I am drawing for the bread poster. After some meandering speculation with making it dense with text like a 1700s broadside newspaper, I finally picked up the pencil and started doodling out the steps… and it turns out that it’s going to be a 7.5-inch-wide, 35-inch-tall, strip of graphic bread-making narration. In a totally different visual and narrative style from the zine. (These things are rarely within my control.) The format shift has something to do with the idea of “the difference between reading and seeing”, which comes from a quote from Chris Ware (re. differences between comics, paintings, and books) which I wrote down six+ years ago, in a sketchbook that I cannot put my hands on at the moment…

… nor can I articulate my version of this idea very well at this hour of the morning/night! However, you should all clear a 36″ high strip on your walls in your kitchens, somewhere where you can see it from your counter area…

detail:

As I was drawing these images I realized that this poster will owe a debt to my friend Lauren O’Connor’s artwork. I’m not sure this picture does her awesome ink drawings justice, but here is a shout out anyways! This is from the installation she made in the Dirt Palace front window in 2005.

other stuff that happened recently: worked on re-starting kitchen thinking at Forbes; my brother helped me make a good plan for the next two months; found myself glued to the most recent presidential debate; helped set up and clean up at New Urban Arts, since the program year is starting (I’m not going to be a mentor there this year, but will be helping out with the silkscreen studio); got paperwork and logistics done (more or less on time!) for shows I’m gonna be in; finally bought new sneakers (after accepting the fact that wearing super-busted sneakers for the past six months is probably what is making my back hurt a lot recently); and…. cleaned off my desk: all of it this time, not just the minimum corner! There is more work to do on room/work area functionality, but the clear desk is a real start. My housemate helped me make this animated gif!!!!!!!!! to promote my work on the Craftland website. I got two great letters in the mail today from internet/faraway friends… thank you! watch your mailboxes…

Reading/looking:

• The Case Against ‘Modern Architecture’ — an essay by Lewis Mumford
• La luna é i faló (”the moon and the bonfires”) — by Cesare Pavese, reading in Italian. I started it a long time ago and got about 1/5 of the way through. Recently I went back and read it from the beginning, understanding about 90% of the vocabulary, but sailing through and making good guesses along the way. The end was stark and sad, it surprised me…
• Heroes and Ghosts — prints by Kuniyoshi (1800s)
• Red Mars — by Kim Stanley Robinson (science fiction about group dynamics, landscape, and buildings. yessss)
• Elementary Economics — by Thomas Carver and Maude Carmichael, 1938 (my housemate’s grandfather’s high school textbook: “There was never a time when men needed to think so seriously about the problems of national welfare as at the present.” !!!)
• the ULINE catalog (shipping and warehouse supplies)

okay, that last entry in the list probably means it’s time for bed.