I found do-it-yourself plans and instructions for a vacuum table and a screen washer.

I found a video on the best do-it-yourself screen exposure box. This is by Roger jennings and he has quite a few more (search google and you tube).

All of this will take time, and I’d like to build it out of nice wood rather than run of the mill oak or maple. I’ve been making a vanity for our downstairs bath out of Jatoba, a Brazillian cherry, which initially at least looks like a rich teak and is a very very dense and hard wood.

I keep reading and learning. Screens need prep in the borders and edges, using gummed packing tape and shellac, varnish, or paint (depending on the book).

Squeegees should be an inch or so wider than the image. For me that means about 22″ wide. Not a Dick Blick item – but I found squeegee material (12′ 70A for $100) and individual 22″ squeegee at about $35 at https://printersedge.com.

What I think I need to do this keeps refining and changing as I read through this. What makes it possible to sort it fairly effectively is I know the impact I want, the size of the images, that they derive from the sunset paintings but aren’t direct photo stenciled – but maybe they do come from that process altered. Thus I can look through paper, screens, squeegees, designs for tables and exposure, and evaluate against that initial 24″ x 30″ painting – probably a 18″ x 22″ print…

More to learn. But this is a much simpler project than an etching press will be.

—spence

My daughter could not talk on the phone.
She had fought leukemia for a year and was about to find
out her body had lost.

We didn’t know that yet (though I was very afraid)
But I did know I loved her.

And I wrote her (in text) then what I write here for you.
Because I find it to be true.

This life you have now,
that’s not all there is.
You will leave this body
behind someday.
You will remain.
And you will still be.
You the being who is my daughter do not die.
I will always love and cherish you, whether I leave this
existence first or you do.

it’s not a win or lose battle against your cancer.
You will still exist and you will still be
loved no matter the outcome.
love, –dad

Let me know when you have read that message
above – that one is important. Love, –dad

Reply: I read it.   

Love you. –dad

Reply: Love you too.

second test with a different logo…

Excellent, that worked much better than the default WordPress image.

testing spencemunsinger.com facebook app access…

(This was Wordbooker and it failed repeatedly)

nextgen gallery plugin works great. It saves a tremendous amount of tables and linking html
to get from images to pages. But I wanted to have the image not display with an effect,
rather to link to a page.

Doable. Anything in WordPress is doable. But I upgraded the nextgen gallery plugin as it
was revised and somewhere along it stopped behaving as altered.

I recovered those changes. Here’s how you stop image effects and link to a page
from the gallery images…

You do not want the images to use a javascript or lightbox effect when they
are clicked on. Go to Gallery > Options > Effects > Set Javascript Thumbnail Effect to ‘None’

Install the NextGEN Custom Fields plugin, if you haven’t done so already.
Create a new custom field for images called “link”. Custom fields are case-sensitive.

In the custom field put a link to one of your pages, posts, or another site, e.g.
http://spencemunsinger.com/sunset-01.html
I made mine a link to the specific page for each painting in my portfolio.

Populate the field for each of the images in your gallery.

Then you want to edit nextgen-gallery/view/gallery.php. There are two methods, depending
on whether you have shell access to your site or not. I edit the file within the filesystem of
my website, and it’s at /wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/view/gallery.php. I make a copy
and edit it.

The other method is through the plugin editor – Plugins -> Editor, then “Select Plugin to Edit drop
down, select “NextGEN Gallery” and click on “Select”.
Scroll down and find nextgen-gallery/view/gallery.php.

What you want to change is at about line 41:

		<div class="ngg-gallery-thumbnail" >
			<a href="<?php echo $image->imageURL ?>" title="<?php echo $image->description ?>" <?php echo $image->thumbcode ?> >
				<?php if ( !$image->hidden ) { ?>
				<img title="<?php echo $image->alttext ?>" alt="<?php echo $image->alttext ?>" src="<?php echo $image->thumbnailURL ?>" <?php echo $image->size ?> />
				<?php } ?>
			</a>

Change this to:

		<div class="ngg-gallery-thumbnail" >
			<a href="<?php echo $image->ngg_custom_fields["link"]; ?>" title="<?php echo $image->description ?>" <?php echo $image->thumbcode ?> >
				<?php if ( !$image->hidden ) { ?>
				<img title="<?php echo $image->alttext ?>" alt="<?php echo $image->alttext ?>" src="<?php echo $image->thumbnailURL ?>" <?php echo $image->size ?> />
				<?php } ?>
			</a>

You are changing, more specifically,

href="<?php echo $image->imageURL ?>"

to

href="<?php echo $image->ngg_custom_fields["link"]; ?>"

Once I had this working I copied gallery.php up to the parent directory so I can recover
it directly if I upgrade and overwrite it again. Which I will, no question.

—spence

I was looking through Doug Forsythe’s Build Your Own Press plans. I love doing things myself, I tend to want that kind of control over the quality of the product. Asking a machinist to mill metal, an area which I don’t have any experience or native inclination, is going to be the unknown. I’m going to build the metal roller version, including the machinist, because the rollers take a lot of pressure and because I want to do this once. Or maybe twice – I’m thinking of pricing the parts as pairs – for two presses. I’ll either have a spare press, or a hell of a gift for my artistic step-daughter, or a press for sale.

