Show visitors

The show is down but while it was up some people came to visit.






That is Ginger, two-year old dynamo. Her sister Violet was upset she wasn't in the show so she made a drawing:



and put it up herself:



Ginger did too:






My parents came:






They liked the Café Royal wall.



Ginger liked Opuntia Books. The girls remember André Lemos as "Drawing-Man," which is pretty much the greatest compliment ever.



Oh show... I miss you.



Ginger! Where are you going!?!

PS:



Outside some dudes were selling bread.

Next: Unhanging; a cat, a wizard and a Shiner.

more Lemos Victory!

André has two MORE shows opening this coming weekend:

"Tex not Mex" at Meme Gallery in Denton Texas (curated by Nevada Hill).

&

 

"Pterodactyl In a Jar" at Espaço JS em Nisa, Portugal (I think this might be a good link).

VICTORY! Vitória !

Einspruch = VICTORY!

Franklin's great show "The Talk That Walked" has a reception tonight in Miami:

For this exhibition, artist Franklin Einspruch has created a series of images, drawn in ink on paper, that together create a set of narratives relating to specific excerpts of great poetry. He works in webcomics, in a manner that finds inspiration in the poet-painter tradition of Japan and China, but taking cues from contemporary American life. These sequential images take the form of multi-directional narratives tying lines of poetry to ordinary human stories, eliciting new interpretations of the verses. Drawing excerpts from diverse sources--ancient, contemporary, and in between--the works constitute an installation-scale collection of short stories, told with both pictures and words, that require the movement of the viewer to read. An accompanying website documents the installation and allows viewers off-site to go through the exhibition virtually, view source texts, and see background information behind the installation.

The website he made for the show is grand, as is the work:

On his also grand Journal he recently wrote a bit about and posted some images of Leaf and Signal:

Another image - I recently delivered the piece Newbury Street to the collectors who bought it out of the show:

 

I added the paper strip. And you can see the edges of a little book Franklan made of the piece in the LaS book.  More on that later once it's offically released.

To finish this all-Franklin post I want to mention what a pleasure it was having him visit and stay with my family for a few days.  He's a courteous and thoughtful guest and game for most anything my crazy family could come up with. He bought me a book on Zen. He met with some of our pals. He stayed up late talking with me. He played with the kids:

(he's up in the fort with Ginger) and he painted with us:

and he's welcome back anytime.

LaS artists are BUSY with VICTORIES

 

André had a show open last week - see images here. VICTORY!

 

Franklin has an incredible show opening in Miami - see here.  VICTORY!

 Via the Little Paper Planes blog, Cafe Royal is having a pop-up library show soon - see here.  And scroll down the LPP blog to see all that they're up to. MANY VICTORIES!

Plus Geof keeps writing and making and Oliver gets ready for a show he's curating - with Craig and me in it.  VICTORY VICTORY VICTORY!

show down, book up

 

The show is now down and all the work is safe and snug.  Still, sad. 

But to commemorate all the victories and show how grateful I am to everyone involved here's a free little downloadable DIY book I drew based on work in the show. Go get it here.

Last day is today

Sad but true. The show ends at the end of the day today so go see it!

Lemos Show - "Bayonets Replacing Toothpicks" in Porto, Portugal

 

André has a solo show opening this Saturday Oct. 30 at Dama Aflita in Porto, Portugal.  BAYONETS REPLACING TOOTHPICKS!  This show opens the night LaS goes down and I wish I could go see it.  The victories continue!

Review of "Leaf and Signal" in C-Ville

 

I met with Andrew Cedermark last week and had a great conversation with him about the show. This week he wrote a bit about it in his Feedback column in C-ville, another local weekly magazine:

About-face

Across town this month at The Bridge/PAI, “Leaf and Signal” is a different kind of sea of images. Unlike “Half Life” there is no riptide waiting to pull you under. It is yours to swim in, this placid bay of gorgeous of little mysteries.

Local artist Warren Craghead curated this show, which draws from the (apparently robust) world of D.I.Y. publishing, many of whose denizens are in Europe. “The work is close to their life, but not autobiographical in a dramatic way,” says Craghead, who himself contributes to these handmade, mostly Internet-distributed pamphlets.

One highlight: Oliver East, a Manchester-based artist who makes beautiful booklets about his travels along train tracks. His and many other tiny surprises are wheatpasted to the walls of The Bridge/PAI through the end of the month.

The main bit in his column is about Will May's great show up at PVCC here in Charlottesville - the same Will May who helped with hanging LaS. Victories!

Hang hanged hung pt 3

Friday Oct. 1 - the day of the opening. After a bit of dayjob work, I headed to Lowe's to get shelves, then to the gallery. For the rest of the morning I hung more Franklin work, finished some Opuntia wheatpasting and just ran around like a crazy person. Greg was calm, that was good.



I decided to make the gallery map, pricelist and didactic all hand-drawn, so I drew them.



It was fun drawing the letters of the words for the work and making a little map of where everything was. It also showed me how much stuff we had crammed into the space - there are a lot of names on the list.



After some cleaning (and heaving heavy bags of wet clay into a trailer) I headed home where I started putting books together. After about 50 I saw Franklin pull up outside, fresh from a plane/car ride from Boston. Franklin and I had only communicated online until then, but we fell in right away and became comrades in this adventure. An hour or so before the opening we headed over.



