A trip with Scøtt in the van to a creepily perfect still-almost-brand-new shopping plaza in Smithfield RI, a visit to the giant chain home improvement store, twenty-three dollars spent, some cutting with the knife, and a little time with the white paint =

new homasote boards for pinning stuff up on!

I have been making notes on small cards and laying them out to think about how things are related. This probably traces back somehow to witnessing some of my friend James McShane’s comic-making practice, in which he works on narrative sequences the same way, as a deck of card/pages that can be ordered & re-ordered.

Laid out on my desk, whatever arrangement the cards are in is bound to get destroyed in less than a day (since I’m also using the computer, reading & taking notes on books, trying to do my taxes, organizing stuff I pull out of my backpack when I come home, etc, all on the same desk). The pinboard solves that problem. Also it lets me look at many things at once, keep many ideas up in front of my eyes, and thus in front of my ever-distractable mind.

Having more pinboards also makes my room into even more of an art-making nest. It’s pretty tiny (about 8 feet by 10 feet), with flatfile storage, bed, clothes, giant 4 foot by 4 foot drawing desk, many shelves, cat litterbox, etc. fitted in on multiple levels. The pin-up boards definitely are kind of tipping the scales towards “work” and away from “other life”. wait, is there such a thing as “other life”?

More cards, with images instead of text, are probably going to be in evidence soon. There’s a drawing of them already, but I need to be able to move them around & rearrange. The second print looks like it’s going to be some kind of catalog or chart of various different ways doors, walls, corridors, windows, stairs etc. can create different degrees of privacy between personal spaces and shared spaces. At least that will be one of the things that is happening in it… My tenuous prediction/hope is that it will be some kind of cross between the rigor of an Edward Tufte diagram, and the nonsense-within-order of a Bernard Tschumi drawing for the Parc De La Villette in Paris. Plus some perspective drawings. In awesome colors. WHO KNOWS.

This stuff happened about a week ago, it just takes me a while to record things and write about them. The non-internet comes first.

Reading:

• The Social Psychology of Privacy, a 1968 essay by Barry Schwartz, which was a standout in Robert Gutman’s 1972 anthology People and Buildings, dealing with the implications of sociology on architecture. In general, pretty interesting and relevant, even in its datedness.
• Architecture and the Burdens of Linearity, by Catherine Ingraham, 1998.
• A Hut of One’s Own: Life Outside the Circle of Architecture, by Ann Cline, also 1998.

The late-90s critical theory and the late-60s sociology provide a really good counterpoint to each other. Like Fanta and cheap red wine. I mean it!

I printed a whole bunch of these “kitchen kits” over the past week. The kitchen in question is, of course, the kitchen at Forbes St. — and these were made specifically for the residents of that house to cut apart and put back together as they choose. (The prints will also be a ‘bonus print’ for print series subscribers, and some will be floating around at my show ! in May.) Making a screenprint with parts that you can cut out & paste together (definitely inspired/spurred on by Jung Il Hong & Brian Chippendale’s silkscreen work in this realm, as well as Meredith Stern’s linocuts) was something I’d wanted to do for a long time, and this doesn’t totally fulfill that need, but it’s a start.

It’s also a start in experimenting with how to give people the tools to make drawings, without making them go through 5 years of architecture school training. An architectural drawing is a great way to communicate and transmit information, and even to facilitate a conversation about ideas for space, but access to that medium has always been limited by technology or specialized skills (even in the pre-computer era). How to communicate about design? How to make a tool that people can both use in group discussions, and take back to their rooms and mess around with on their own? How can we have a conversation that will produce a physical artifact that everyone present has had a chance to modify, that can be referred to in the future as evidence of the process or the decision? How to avoid being, once again, the one in the middle of the room holding the only pencil?

So, the kitchen kits are in the classic poster tradition of ‘large expendable multiples’, as well as in the classic dungeons & dragons tradition of ‘a gridded space over which creatures can move and adventures are had, facilitated by the imagination’. After getting done with the printing (and then sleeping) I kind of couldn’t keep my hands off of it and spent yesterday cutting them up & making a couple of different versions of the Forbes kitchen (past, present, possible future). It was a lot of fun. I had had doubts about the grid (which is 6" squares at the 1/2 inch = 1 foot scale), but in the end it functions pretty well as both a ground to denote what is the interior space of the kitchen, and as a instant measurement device: “wait, only 2 feet between this counter and the wall…. that’s not enough for someone to walk through!”, etc. (To all my architecture professors: Yes, it has the scale on it… you can also cut out the graphic scale and use it to measure things on the drawing!)

This, and hopefully more playful, game-like print/building projects to come, are inspired both by game designers like Jane McGonigal (whose work I barely understand but am pretty excited about), and by the book Housing Without Houses, by Nabeel Hamdi.

Here Hamdi talks about trying to make buildings which involve the users in their creation:

If the setting these buildings provided was to be an invitation to users to participate in creating an architecture of cooperation — a concept only primitively explored in the days of flexible buildings — then the size, position, and organization of space and materials would also have to perform in more than technically rational ways. They had to reference the choices available, promoting spontaneity and discovery, albeit within the constraints of the materials and systems employed and the legal and regulatory structure. The architecture of possibilities, in other words, would need to be legible and opportunistic, and yet remain technically rational.

