Instructional infographics are like someone who’s always spewing random facts they read on the internet to compensate for a lack of life experience.
Take the Which Wich? menu for example. When you walk into a sandwich joint for the first time, what do you want? You want a sandwich experience curated by a professional. A professional that says “Hey! We’ve made every sandwich you can imagine, but here's our favorites." Give me creative limitations based on taste-makers expertise. I don’t want every option, just the endorsed options. Instead, Which Wich? slaps you with this hodge-podge grocery list of ingredients and fill-in-the-bubble options all set to 3 pt. typeface. So you’re basically in somebody’s house and they step out the kitchen like:
“You like sandwiches?”
And you’re like, “Yea, wanna make me one?”
And they're like, “I read this article about 500 ways to make a sub with just 12 ingredients.”
And you’re like, “Ok. Which one we making?”
And they’re like, “I don’t know.”
The problem with infographics is they signal a process is too complicated to be intuitive. But if the process is too complicated, shouldn’t it be simplified instead of dumping the responsibility onto the consumer? I'm not endorsing Subway but at least someone is there walking you through it… sometimes they’re coherent… still beats a pamphlet.
I started satirically using infographics in my personal projects to vent. Graphs, numeric values, pie charts, all give an implied sense of order. Like oh wow this disjointed emotional mood board makes sense now cuz it’s numbered. Peppering in a few diagram elements parodies the expectation that art should have meaning. The demand for thesis doesn't benefit the artist, it benefits viewers who need everything defined.
I like the label lines and magnification boxes in particular. They signal a PointA-to-PointB eye movement that’s trained into our psyche. When I started making GRP cut-and-sews I wanted to find a stitch that provides the same functionality on garments.
I started with the obvious straight stitch. It’s straight. It looks like a line. However, the straight stitch doesn’t flex with tension. When I sewed the straight stitch into jersey (a knit fabric with is made to flex), the straight stitch would snap in random places when the shirt stretched.
I tried using a zig-zag stitch which flexes with the fabric, but the end result looked more like a scribble than it did a label line.
I told Laila about it and she put me onto her cover stitch machine. The cover stitch machine sews loops that are only visible on the top half of the garment creating the illusion of a straight stitch but with the flexibility of a zig-zag. So now I can make diagrams on fabric.
My brother would drag my mom and me to skate shops trying to convince her to chip in on a pair of skate shoes. I’d walk the aisles comparing skateboard graphics or watching videos. I could never tell if the music was playing on the video, or if the video was muted and a CD was playing in the background. Right as I was convinced that the two were in sync, one would go off beat, or off cut. I couldn’t look away until I knew for sure.
The first few months my chick and I were dating neither of us had a car. We lived pretty far apart so we basically only saw each other on campus until she got picked up by her mom or my bus came. Eventually her dad gave her this dusty ‘04 silver Mustang. She became one of the cool kids who parked in the unpaved lot behind our school. I’d wait for her in the morning, carving out little doodles in the dirt with my foot. Her car didn’t mean anything to me while we were together. It was a tool we could depend on but nothing special. It wasn’t until after we broke up that I became fixated. Her car was a bookmark to cold winter mornings waiting for the warmest person in my life at the time. I still see those ugly ‘04s and wonder if she’s behind the wheel.
Swing is something I learned to identify from J Dilla beats during my brief stint making music. I was introduced to music through DAWs and drum machines, so the swing of acoustic sound was a novelty. To break from the default quantization, one has to go out of their way to make a digitally mixed track sound human. Dilla is known for pushing this to the extreme, manipulating each 4-bar loop to sound slightly off kilter from the rest. A drum loop that repeats perfectly is easy to forget, but the same beat slightly altered on every loop creates infinite anticipation.
Why are we obsessed with creating patterns?
Why do we lose interest once a pattern is established?
What returns our interest once the pattern breaks?
Maybe the mind’s limited capacity forces us to create patterns so we can focus on other things. I expect to breathe, not because I know there is enough air, but because I need to shift my focus toward other necessities in life. Establishing the pattern leads to expecting a definitive outcome. Receiving that outcome leads to trusting the pattern. Trusting the pattern leads to forgetting the pattern exists. A shift in outcomes leads to revisiting the pattern. You only notice the ground when you’re tripping on it.
This month I am participating in the group show Printed Matter hosted by Sanitary Tortilla Factory in Downtown Albuquerque. The show is curated by Diego Garcia, an STF resident artist. Diego flexed his rolodex organizing a wide range of printmakers featuring established artists such as Henry Morales alongside emerging artists such as myself and Jesse Littlebird.
