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Fail to Meet Expectations: Vinyl on Paint Posters

We’ve been talking about picking up on some of the ideas we put together for the OPEN panel discussion from earlier in the month, and it seemed like posters were a natural fit. Given the text statements that we made to address the an idea of economies and creative practice that served as the backdrop for our talk (rather than the normal set of images), we wanted to find a place for them beyond that PDF file.

So, Monday seemed like a great day to start playing. We’ve been doing so much paper work lately, this is long overdue.

Hiba mixed some colours and started make some base colours.

We decided from the start to cut some vinyl (rather than screen printing or stenciling at this point), so we experimented with some colour.

But, it wasn’t long before the black stood out. Hiba was using a metal scraper to spread the acrylic paint on these smaller 9×12 sheets. We want to make these larger posters soon.

Also, decided to play with some other vinyl … haven’t pulled out that gold for a while.

Detail of texture of the paint.

We printed out those slides and started sorting through.

We decided to go with just one, as we were planning to cut a couple different fonts and colours and wanted to be able to compare the results.

Good ol’ Cutting Master.

We went with Interstate and Garamond — all caps and small caps.

Hiba weeds the first cut of shiny black.

Interstate looked promising at first.

Hiba applying the vinyl to the paper.

The paint dried, but was just a bit tacky, which helped get the vinyl to stick.

Detail, applying the vinyl, you can see the text through the masking.

Pulling it up, the gloss black looks deep.

Nice and clear, but didn’t stand up to the serif font.

T.

Side by side, we’re pretty convinced with the Garamond on the right.

Less surface area of the font face makes it a little less visible though.

Garamond.

Interstate.

Then gold, just to get some contrast into the test.

The gold is a cheaper vinyl, but a lot easier to weed.

Fixing it up, as it didn’t stick to the paint as well.

Side by side, the gold is most legible, but looks too much like a poster. Not sure what to do with the black on black yet. Thursday will be more time to play. Maybe we can get some larger paper by then … lots more to experiment with, but even looking at these photos now, I’m still pretty convinced of the black gloss serif. Maybe more play time with the texture of the paint.

I came back later on in the evening and saw the rest of the work Hiba did with matte black before she left for the day.

Definitely harder to read, but the thicker black paint and the matte vinyl really work up on the wall. Experiments on Thursday.

More soon.

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Martha Street Studio Residency Day 3: Install & Exhibition

A quick three days at Martha Street Studio finished up with the opening for our exhibition, All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg. The show features a series of posters made by participants from our workshops and created in response to the stories they collectively wrote.

The exhibition runs until January 5, 2012!

We have to extend an incredibly huge thank you to everyone at Martha Street Studio for facilitating this residency and exhibition. We were floored by the support we received there and were lucky enough to host some exceptionally great Winnipegers at our workshops.

Needless to say, we had a great time — and below is how it all came together.

Continue reading “Martha Street Studio Residency Day 3: Install & Exhibition”

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Next Week’s Adventure: Martha Street Studio in Winnipeg

Next week, Justin, Michelle and Josh will be stationed at Martha Street Studio in Winnipeg to do a quick residency involving workshops, walks, and a lot of on-the-ground research leading up to an exhibition.

In Winnipeg? Check out the Martha Street Studio facebook page for more event information!

Here’s the details:

Martha Street Studio houses an exhibition gallery open to the public 5 days a week from 10–5pm. Martha Street Studio also has an inventory of artists’ work for sale and an archive of work produced at the studio since 1988.

“All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg”

We know a city from the stories we tell about the city. But, we can also know something about a city from the stories we don’t tell about it. Winnipeg is no different. Some of these stories we tell are about celebrating everything the community has to offer, while others are about all of the things that make the city a difficult place to love. However, there are still other stories that fall somewhere between the two, based on the personal narratives we all chart as we live, work, play, and move throughout the city. These stories of our everyday experiences are the ones that we don’t hear enough about.

You are invited to participate in the creation of a sprawling series of posters featuring the titles of all the stories Winnipeg isn’t telling, written by you. Facilitated by Broken City Lab, this workshop will begin with shared story telling, community mapping, and DIY design tactics and culminate in an exhibition at Martha Street Studio, of all the posters.

