the first circular matte, a solid circle suspended in front of the lens. You can see the tape holding it up in some of these shots. I also matted off the right half of the frame. Then I had AJ sit and look serious, wearing very little clothing, and wave his arms around. I shot the required number of frames (all counted out beforehand!) with some single framing to make it look choppy and weird.
Then I rewound the film again, removing the matte over the right half of the frame, to the places in the roll where I wanted the close ups. Here I had AJ sit with his forehead against the matte box and squint while I ran the camera at regular speeds and single framing.
Another rewind of the camera, and AJ and I deconstructed our light box and set it up again facing the opposite direction. I matted off the left half of the frame this time and shot AJ again looking serious, but without the arm waving. We cleaned up the space and AJ put his clothes on. Then I dropped the film off at the lab.

OK! If you read all that, thanks. I was in a state of suspended mild anxiety the whole time since a lot of this stuff I was trying for the first time - mostly, I hadn't done all of those things all at once before - and there were so many ways I could of fucked it up. The room in which I did all my bi-packing was not entirely light proof, which shows in the fogging of parts of the film, but I don't really mind that. There is only one place in which I seriously didn't get what I wanted, but you have to ask me or guess if you want to know what it is.

I conceived of and executed this film in about four days, and because of that I feel that it's not that conceptually interesting. Visually, I think, it's a resounding success and I am very excited about the future possibilities opened to me by this experiment. I'd like to use these techniques and more considered ideas to make similar films that actually mean something. I'll keep you posted.

I Have No Interest In Drawing Animals

2009-11-23T06:27:00.000-06:00

More from old sketchbook. I like my notes to myself in these, and especially the old lady sitting in front of the mystery tree. Her face is totally fucked up logically, but you get a ton of information from it.

That drawing animals thing is still true, by the way. Animals suck.

Sequin Sequence

2009-11-21T13:41:00.000-06:00

The first video is one of the first things I made this semester in my Image Making class. It's a strip of clear 16mm leader with about ten seconds of thread sewn through each frame; every two seconds (every 48 frames) I switched from just thread to thread and sequins, one sequin per frame. This effectively created (as you can see) one giant sequin flashing different colors for a couple seconds.

The second video is a rayogram onto color positive film stock. I took the unexposed film and held the strip of sequins against it, with a light table below. By turning on the light table for a second or two the film was exposed, light shining through the sequined film strip, and an image was created that roughly (really roughly) approximated the first embroidered strip of film. My group and I also played with a bunch of filters laid on the light table, which is where all those crazy colors come from.

Nautical Warning

2009-11-20T08:00:00.001-06:00

This is the cover of my current sketchbook. Her name was not invented by me, but by Andrew.

Potluck Planning

2009-11-19T06:13:00.001-06:00

And here is something more from that old sketchbook. I used to throw a lot of dinner parties. I love cooking and I love hosting and I think I'm pretty decent at both. In this instance, I was planning a meal for about ten people, including some vegetarians, and because, well, not really because of anything, I drew pictures to go with all my ingredient lists.

Here is another thing from the same sketchbook that I think is really funny. Like, really funny. I don't know what it means so don't ask, although I do vividly recall completing these steps on several occasions.

Are You Lonesome Tonight?

2009-09-29T14:21:00.001-05:00

I made this mini-comic last week for my Indie Comics class. I found a zine called "Elvis Goes to Parkes" about a bunch of non-Elvis fans dressing up for an Elvis convention. The zine is just a bunch of low-res bitmapped photos of Elvis impersonators. I really liked the range of characters and effort. It was an assignment to respond to whatever zine we picked out, but after I finished this (in its physical form it's a little twelve page booklet) I liked it so much I decided to keep working on it. I'll be printing copies in my offset printing class, and probably add a layer of inkwash tone, a la Alison Bechdel's newer stuff. (Many artists do this but I've been thinking a lot about Alison Bechdel recently, after re-reading Fun Home and talking to my mom about how she was a fan in the eighties. Alison also talked to my class yesterday over Skype, which was pretty cool and also weird, having a giant pixelated head on the wall, and she's coming to Chicago next weekend to be at Women and Children First's 30th anniversary party.) Anyway, I like this little comic because to me it's all about this kind of postmortem obsession and devotion, sad and funny and strange.

