There was, and will be so much more
We did watch Christmas, Every Day right after we hit send last month (the 13-minute running time helped). They are in a kind of isolation in their world, the life of other kids their age elsewhere in the world treated like just audience to their life. A favorite part was watching the main character scroll TikTok — the light is great, the way she sits with the straw from her water bottle in her mouth, how long she stays on each video. We can’t see what she scrolls but we hear it all.
At the start of the month we finished a stack of prints for Evan Apodaca. In 2023 Evan had a video installation shown at the San Diego International Airport. Thing is, his work was critiquing how San Diego is deeply interconnected with the war industrial complex. So after installing the work the airport curatorial team took it down — censoring Evan’s work. This piece we printed for Evan comes from and points at that video, it’s a counter to its censorship.
All month long, Andy’s been going back to this book, Érase una vez y mucho más será by Johanna Schaible. The book’s pages are cut in, so each page is smaller than the one before it, and each page moves forward in time, until the middle of the book when the pages start to get larger again. The text — one line per spread — tells us something about time: It was a million years ago that dinosaurs walked the planet. It was a week ago that there were parades in the city. It was a minute ago that we had the last light of the day. Until the center spread is about the now, this exact moment. Look, it says, make a wish. Then, as the pages get larger again, it asks questions about the future: Who will you meet next month? What will you remember in ten years? Will you have kids one day? What do you hope for the future?
This structure is so grounding. To look at the context, millions of years of it, then to be alert in the glorious now, unsure and complex , and then ask what I want to envision for the future.
For Andy, It was seven years ago that she quit her job and structured what she could around writing PLUM. It was 3 years ago that she submitted the novel manuscript to Hub City Press and gave herself a sticker on a sticker sheet of submissions. It was two years ago that we sat on the beach sun drunk and read an email from Kate McMullen that Hub City was interested in publishing it. It was three weeks ago that the book came out. It was two weeks ago a stranger emailed Andy to thank her for writing the book. Look, someone is reading it right now. What does a person write next? What do they hope for the future? What will be remembered forever?
This month, we printed photographs for local and New York artists, a few local shows and even one that’s heading overseas to the Venice Biennale.
For one of the local shows, we printed 25 photographs by Alexandre Souêtre and Mike Burgess for their two-person show. Printing the work was juicy and it was exciting to see everyone at the shop craning their necks and looking over to see Alexandre and Mike’s work.
Every photo simple and immediate, like they were handed just a few pastels and asked to make the image. They aren’t just simple though, they craft an ode to blips of human moments in time, and to concrete, to human-made shapes and structures that feel immovable and vast, and to skateboards. The skateboards feeling like feet substitutes, like the only way a person could move through this brutalist landscape. The show is up all May.
We watched another documentary about art-making, Secret Mall Apartment, and we for sure recommend the first ~33 minutes of it, and then recommend turning it off. It takes place in 2003, when 8 artists in Providence, Rhode Island built a secret apartment in the mall, this behemoth of development and gentrification. They documented it along the way, with some early selfie footage and vlogging. It’s a time capsule, and also a document of how a group of artists reacted to displacement and development by creating art and creating community. Andy and I watched it in two sittings (as we have come to do, since it is either we watch in sittings or we do not watch at all) and the first 33 minutes had us feeling like making art, right now, no matter what, oh my god what are we doing if not that. And the last one hour had us feeling less sure. Art and art career pressure and economic pressure, whether that’s living in community or trying to figure out how to build that community. Most redeeming part of the second half was of the artists, Colin so honesty sharing what is burning in my head all of the time — am I a person making art or am I a person living a life of art. Both require so much discipline. So, we say watch that first part (or the whole) and go make some art with the feeling.
And on the last days of the month, we went on a walk up and down Figueroa with an old friend and artist, Tony Favarula. We photographed the trees along Figueroa and the mountains in the far distance that would peek through behind buildings.
We also tried to understand if it was possible to communicate an idea but with chunks of smaller ideas taken from different contexts. Is it possible to depict something honestly if you are an outsider to that subjects world, has the visual language of photography changed since the media platforms that shape our cultural visual landscape also show the actual images of what genocide looks like?
We weren’t looking for answers, I don’t know that we have any either, but we photographed and moved our thoughts out of our heads and into the spaces between us. We wonder if you have answers, to any of this?
I realized recently that Alabaster DePlume’s music has often been playing at home and in the shop, his music like the wisps of smoke from a cozy campfire. I just never knew who it was until this month. He wrote in his bio that his music “transmits calmness and generosity in warm waves – unless they’re raging against complacency and the everyday inhumanity of end times capitalism.” I am thankful for how it feels to listen. I see from him how it is possible to be a person living a life of art. I am thankful for how it feels to make art. You can start anywhere with Alabaster. This is one of them.
At Los Angeles Print Shop we operate on a sliding scale for any artist, and pay-the-list-rate for those endowed with capital and power — all are welcome and when you’re ready you can reply to this email, or DM us on Instagram.
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