Today, having completely lost its ertia, is a good day to do random website updates and to put up pictures of what I’ve been re-printing recently. . .

These guys are originally from 2001.

… and:::

The original drawing for these simple prints was made in 2006, but I have re-printed them in various versions a couple of times in the intervening years. Here are the color-versions I have right now.

Re-printing stuff is always weird, because it makes me feel three strange things: 1) that I am subject to the whims of a buying public (which might be true, but isn’t, for the most part) 2) that I did the best work I’ll ever do X number of years ago (if the thing I am re-printing is really good, like the Mill City Gallery poster), and 3) that I’m standing still or regressing in time: because I get very physically pulled back into the emotions, desires, outlook, haircut, etc. that I had when I was first working on that print.

Occasionally, as with the Mill City poster, it makes me feel somewhat accomplished, since I have a much better command of the technology than I did in 2001; for instance, I can actually align the different layers more or less as I intend them to be aligned (as opposed to in 2001 where every print was a struggle and very likely a failure…).

So the cut on my finger turned out to be not that bad, but a couple of days later I had to stop working hard, stop ignoring my body’s signals of pain, and finally admit that I was actually seriously sick: a bladder/kidney infection (?! I know), plus some throat thing that made my voice disappear… Then the next day the whole region got covered with snow, in a storm that’s now lasted three days, off and on. Ordinarily I would be outside running around in the snow, but I don’t want to give my poor sore kidneys any more hassle than they already have to deal with…

So I stayed inside, and pushed my departure towards Philadelphia for the holidays back a day. I’m recovering, but still low-energy from being sick and from not going outside for three days, plus just the inertia of not really being able to do anything… then not doing anything… stuck in time & in space. Thus — re-prints.

Reading:

• The City in History, 1961, Lewis Mumford (good, but slow going, and so far I’ve had to ingest many many grains of salt as L.M. has been blatantly making all kinds of sweepingly gendered statements, based on little to no evidence, about the symbolic and actual roles played by women in the origins of the ‘primitive’ city…)
• The Baffler #7, 1995, edited by Thomas Frank et al. (classic stuff that shaped my mindset when I first read it in 1998 or so…)
• The Architecture of Japan, 1955, Arthur Drexler (also kind of slow going)
• Hope, Human and Wild, 1996(?), Bill McKibben (Curitiba: a city made by architects)
• “Reversals of Fortune in the Tea Industry” from the Upton Tea Imports catalog (aw yeah!!!)
• whatever else I can get my hands on to keep from going totally stir crazy.