Electrolyte Enhanced Doritos

2009-09-29T13:46:00.000-05:00

More pages from that old sketchbook. That is a cutout from a Doritos bag in the middle. The brown coffee stain occurred later but I think it really helps with the overall what-is-this-shit aesthetic.

Brainstorm

2009-09-25T14:44:00.004-05:00

From an old sketchbook, circa 2007. I think I was in my Media Practices class (the prerequisite to all film and video classes). I remember my friend Nick leaning over my shoulder, chuckling and getting glared at by the teacher.

BUGEYE

2009-09-21T03:09:00.003-05:00

I made this on Saturday morning in under an hour. My free (stolen) internet has disappeared so this happened instead.

I don't know why Apple doesn't use these kinds of videos in their ads for Photobooth and iMovie and Garage Band. That's all I used, in conjunction with the camera and microphone built into my MacBook.

Abstract Etching

2009-09-08T08:00:00.001-05:00

Here's the third plate I made in my etching class, and the only abstract one. This is the best print of it. I made a couple runs of this print with different color inks and papers, and this one was my favorite. I filled the plate with black ink, wiped more than necessary off, and filled the rest with a sepia-ish ink. That's why the darker, deeper lines are black and the rest of the print is lighter.

Claw Kite

2009-09-04T15:36:00.000-05:00

I followed my first etching with another along similar lines. Instead of an arm umbrella, here we see a kite with claws, which is on its way to attack the little boy who's looking for it. I think this images is much more successful than its predecessor. The composition is considered and loops your eye around nicely, and the figures stand out against the plain background much clearer than the girl and her umbrella did.

The reason the little boy's pants and the kite are a different color is because I was working with a technique called chine collé, where a different type of paper is used to fill in an alternate texture or color for an area of the print. This paper is trimmed to the desired shape and size (pants and kite, in this instance), quickly placed on the inked plate, and then the larger paper placed on top of that so that when the whole thing is run through the press, the smaller paper is printed upon and affixed to the larger paper all at the same time.

Arm Umbrella

2009-09-01T14:18:00.002-05:00

Back in second semester, freshman year (oh, spring 2007! How I miss thee!) I took an etching class. I really liked etching but I wasn't very good at making it a top priority, so I didn't get as much etching done as I would have liked. I did, however, complete four nice pictures, the first of which you see here.

Etching is an arduous and lengthy process of coating zinc or copper plates in tar, scratching out the picture you want, dipping the plate in acid for a very specific number of seconds, wiping off the tar leaving an etched drawing, coating that scratched up plate with ink, wiping the ink off the surface of the plate while leaving the grooves full, and then running that plate along with a soaking wet piece of paper through a giant felt press. This process is repeated over and over and over, with multiple tar coats and acid baths, until you get the desired result.

I chose to make my first image one of a little girl holding an arm umbrella. The arm umbrella was an invention of mine shortly before school started that I became very attached to for about a year. Arm umbrellas pop up in my sketchbooks of the time, in a painting, and in this etching. I liked the visual confusion created by the object, and the kind of fairytale association, especially when being clutched by a little girl. In this picture, you're not sure if she's being protected, as an adult clutches a child, or is about to be taken away. A kind of Mary Poppins-by-force mode of transportation. This idea is made more sinister by the surroundings I added in a second acid bath. She and her umbrella are at some totally messed up face circus thing. Ultimately I don't actually like this image very much. I think her face could've been rendered a lot better, and the Tim Burton type imagery is ham-handed and meaningless. I'm reminded of countless abduction/circus/hallucinatory/nightmare/little girl stories about how freaky it is to be a kid. It's cliché.

The other way to mess with your etchings is play with the ink and the paper and how you apply them.

This last one I like the best, since the background fades out more (that was accomplished through a process involving spraypaint and acid, totally punk rock). While I'm not satisfied with this plate on the whole, I still really like the idea of an arm umbrella.

Vacation

2009-07-27T00:00:00.001-05:00

I will be going on vacation in the physical world and also the internet world starting today, and will not be back to my normal life until the end of August. Until then, feel free to peruse the archives and ponder what I may post next or visit another artist and their wonderful site, like Gillian, Garrett, Jesse, Ben, Ryan, Suzette, Ian, or Alyssa.