Some last minute book shuffling and some fun extra wheatpasting (thats Franklin pasting up some Oliver East with Franklin's own work in the background) and then we were ready. The opening started as we were still talking and pasting which was a great thing to start out with - working artists making things and talking big.



The opening itself was great - many many people, too many to list.






My wife and kids came over (two-year-old Ginger took her shoes off and ran in circles and five-year-old Violet helped us wheatpaste) along with many pals and friends. Franklin waded in to the crowd, meeting with a talking to everyone. Thanks to the scholar there who declared one of Franklin's pieces, "The best poem I've ever read," and thanks to the many folks who bought things big and small. People seemed to really enjoy the walls all covered with drawing and all the books to look through.


My favorite part was when I got to talk (the image above is my attempt to take a picture of Franklin while he was talking). I didn't like the spotlight and all the nervousness but I did like doing my bit to evangelize about bookmaking and DIY art publishing. Several people, some really good artists, came up to me with plans forming for books. That was the best. I want to drown in books of good images and words.



After the place finally cleared out Franklin, Greg and I went to Mas for some tapas and beer (and some strange conversation with a man named Darryl). We talked, gave food to nearby people and basked in glory.



Thanks to all the artists, Greg, Zach and all the The Bridge, all who came to the opening, to the volunteers who worked so hard during the opening, to my wife for her help and to Franklin for coming all the way down here. I've got more to write about the whole show, but when I think about the opening I think about how grateful I am for all the people involved, directly and indirectly. Thank you.

Look around

A panorama of the main room of the show.

Hang hanged hung pt 2

I went over to the gallery Wednesday the 29th and finished a lot of the hanging of the original work. I also did a lot of finishing on the book and got that to the printer, though the covers were still being done. Things were moving but still scary...



When I went in Thursday to hang stuff I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I had gotten the covers printed earlier that day so I knew that was going well (more on the book later) but I was getting a little scared about all the wheatpasting I had to do. I had never done it on this scale and I didn't have time to mess up. Luckily the rain was all gone...



And luckily I had a helper. The great photographer and artist Will May showed up, unasked, to help for a few hours. He and I figured out the glue-to-water ratio and started glueing, first with Geof Huth's work.



I quickly learned a few things:
1.The glue shouldn't be too runny.
2.You can just coat the back of the paper and then slap it on a cover the top and it will hold without too many wrinkles.
3. Planning composition too much doesn't work well.



So I started using a more thick glue mix and a more freestyle composing technique. Once Will had to leave we were through Huth and on to Café Royal. I'll pause here to, once again, thank Will for his great help both swinging a glue-brush and talking to me about everything. He has a really great show up here in Cville right now - I'll post images soon.




After Will left I kept glueing through Café Royal and then Craig Atkinson. It was a little crazy - I had pages spread out all over and I just grabbed ones I liked and slapped them up. I started with a grid of sorts but that broke down and there were overlaps and weird joints. I deliberately put images near the ground that I thought my kids would like!

Somewhere in the middle of the melee I walked over to Belmont BBQ and got some food. Great BBQ and fries, comfort food. Greasy victory.




Soon I was through Craig and on to André Lemos and Opuntia Books. André's work was all up and rather than take it down I covered it all with garbage bags and kept heaving glue. I tried to keep Opuntia's artists work together more, but it still got all mixed up.



I put some posters at either end of their section and started getting clever with composition, putting some heads at the top and some weird animal/people at the bottom. Mostly I tried to mix up color and BW and make it look interesting and alive.




When I finally passed out Thursday I could see the end - way off, but there. More to hang, a little more to paste, a book to assemble and a thousand other small things to attend to, but the end was in sight.

Next: Books, shelves and a Franklin. Oh, and victory.

Hang hanged hung pt 1.5

Here's the beautiful drip sound from when we were hanging the show:

drips in the gallery by craghead

Hang hanged hung pt 1

It's lame that it's taken so long for me to write about the hanging and opening of the show, so here's a start...




The show before us was still leaving Monday, but I was able to look around and figure out where to put stuff. There was some variation in what I wanted from artists and what they were able to send, so I had to make some switches in placement from my original plan.



The biggest change was that instead of tacking up all the books pages, we decided to just wheatpaste glue them up. It was kind of a crazy moment whern Greg and I realized that wheatpasting wasn't going to be just the easiest way to hang the million pages - it was going to be the AWESOMEST way to do it, evoking street art and making an inviting lovely surface to look at and contrast with the original work hanging up.

Oh, and it was raining like CRAZY and the roof was leaking. Drips! I recorded them and I'll post that sound soon.


So Monday and Tuesday nights were spent figuring out where to hang stuff and then starting to put stuff up. I had tape-tabbed all the art sent to me earlier, so I had to do some math to even things out and started putting it up. First Craig, then Oliver, then André, then some of Franklin's. It was a little weird because I had to guess where the wheatpasting was going to go, but I drew and drew and figured it out, I hoped. When I went to bed Tuesday night I really wasn't sure how this thing was going to turn out...



Next, wheatpaste, a helper and bar-b-q.