Monkey Mask!

Miles and bananas. 

 

A few weeks ago, I bought a bunch of gorilla masks. I also got some gorilla gloves, you know, the gloves with the fur. The goal was to make some pictures with Miles. It’s nice having a four year old. I can buy things like gorilla masks and say it’s for us…for a project. Father and son bonding. I didn’t start with a real idea of what I’d make with them, but it generally ends up with me putting postage on things. Who doesn’t like postcards with Miles on them? In honesty, I’m always ready for a photo shoot because I know a lot of stuff will come from it. I have a large plastic box filled with masks and wigs to do stupid stuff with at any time. Just last week I found a large rubber Zeus mask. I buy them at thrift stores for next to nothing. Of course, I make sure they’re always sealed; no one needs a scalp fungus from a sketchy hobo. When I get home, they go into the plastic bin until the next time Miles wonders upstairs and starts moving everything in the room around.

On October 31st, I grabbed Miles and we went outside for our shoot. At first, I put him in a tree with one of the three masks. I put him in a tree because monkeys like trees.  Monkeys / apes / cousins, it’s all the same to me. He didn’t like either of the over the head masks but was interested in the one that just goes over the face. If you look closely, you can see human ears peeking out the back.

They looked convincing enough, but all three of them smelled horrible, much like the distant factory I figure all of them came from. That rubber smell was on my hands for the rest of the day. I got pictures of him in the tree out front and then tossed up some inflatable bananas in the backyard. The inflatable banana was a nice touch, both as an homage to the Velvet Underground, (Andy Warhol) as well as to Anna Banana. I should have washed the mouth spouts on those things before I decided to blow them up. Didn’t tell Misty they came from the thrift store until she had already finished hers. I was lightheaded after a few seconds working on mine, so I needed her air. Nothing weird has happened to us since we blew them up.

Of all the masks I could have focused on, the gorilla masks seemed like the right choice. I like monkeys a lot. One day I will hold one, but until then, I just get to act like one in the yard every once in a while. Most Saturdays I force Miles to watch monkey videos on YouTube, something I think he gets into because why not, monkeys are awesome. They’re fun little scamps that steal things from humans, hang out in clumps, and sometimes are spotted drinking their own pee.  I’m honored that humans are almost genetically the same as monkeys, and if you look at most human choices like war or 1970’s fashion, we seem to be as smart as them. All that fur in the summer months would be problematic. 

Analog starter. 

 

Unlike our past photo shoots, Miles has to take a lot of the pictures, obviously all the ones with me in them. Although I have a lot of his pictures to delete once the shot is over, he does a pretty good job. Most of the pictures were framed nicely. No reshoots. The one criticism I have about his style is that he sometimes goes a little wild. Right before I had to rip the camera from his hands, he had his head against the ground and was shooting pictures backwards, through his legs. Those pictures were terrible. Richard Avedon never did shit like that.

The first goal was to isolate our bodies from the background. Doing this allows me to put us in all sorts of settings. I picked out four good ones of him and four good ones of me. Later that night, when I was half watching football in the background, I started putting things together. The next day I printed a bunch of images and then cut us out. Then I made “analog starters.” Analog starters are my first step in making broadsides. Well, not completely analog, but mostly analog. Think The Books’ Lemon of Pink! I take these starters, which basically is the images of us with another image or two, say Richard Simmons or a kid picking his noise, and then I scan them. After scanning, I add (mostly text) and subtract stuff digitally over the course of a few weeks. I love doing things this way because I can chip away at a project over time. I take pictures; I collect and scan the images I add to my starters and then add text and manipulate later. (Does The Books comparison make more sense now?) In rare instances, I print and do it all over again. Nothing new, not really, just cleaner lines since I lean on the computer more than straight 1960’s xerox art techniques. I’m constantly shuffling paper and files around.