Chain Stitch Binding

2009-07-07T17:47:00.000-05:00

Aaaaand here's some more bookbinding!

This one's called the Chain Stitch, not to be confused with the Chain Stitch that you use to embroider. The more signatures the better when it comes to this artist's book, because then the stiching on the open spine becomes more apparent. I wish I had a better picture to show you guys.

This is what the open book, between two signatures, looks like:

Were you to open the book within a signature it would look the same as any old book, with the stitching running vertically down the middle. This book is filled with blank pages, as well as glassine sheets (thin transparent paper for archival purposes) and found pages from another old book, which you can see above. The spine has a nice loose but strong feel to it, and is very flexible (obviously).

Garden of the Gods

2009-07-03T18:09:00.002-05:00

This is another roll of Super 8 I shot on my camping trip in March. This area of southern Illinois is called the 'Garden of the Gods' for the strange rock formations.

Accordion Book

2009-06-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

Actually this is a double accordion. An accordion book is one sheet of paper, encased by two book board covers, folded like an accordion between. For this little experimental book, I took two folded accordions, slit each page vertically to its midpoint, and then scissored them together to create this diamond effect. The book can be opened from both sides, and has the additional awesome factor of an inside space, kind of hidden pages. The covers wrap around and clasp at either end to make a nice package.

Sorry updates have been kind of slow and all book-related recently. I usually try to mix up the mediums that I write about for interest's sake. Right now I'm working on a backlog of photos I took last semester, since the school year ended in May. I've been pretty busy with summer fun and trying to find a real job while scraping by on part-time or one-off gigs. I still have a comic in the works, as well as a couple things I haven't scanned or photographed yet (including - yes - more books!) And just this weekend another project of mine came into fruition. I had a series of works about Llama Man installed at the IASD Dream Art Exhibition, including Llama Man himself (the costume posed on a freestanding armature I created for the exhibit). My film, For My Psychopomp, was installed as a loop on an old TV I got at a thrift store. I got a lot of really great feedback from a community I was incredibly happy to show my artwork to. People were really interested in the dream and how I've worked with it over the years, as well as in awe of Llama Man's towering and terrifying figure. Sunday night was the reception, and I won first prize in the Nancy Richter Brzeski Dream Art Awards! Now I have some money to buy more film to make more creepy movies. Yes! I am so excited and honored to have been recieved in such a wonderful way, and win such a great prize. Thanks IASD!

Coptic Binding

2009-06-16T17:46:00.001-05:00

More from last semester's artists books class. This is called coptic binding, and uses multiple signatures (groups of pages). I triple wrapped the thread each time I came to the head or tail of the spine to create the thicker number of lines there.

I also made a cover for this book, out of cardstock and bookcloth, and colored paper for the inside cover.

Pamphlet Stitch

2009-06-12T08:53:00.000-05:00

Here are two of the books I made at the beginning of last semester in my bookmaking class, while we were learning the pamphlet stitch. The pamphlet stitch is one of the simplest bookmaking techniques, and I've used it before in both of these.

You can see in this second one that I've also included a tab on the back cover that folds over the front cover to clasp shut the book. Very cute and simple. These books were made out of recycled and found paper.

Squishsacks

2009-06-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

These are sketchbook pages wherein I've been working on the design for the characters who inhabit my newest comic. They're called 'squishsacks', and they travel in a jellyship. They're bloblike aliens composed mainly of fluid containing their and their species' genetic information. They have three sacks inside of their main body sack which contain only their own genetic information, and they can come together like soap bubbles to communicate through a fluid exchange. They can also meld into the jellyship, a completely organic spaceship shaped like a jellyfish doughnut, which propels through space by manipulation of its many tenticles.

Frame Faces

2009-06-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

Recent doodles.

Llama Man: Documentation

2009-06-02T17:21:00.007-05:00

Here are some photos documenting the making of my final film for the semester. Most of them are from the super 8 shoot, which happened in early March in the Chicago Forest Preserve and on Montrose Beach.

Mark and AJ helped me out with this part, AJ working the camera and Mark helping me get my costume on and off and move stuff around.