The show’s emphasis on archived work from Albuquerque creates a timeline of printmaking evolution and culture. Delilah Montoya’s featured prints date back to the 1970s and document the transition of halftoning from a manual into a digital process. Diego and Delano Garcia feature an archive of gig posters timelining punk and hip–hop influence in Albuquerque.
Opening night was further fueled by Bucket Exhibitions who broke out the tortilla press for free relief printing. They hosted various hand-carved, laser-cut, and AI-influenced blocks for participants to mix and match. Karl, Ellie, and their crew of illustrators always bring a magnetism to any event they attend. Even the novice enthusiast is pulled into the printmaking process witnessing the simplicity and accessibility of relief printing.
The history, diversity, and accessibility has made this show one of the most interactive art events I've attended. The closing reception will take place Friday, March 29th from 5-8pm. Thanks Diego and Sheri for providing the space and curating a story greater than our individual narratives.
Margin of Error issue 4 is out for production. In retrospect this issue feels like a rehashing of the past. Like I'm revisiting the last 10 years of projects asking why did I do this? Back then a lot of projects I rushed to completion weren't given the chance to fully develop. Taking an illustration and redefining it in 3D space, or collaging graphics into new works on garments are a few ways I’ve shaken out a little more meaning from stuff I was just doing for fun. Hopefully I can find a common thread that guides me toward what I need to create next. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue! Be sure to subscribe if you'd like to receive a free issue mailed to your home address.
During the 2020 quarantine, my friends at 111 were looking for a way to fill the huge retail window to protect shop equipment while also giving pedestrians something interesting to look at. I proposed creating a design that repeats on all four sides that we would screen print at 12x12” on cheap newsprint paper. The squares would print as many times as needed to fill the 25x11’ window.
I first experimented with a yucca repeating block and then moved onto a chrysanthemum design. The chrysanthemum was a little more defined when viewed at a long distance, and the perpendicular Cuban links unified the separate blocks.
It took a lot of initial work to screen print and cut the couple hundred newspaper sheets but it was way cheaper than buying the same amount of material in fabric. We taped the sheets in the window and boom! Bento box.
The Petals designs have fostered a few applications but I felt my job wasn't finished until I convinced someone to give me an actual wall to wallpaper. This year Lapis Room gallery hit me up to finally do so. You can see the wallpaper install reveal Thursday, March 21st from 5-8pm or visit them during business hours. I will (most likely) have prints available too.
Print Austin is a manual printmakers convention held annually since 2010. It's a three day market that hosts over 50 vendors showcasing a wide variety of printmaking styles. I found out about the event last year through their satellite event Print Santa Fe. I missed the Santa Fe application deadline so I figured why not roll my dice in Texas. Here's what I learned from the trip...
(1) Know your place. Print Austin caters to fine art collectors. A lot of the vendors I checked out were selling relief, litho, intaglio, mono, stereo, arpeggio… all the process-heavy print methods. The quantity and scale of work vendors provided was impressive too. Some artists brought an entire catalogue with dozens of different editions, while others showcased massive prints with 12 or more colors each carefully etched and layered with pin-point registration. I brought t-shirts and 6 print editions haha. Being used to the craft/holiday markets in Albuquerque, I realized I had never seen a major league print market before. Walking the aisles made me question my place amongst print martyrs who spend hundreds of hours perfecting a single edition.
(2) Know your role. One thing I noticed while gawking at print wizardry was a lack of unique subject matter. Printmaking is kind of self-sabotaging sometimes because we’ll spend copious amounts of time meticulously perfecting a multi-color, hand etched image of like, a cat. And the concept is like, “this is my mom’s cat, she died holding him in her arms.” Nothing wrong with that, but when you get a whole market full of sentimental animal prints everything starts to blend together. My initial game plan was to highlight my poster prints, but after walking the aisles I decided to pivot and showcase the GRP pieces. No one else on the floor had garments for sale and when the few waves of young people came through, I had them locked in.
(3) Manage expectations. The general chatter between the vendors indicated this was a slow year. And I don’t know if this is related but Print Austin will not be returning to Santa Fe. I sensed a decline. I had a few good waves over the weekend but I left feeling like print is dead lol. Sometimes it beez that way. But I’ve learned to manage my expectations by budgeting expenses. We dropped a little over $1k on the trip and made $1,500–which after taxes, artist payouts, and vendor fees, basically equates to not going to Austin and donating $1,500 to local efforts–something I might consider before leaving the state again.
On the plus side we got super hyped on Canvas, an artist compound providing live-in studios for working artists. We also stumbled upon a few shops partnering with artists to create immersive art installations.