After I have a scanned image, I assume the creation will end up as a broadside or in a zine or book, or as a postcard. When I started taking pictures of Miles in the monkey mask, I knew one image would end up as our “weird” Christmas card, and it did. Every year I make a silly card that I send to the sillies in my life, the folks that would be OK with something other than holiday schmaltz. Not that I can just send that one, I have to have a “normal” one for the normal people in our lives. You know, us in sweaters in front of a tree, something boring like that. Not my choice. One year I’m going to get around to making a Christmas letter that’s 100% false.

Anyway, at this point I’m trying to bring it all together while making something generally entertaining. While it’s Miles and me in monkey masks, there’s lots of hard-hitting satire in there…messages for the mind. I’m going to play around with this idea for the next few weeks and see what comes of it. 

Behold...art!

Three Sheets to the Wind

 

I had a great mail-art idea.

Lately, at least for a couple years, I’ve really leaned into sending large manilla envelopes. As a rule (we all need rules, right) I like to drop in a couple handmade collages, five or six broadsides, a 4x4, and a bit of ephemera. To send these in the United States, no way could I afford to send them out of the country, it costs me almost $2.40. To make the best use of my time, I like to send out ten or so at a time. I’ve done this about every other week. In between mailing these, I send items to specific people and things to friends and family. Taking a guess, I’d say that I mail out stuff 46/52 weeks. It’s a bit of a hectic schedule I’ve created for myself but it slowly, expensively, gets rid of the clutter.

To combat the amount of stuff, and the monotony of addressing envelopes and going to the post office each week, I came up with a plan. I’d focus on sending out things in regular sized envelopes for a while. I’d put three sheets of paper in the envelope. That’s six sides for my creations. Considering the cut in cost, I didn’t have to worry about who I sent to as much. I could send out of the country without worry. It seemed like a great plan

What I ended up doing was simple, I’d work on things when I finished grading. I did this at work. Everything had a digital component to them, that way I could do them sitting at my computer without anyone asking questions. An hour here and there adds up. I’d then then print them out in editions of 30. No idea why I decided on that number. It was like a mini zine. What I included was the usual fair, minus the analogue collages. It was mainly broadsides and short writings. I worked about two weeks ahead on these, so when I printed out one thing, I already had another printed and dropped into decorated envelopes. I did this about eight times, mailing one pile out a week, every week for two months.

This was a bad idea.

Doing short runs of things meant I was spending more time putting addresses on envelopes. Of most of my mail-art related clerical work, I hate doing this. My handwriting sucks and we have computers now, so there’s no reason to handwrite anything. All day I type and I’m good and fast with that; I do it for fun even. Look at this thing, I typed it. I never handwrite things. It hurts! Also, I get bored doing it. With the short runs that were meant to save time and money, I was doing three times the amount of handwriting. Even worse, it wasn’t saving me any money. I bought three times the amount of stamps.

I got a theory for this. It’s like the mini candy bars. No one wants to quickly eat a large candy bar; that’s something psychopaths do. Anyone, however, will take down twice that amount if you have those mini ones around the house. Toss in a few of the snack size, and you’re eating just as much candy, but somehow not feeling as guilty. I was sending as much postage but in smaller amounts, more often. My postage unit price was all out of whack, and I was doing more work to send it.

So, it looks like I’m back sending the big envelopes. Big envelopes mean larger collages, which means more scanning. More scanning I have to do upstairs which means less time making collages upstairs. I need a scanner in my office. 

 

Innenundo And Out The Other

 

 

 

Above is me playing with getting some old pictures of myself from Jacob Myrick. I sent this out in an edition of 20. I’ll send out those 20 and then never send them out again, probably not. For a little bit, I’m going to try out this pattern. Maybe six pages of something, from and back three pieces of paper, and then “off you go.” Doing this is akin to bands putting out single songs over whole records. Not sure what to put in the big envelopes once the collages start to mount? I’m not sure this is even an idea, but here’s an example of what I was thinking about.