Housing Without Houses, p.73

“Okay, roll the 20-sided die to see how much resistance you get from Code Enforcement….”

The Forbes kids get their hands on the kits this weekend, we’ll see what they do with them…

sticky-paper sheets printed from the same screens will also become coffee-cup stickers for my friend’s travelling espresso machine coffee shop…. yeah!

…reading Edward Tufte’s explanation of the C.J. Minard diagram of theFrench invasion of (and retreat from) Russia, 1812-1813, which he uses to give examples of the principles of good analytical design…

…then making notes on a couple of things, then folding clothing as it came out of the dryers…

…good enough.

Well, a lot got done, but nothing got finished, so there was nothing of mine at the Millcraft sale, which was probably okay. Now I’m in another city (holiday and family time), not drawing or printing anything, but reading:

• The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (I finished The Golden Compass/Northern Lights in 2.5 days)
• Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
• Anarchy and Order by Herbert Read, who also wrote a book called Art and Alienation which I obviously need to track down so I don’t re-write it
• old issues of Wired magazine (1994-1995, 1999) which I saved ‘for some reason’ when I was in high school

Everything is pretty great, and the His Dark Materials series has me fast in its relentless grip, but the old copies of Wired are really the standout. In 1999 there was already ebay, and Wired had already become more consumer-oriented and easy-to-read. In ‘94 and ‘95, though, it’s like a publication aimed at people involved in a specific trade…. which it was.

The magazine’s graphic design is combative and challenging (but interesting!), each section and article uses a totally different graphic language, the ads are either laid out like those you would see in any other trade magazine (then or today), or are trying to employ something like cutting-edge (ie. really bad and illegible) design. Almost all the ads are for computer or internet related things, jobs, machines, software, etc (notably unlike the Wired magazine of today). Internet service providers are offering Mosaic for looking at images on the World Wide Web, many many interactive CD-ROMs are for sale (the ones made by the Residents get really good reviews), and Disney is putting in quarter-page ads for programmers and computer-type people to come work for them.

It’s fascinating, in the relaxing-in-a-time-warp way that coming back to this house at Christmastime is all about. I’ll put up some pictures tomorrow.

…or, almost cleaned up, but 90% cleaner than it was earlier this evening, and 300% more organized and cat-proofed. Ready for me to leave town, ready for Scott to print some stuff while I’m gone, ready for me to return and jump into printing as soon as I get back.

Recently, time has been taken up by (in no specific order):

• working more on the Magic City Repairs installation in Worcester, then dismantling it this past weekend, godzilla-ing the cardboard mountain/structure, and bringing 15 boxes of buildings back to storage in Providence.
• attempting to get cat-pee smells out of the studio area: working with my housemates to pull up carpet and sub-carpet, sand (!) the floor and put on a couple of coats of polyurethane. Successful so far. The studio cleanup is another step in the anti-cat-pee direction.
• mentoring and working on projects at New Urban Arts. So far I have a bunch of students who are all working on totally different things, most just testing out the silkscreen medium, one very large (almost 4 feet long!) graffiti letter poster, one emotionally and politically complicated poster about an eviction and real estate development in the student’s neighborhood… They are all exciting projects!
• visiting Andrew’s family in Maine…
• attempting (so far, unsuccessfully) to sort out some thoughts about control, structure, initiative, responsibility, purpose, etc. into essay/zine/broadside formats. These will come into existence at some point, but aren’t ready yet. If anyone is interested in being a reader/editor/advice-giver, let me know.
• logistics surrounding the poster series, mailing out posters, contacting potential subscribers, etc.
• “wasting” time looking at “interesting” things on the Internet.
• reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire.
• everyday cooking & eating projects (which always take me a long time), as well as making sauerkraut, carrot-ginger pickles, and applesauce, with the intention of not letting seasonal fruits and vegetables go to waste.
• worrying about how difficult it was going to be to clean up the studio, after the sanding project, and after a bunch of months of printing things and not really organizing at all after any of the print runs. As it turned out, it was hard and demanded persistence and focus, but it wasn’t as bad as I had thought (of course). Now — it is done, and my brain is still realizing that I don’t have to worry about it any more…

I think that is about it.

The transparency for the seventh and last color is ready.

In the ‘morning’ (2:30 pm, when I wake up…) I will shoot the screen… and if all goes well, print it tomorrow night/today (Wednesday into Thursday).

Thursday: sort out, sign & number.
Friday: pack up some posters, head to Worcester to deliver the Worcester subscriptions.
Saturday & Sunday: back to Providence, address and prepare for mailing. Contact Providence subscribers and deliver posters around town.
Monday: mail out posters.

… there you have it.

Reading:
The Shape of Content, by Ben Shahn.

Essays about art and why it might be worthwhile to strive to create anything in the world. I read this book when I was 17 or 18, and coming back to it now I found myself thinking “Oh, I’ve read this one before, I don’t need to read it again…” Then a couple of sentences into the essay: “Hey, wait a second — I don’t remember this part!” It’s really thoughtful, down-to-earth, and unpretentious, focused on art’s connection to and meaning within life. Reading it now, it is obvious that this book was about 50% of the reason why I ended up dropping out of the the University of Chicago when I was 19. (the other half? attention deficit disorder.)