Tune it to an open chord and everything sounds good
This month, we printed a show for Pakistani-American photographer Simrah Farrukh at Friday Gallery. It’s always so juicy to get the blacks to be so black and still convey the detail. To pull back just enough to get detail. When we think about the limits of printing and the richness of a printed image, the blacks are a place we return to again and again, especially on a matte paper like these are. Friday Gallery is creating a space that’s thematic and built around art — they curate a show with art and the objects in the store are in response to the art. What if all of life were like that? Bit by bit.
Andy is doing one last read through of her novel to catch any errors before it Goes To Print and reading Full Catastrophe Living. When it was recommended to her, the title just hit it so right — full catastrophe. It’s what it feels like, is what it is like.
Talking about the title, the author says, “What could we possibly call the sum total of our vulnerabilities and inadequacies, our limitations and weaknesses and foibles, the illnesses and injuries and disabilities we may have to live with, the personal defeats and failures we have felt or fear in the future, the injustices and exploitations we suffer or fear, the losses of people we love and of our own bodies sooner or later? It would have to be a metaphor.”
Of course it must be metaphor, must be art. How else do we say it all?
It’s nice to have someone find a few words that can hold so much.
Three musicians we have been grateful to get to know released a new album, pianist Hye Jin, cellist Yoshika Masuda, and composer Reena Esmail. When we listen to them, it is like we can touch their feelings with a finger the way a person might touch a spot of something on the counter to figure out what it is, their finger wet now too. At a concert once, Yoshi said he warms up by asking himself how he feels, then plays that feeling from Bach’s cello suites, since all the feelings are there.
We got a cake, a beautiful one unlike any we’d ever seen or tasted before, for Andy’s birthday. We found Stella Ramos and don’t even remember how, it was immediately clear that Stella was making more than just cakes. They were art, they communicated more than what the object itself depicted. The cake and I rode alone in the car on our way home. With a hand on it to keep it from sliding, I thought I can’t believe I take this art home. It felt so intimate and personal. I love that the feeling of looking at a beautiful object made by a human can also be in a cake. A reminder that Art doesn’t have to be only this or only that. It doesn’t have to be a cake like a person expects a cake or a painting like a person thinks of when they think painting.
Our neighborhood got together to hold a bunch of garage sales on the same day and we all walked around looking at each other’s things, the things they were ready to not be theirs. At one house, there was a white awning up with a pristine display of guitars, pedals, and a single stack of books. We looked, asked questions, and our neighbor played every guitar for us — telling us about each one, where it came from, how old he was when he bought it. One was a banjo he’d gotten on credit in New York, somewhere in the Village. He was broke then and young, wondering if he was maybe a banjo man. I’ve bought cameras the same way, probably at a camera store on that same block, paying my ING card bit by bit by bit.
We left with a 3/4 guitar — just the right size for our small hands — and instructions to later get a ukulele, one that costs more than $30 but less than $100. He offered to tune our guitar, since it was in Open D, then thought again. If you’re just noodling, leave it like that because anything you do will sound nice.
Now in our living room, we have a guitar. I pick it up and play, change the sonic air of our house. I don’t know what I’m doing, might never know, but almost anything I do sounds good. And it tells me more about what I am thinking than I tell myself. And maybe it's a coincidence but this month I have also taken more photographs than I have the past 12 months. I don’t know if the photos communicate what I want them to, I don’t know if they will become anything. But there they are existing where just a month ago they did not.
We feel that way about photography and printing, too. It all looks so good coming out of the printer. The physical object is so satisfying. If you haven’t tried it, try it. Pretend that the print shop printer is just there in your living room. Send a file, come look at a test print, see what it feels like. Maybe it will change something for you, maybe you’ll find out if you are a banjo person, maybe you’ll just change the tenor of a single day.
If you’re thinking of making a print to give as a gift before the end of the year, now is the time to start. We’re here and ready and don’t like charging rush fees. Our turnaround right now is about one week, so there’s some time, but you don’t have to be completely ready to get started. We can work through the details together.
Come for the first 30 seconds of the song but stay for the rest. It’s like the song formed itself into existence from all of our thought bubbles.
At Los Angeles Print Shop we make meticulous fine art prints with a pay-what-you-can model.
Say hi to get started. Or send this to a friend you wish would make more art.
Those blacks in the first one…. I wish I could see in person! And I might need a print of your rock one… lmk if you’re selling any. Brilliant newsletter as always, thanks for these!