At first we were having a really difficult time as it had rained the previous day, so these big fields we were in were very muddy and my stilts got caught in the ground. This is a disaster for anyone who knows how to stiltwalk; because you have no ankles or toes on the bottom of your 'feet', you must keep in constant motion to stay balanced, and that is impossible if your legs are glued to the ground.

We finally had to find places for me to walk on concrete drains or paths, with a natural background to make it appear as though Llama Man were walking on the grass. This is why, in the film, you'll see that his feet are cut off in several shots.

AJ did really well considering he didn't know that much about film or shooting film. We'd frame shots together and then I would yell at him through my mask how many seconds I wanted him to roll. The time was around lunch, and there were lots of working men on their breaks, eating in parked cars and watching us.

Llama Man must have looked really bizarre to them, especially since this girl kept emerging from behind the mask. I would wave at them in costume as often as possible, and usually they were good sports about it and waved back. A couple cops stopped to ask what we were doing, if we were shooting a horror film. I said yes because I didn't really want to launch into the whole explaination.

The shoot for the 16mm stuff was way different and much harder. Most of the time was spent constructing the set.

My crew could not have been a better group of people. They were all very patient and supportive and I owe them eternally for it. Here's Zaven, my camera man, on the dolly at probably around three in the morning:

Thanks guys!

For My Psychopomp

2009-05-29T08:00:00.002-05:00

There is sound in this clip, and it's kind of quiet; I suggest you turn up the volume on your computer and also click the 'high quality' (HQ) button on the viewer.

Here it is, my final film for the semester and what I've been working on like a demon for the past three months. It's screening tonight for the first time. The word psychopomp is one that my mother brought to my knowledge, during a discussion of my film. I was telling her how I wanted to make a movie not only about my recurring childhood nightmare (you know, llama man) but how my relationship with that narrative and the character who inhabits it has changed. "He's turned into something like a muse," I told her, "he's like a conductor between my unconscious, which is where I think a lot of my creativity comes from, and my waking life, bringing me ideas."

Psychopomp literally means 'soul conductor' and refers to those people or things that act as escorts to the afterlife. In Jungian terminology, it means the mediator between conscious and unconscious minds. I dedicated this film to Llama Man, who I've decided is my personal psychopomp in the Jungian sense, and the dedication doubles as a title. (This is also why he shows up in the first pages of Night City, as a welcome committee.)

For My Psychopomp was shot on 16mm and Super 8 Tri-X film stock. All the stuff outside is Super 8.

Room Tone

2009-05-25T13:33:00.004-05:00

I drew this poster last weekend in preparation for my upcoming screening at The Nightingale, Room Tone. I'll be showing two films: For My Psychopomp, a ten minute exploration into the origins and character of Llama Man, and an edited version of House Fuck, which will actually be projecting on real film. (Gasp!)

If you're in Chicago or visiting Chicago this Friday, please please come, it will be a great show! A lot of us helped each other make our movies, too. All the info is on the flier.

The Crocodile

2009-05-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

This is a chalkboard I was hired to draw and write on in January of this year. It's eight feet across, four feet high, and on the ceiling above the bar. It took me about twenty hours to complete fully, stretched across several weeks of precarious balancing on chairs on top of chairs on top of bar tables and plywood. You can see it if you live in the Chicagoland area by visiting Wicker Park.

Zine Purchase

2009-05-19T16:56:00.000-05:00

One of our first assignments in my comics class last semester was to go to the local independent comics store, Quimby's, and purchase a zine that someone had put out. We then had to respond in a two page comic in our sketchbook. This is what I drew:

The drawings get lazy towards the second page, but that picture up top is a sketch of the actual zine, which was full of weird, tiny little exquisite corpse drawings that I half-heartedly tried to imitate.

Spring Break

2009-05-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

This is an edit I made of three rolls of Super 8 Ektachrome footage from my spring break camping trip last March. It's the first film I edited with tape splices, on janky plastic super 8 rewind arms in a small dark room. I like it.

Tough Times

2009-05-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

Assignment: A one page comic with movement in every panel. From earlier this semester.

Stationary: Owl Print

2009-05-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

A set of ten two-color prints on scrap paper (the scraps from the paper I used to make this) I turned into simple stationary earlier this semester. The print is a smaller scan and copy of the stencil screenprint I made last year.