One alternative I seriously thought of persuing was at Craft and Concept. I do have the experience and native inclination for turning a baltic birch roller set… Not to mention, the rails and framework are beautiful to see.

—spence

I saw the MFA’s Alex Katz Prints exhibition April 25th. Alex Katz’s work reminded me intensely of Tom Wesselmann. Alex Katz was at Cooper Union 1945 to 1949. Tom Wesselmann was accepted at Cooper Union in 1956. They are roughly contemporary, Alex was born in 1927, Tom in 1931. Tom Wesselmann maintained bright color and pop art direction through to his passing in 2004. Alex Katz kept similar bright color and simplified form (at least in prints) but concentrated on literal interpretation of the human form.

A lot of fun to see.

In the exhibit some of the prints were exhibited done through several different processes – screenprint next to woodcut, for example. I’m researching presses, screen and etching. If it were as simple as buying a press and trying it out that would be one thing. But I would want to print abstracted sunsets at 24″ x 30″ and that in a new etching press is 5500.00 and up. Not to mention you have to watch what these things weigh – some are “light” at 1250 lbs., a weight savings of half from a less weight-conscious press that comes in at 2650 lbs. Not the thing you throw casually into a second floor studio. Screen presses are easier in the press itself – I can likely build one that will accommodate 24″ x 30″ prints in four colors. I found a design which I can adapt at www.printingplans.com. Most of the for-sale presses for screen are t-shirt and fabric presses.

I also found an elegant solution already executed by Doug Forsythe at buildapress.com. This is very interesting. For a best guess expense of $1200 – $1700 I can likely build a press that would print 26″ x 32″ (my arbitrary dimensions). A press that I am finding would cost 5500.00 to 8500.00 new, and would be able to print exactly what I want to.

I think a simplified abstracted away yet again sunset could be very cool in handmade small editions. Not to mention just straight print art itself.

— spence

This painting is at the stage where I am watching for things to add/change and not yet changing it – very close to done.

It is from a moment on Hendry’s Beach just down from the restaurant, walking down the path toward the sand to photograph a classic sunset in Santa Barbara, and spotting these two surfboards just catching the light and just off the path.

—spence

This is the coast view from the Douglas Preserve in West Mesa, in Santa Barbara.

I was watching rain come in across the ocean.

The light in California is unique. I asked Ethan Karp, a gallery owner in Manhattan – for the sunsets, East Coast gallery or West Coast gallery? Ethan said he could see the light in the paintings as Western, but that might make it more exotic shown on the East Coast… Not an exact quote, but close.

—spence

I’ve had so-so behavior from Twitter Tools, a wordpress plugin for both pushing a blog post as a tweet and getting twitter feed. The push part seems ok. The pulling in of twitter feeds is problematic as hell.

Lately a post from 1-1/2 weeks ago to twitter stayed as the most recent post on the main site and was superceded by more recent posts on the mobile version…

This is testing Reliable Twitter (for twitter feed) and Twitter Blog.

from L.A. Times 2 Feb:

Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote in 1994, “Kelley is an avatar of the power and humanity inherent in recognizing the radical impurity of human experience. His art searches out dark and soiled places where defects, fault lines and inadequacies are obvious and routine, and where failure takes on the poignant, fragile, even heartbreaking beauty that accompanies any loss of self.”

Looking at Mike Kelley’s face, the lines worn deep – sadness, depression? Demons reflected in his work.

Art like that impinges on the audience. Damien Hurst does the same without involvement, for money, to shock and titillate and to market. Mike Kelley’s face looks haunted, linked and held down by his work. “Escaped Bird” at least sees a light at the end of the tunnel. Introspection to find the reflection of emotion from a color or a sunset or even a death. Twist through the pathways of that emotion for a meadow or two. Then run for the exit. Too much journeying deep into the recesses of the psyche just strengthens the parts you can’t really view and see and those are the dark ones.

I would prefer to reach beyond the experience of being just human, the messy brutal and short existence here, and reach for a beauty that reaches beyond even a contentment with being human and on earth. I want to find that delight, that tickle at the top of the spine that becomes goosebumps when we glimpse something ethereal, transcendent. I can’t see a value in wallowing in muck – I find that easy, obvious. I think art has to reach beyond the constraints of flesh and material and into the spirit, beyond the physical.

Wallowing in the mud is the job of the turtle supporting the four elephants on its back that hold up the world…

—spence

Fisheye distortion is just fun… I found the Lensbaby Scout with Fisheye Optic a blast to distort things with. Last evening there were cloud in the sky painted by the sun – not extraordinary, but extraordinary here and now because in New England in the winter there is limited color outdoors. Even a mild winter mutes color.

Here’s the straight shot…

and then fisheyes…

The wrap-around view is like when you focus on something and expand, extend, push, float your awareness around and away from that sharp focus.

—spence