Arm Umbrella

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent doodles.

Llama Man: Documentation

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!