I started making the envelopes at Pantheacon this year, absentmindedly folding them in different angles until I reached a design I liked. It was important to me that you be able to see the owl when the envelope is opened, like how you can see the owl before opening the card. I also wanted to keep with the kind of strange folds that didn't meet each other that the card had going on.

To seal the sides of the envelope and make it functional, I decided not to glue or tape it, and sewed it instead. The paper is very soft and tactile, and it felt appropriate. Also, as you all know, I like nothing more than stitching things that aren't supposed to be stitched.

Triptych Triptych

2009-05-05T11:02:00.004-05:00

Three series of three photographs. Three locations important to me, in California. These photographs were taken in February of this year.

The Doubletree Hotel, in San Jose, where Pantheacon is currently held. I like to hang out in the bathrooms and think about the women who come and crimp the tissues every day. That's my mother's flask sitting on the entertainment center, overpowered by the reflection of the lamp in the gloss on the particleboard; I like to think about who polishes those surfaces, and the surface of the faucet. I'm aware that the job is most likely a boring/grueling one, but when I imagine myself performing these tasks, it is in a meditative state. This is the state in which I took these pictures, and the state in which they ought to be viewed.

Ragle Park, in Sebastopol, where I spent many days between the ages of one and sixteen, and which I visit every time I'm in town. It is a beautiful, expansive park, with creeks and hills and little paths and little gardens, tadpoles in the summer and mud pits in the winter, and lots of trees to climb. This spot in the park, specifically, is special to me. It's one of those places that feels completely magical and private. It is always lit ecstatically. The branches of these trees defy logic, constantly flexing to extend, heavy, further away from the trunk and parallel to the ground. These photographs look unreal, and for that reason I find them more factual. Look at the blue here, and the gloss.

In-N-Out Burger. There's not much to say that hasn't already been said about how amazing it is. I encounter a lot of people in Chicago who are jealous of my California heritage soley based on the fact that I get to eat In-N-Out every time I visit. I really love these photographs because of how eerie they look. The restaraunt looks like a demon hellhole with grey zombie employees, somehow still spotless while infested with decay. All of which just makes me love In-N-Out more. Quality you can taste.

Night City (Part 3)

2009-05-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

A composite dream narrative, compiled from various nighttime adventures, both conscious and unconscious. We had the option to either write a ten page paper or create a six page comic in response to a graphic novel, and I picked one of my all time favorites, Daniel Clowes' Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. There was no penciling in the creation of this comic. Everything drawn straight up with a pen, yeah.

part 1
part 2

Night City (Part 2)

2009-04-28T08:00:00.002-05:00

part 1
part 3

Night City (Part 1)

2009-04-24T11:42:00.005-05:00

part 2
part 3

Stationary: Long Day

2009-04-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

This was the first set of stationary I ever made to sell at Pantheacon, about a year and a half ago. I cut a linoleum print of a witch with a cigarette and a martini, made 20 prints, put together 20 different cards with scraps of found patterened paper, and then designed 20 envelopes for them.

You can see here how the envelope opens; it's pretty cool, you don't need tape or anything. The five pictured at the top are all of these I have left.

Dramatic Enactment

2009-04-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

The first film I ever shot, in the fall of 2007, in my Media Practices class. We were supposed to be inspired (like all beginning film students) by the French New Wave, which is where all the cigarette smoking came from. My classmates on this project were Nick, Melissa, and Mark. This is probably the most straightforward narrative film I'll ever shoot. All editing is in camera.

Motion Sickness

2009-04-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Um, I think this is the best drawing I've ever done. And will ever do. T-shirts, anyone?

Stationary: Fat Man

2009-04-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

I make a lot of cards and envelopes and things out of recycled materials. One of my favorite materials is old calenders, because they're big, glossy prints on stiff paper and make the most wonderful envelopes.

The cards to match these envelopes are collaged from images I found in this book from the 70's, apparently trying to illustrate the role of the perfect husband. It was a small gag-feminist paperback, and while confusing and potentially offensive, I really loved the photographs. I've been selling this set of stationary at school art fairs and Pantheacon.

Scarf

2009-04-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

I finished this scarf last fall. It took me a year and a half to complete, in short episodes while riding the bus. It's just pearl and knit, but I would switch the direction every now and then to create this paneled look. It's the first thing I've ever knitted that wasn't for a class.

Lamplight

2009-04-03T08:00:00.002-05:00

Assignment (which you can see written in the margins here): Person 1 trips Person 2. Person 1 laughs as Person 2 tries not to knock over a lamp. In my version, the lamp is also a character. This comic made me realize how attracted I am to drawing faces wracked with anxiety.

Mission Accomplished

2009-03-31T08:00:00.000-05:00

Assignment (which you can see written in the margins here): draw a ball breaking though a kitchen window and a newspaper, then being caught by a dog. I thought that was boring, so I added the the things you see here. The background of suburbs is a printout I cut and pasted over and around the drawing in my sketchbook.

Blue Moon

2009-03-27T08:00:00.002-05:00

Below are the sketches for the finished comic above. The assignment: draw a comic, at least six panels, about a character who drastically changes emotions in each frame. This shift in attitude must be shown in the character's face, their body language, their words and the way the text is written, and the background.

The reason for all nudity in the sketches is 'underdrawing'; essentially, it's a lot easier to draw clothes on someone when you know how their butt looks. Similarly, it's a lot easier to draw a butt if you draw the pelvic bone, muscles, tendons and fat first.

Elephant Tattoo

2009-03-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

On the plane back from California last month, I met two very nice couples. One of the women sat next to me, and noticed that I was drawing this comic. She asked, "do you ever draw animals?" And I said, "it depends on the animal," and she replied, "elephants" and I answered, "yes, they used to be my favorite animal."

It turned out that her sister-in-law, the woman sitting in the seat in front of me, was looking for a rendering of five elephants holding trunks to tails in a circle for a tattoo she wanted. The couples didn't know any artists, apparently, so they were willing to offer the job to a strange girl on a plane. I showed the women some of my comics to prove to them that I can actually draw, although they didn't seem too worried, and they paid me in advance. I emailed these two images off last week.

Visitors

2009-03-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

This comic is really stupid. I drew it last semester.

Two Part Philosopher

2009-03-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

Dream comic from a dream I had while in San Francisco, sick with fever. Colored pencils!

Bonus Cat Friday

2009-03-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

I know I said I wouldn't begin updating until Tuesday, but here are some photos I took on my grandfather's old camera. These two cats belong to Deborah. The grey one is named Saturn and the fluffy one is Tickles. I took the pictures of Tickles this February, and the photos of Saturn come from a roll I developed, having forgotten what it was, from 2004.

Hiatus

2009-03-11T21:56:00.003-05:00

As you may have noticed, I have been absent and unreliable in regards to updates recently. Once a pinnacle of responsibility, I have now regressed into a vegetative state of almost complete neglect. I regret this! You must know, dear reader, that I care only and utmost for your happiness, and, since you are here, you must receive some pleasure from the warm sensation of viewing a new entry - a pleasure which I have been denying you.
I can only offer midterms and ridiculously high stress levels (and ridiculously low sleep levels) as an excuse. Additionally, a pace which was initially created in effort to catalog a lot of my older work, that being thrice weekly, has pretty much caught up to me, and it is overwhelming to capture new images of new work all the time.
Because of this I am announcing a new update schedule: Two times a week, on Tuesday and Friday, with attempts to make those updates happen in the morning. I will begin this schedule next Tuesday, the 17th, after my spring break, during which I will be in the freezing cold woods of southern Illinois, in a tent, probably drinking to stay warm. For now, you can see a Sherrif Cat cartoon from last semester, posted above. Sherrif Cat got a new haircut, and that haircut involved steps. Sweet!

Here is a video I recorded in bad judgement last Saturday, the seventh, to prove how tired I have been. I love you guys!

Sketches, Excercise

2009-02-18T22:42:00.002-06:00

I hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day, Lupercalia, and President's Day!

Here is a page from my new sketchbook, with a comic at the bottom from my new class. The assignment was to draw: a person running, a car speeding, a ball dropping, someone staggering, and a newspaper blowing. I turned it into something of a narrative, I suppose, with the pun at the end being that the newspaper is blowing the canon in hopes of creating destruction worthy of headlines.

The sketches at the top are for a character named Howard M. Burgers, from another mini-comic I'm working on.