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WORKSHOP INFORMATION:

Monday, November 21st, 6-9pm
Tuesday, November 22nd, 6-9pm
Each workshop costs $10.
Sign up now, space is limited!
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EXHIBITION INFORMATION:

“All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg”
Broken City Lab Exhibition at Martha Street Studio
Opening November 23rd 5-8pm
Exhibition runs November 24th-January 5th

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And, we’ll definitely be trying to blog as much as we can about the trip! More soon.

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HFBC Book Ready for you to Explore (& get a copy for your collection!)

Remember a couple of weeks ago, we received some copies of our How to Forget the Border Completely book? Well, there were a couple of print issues that have now been resolved, so if you’ve been waiting to get your hands on a copy, now’s the time! HFBC was an 8-month research project that looked at the ways in which we might actually be able to forget about the border between Windsor and Detroit. Whether through small-scale micro-grants or large-scale infrastructure proposals, we imagined these two cities as one big community across 150 pages.

You can purchase the book through Blurb. It should arrive within a couple weeks tops. We’re going to get around to offering a soft cover version too, soon. In the meantime, you can also read through a PDF of the entire book (p.s. it’s 72mb). It’s probably not as fun as having a book in your hands, but the content is there for your perusal.

This book is actually phase 1 of a larger HFBC project — think airplanes, scale models, and a few other things that will take a lot longer to complete than we ever anticipated. For now though, we’re just really happy to see this in print!

 

 

 

 

 

 

BUY a copy!!!

How to Forget the Border Completely is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

 

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How to Forget the Border Completely, submitted for print!

Months of work and research culminated in a 3am submission to Blurb to print our How to Forget the Border Completely publication. It’s about 150 pages long. I’m really happy with this, and I can’t wait to get it back in print. Above, a screenshot of some of the pages in the PDF.

In terms of distributing the content, it’s now really difficult to imagine parting it from this kind of collected format. We’ll offer the book for sale through Blurb, but maybe a PDF as well? Hard to say, it’s 70mb, a bit of an unruly download I suppose. The version I ordered was excessively expensive, but it seemed only fitting to get at least a few copies with a nice image wrap, matte pages, and no Blurb logo.

Anyways, huge thanks to my BCL colleagues and the always generous Lee Rodney and Tom Provost for working with us on this. On a side note, the more I work with InDesign, the more I love it.

It’s election day in Ontario, you should vote.

How to Forget the Border Completely is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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BCL Report: End of April, 2011 (the Art of Planning & Collaboration)

Over three days this week, we got a lot done. And, as I write this, stuff is still getting done. This is why collaboration is such a valuable model for art practice.

But, it’s not just about getting stuff done, it’s the challenges, the insights, the novel perspectives that can be brought up around a table that push the work forward. With some of us having worked together for nearly three years, we can anticipate one another and move ideas and projects that much further along because there’s a context, there’s a history, there’s a resonating understanding of what we can do together.

Collaboration FTW.

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Nicole Lavelle’s Lovely Projects: Be Okay + Neighbourhood Flags

Lovely text-based work. It’d be great to randomly run into this!!

As Nicole puts it:

This piece was an experiment in context, engagement and language. Uh, actually, what I mean is: I wanted people to see these phrases in interesting contexts and engage on an emotional level with the words I had chosen. This piece was also about my grandmother dying.

Materials: xerox, colored paper, thumbtacks, paper coffee cups, xerox transfer, manilla envelopes, cellophane bags, staples.

Nicole was also commissioned by GOOD to design a neighbourhood flag — great idea, right?!

Gorgeous work all-around. She’s also designing materials for Open Engagement 2011!!!

Spend some time checking out all her work — book design, typography, you know, making stuff and doing things. Very specific aesthetic choices, but fun reference for our (imaginary) future publications.

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Steam Roller Printing

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OK AWESOME. Talk about bringing the arts to the people, Martha Street Studio, a community-based printmaking studio recently conducted their second “Under Pressure” steam roller print festival! Found on MAKE:

For the past two years Martha Street Studio has hosted ‘Under Pressure’, Winnipeg’s only Steamroller Print Festival. High school students, community groups, and artists from across Winnipeg create large linoleum carvings leading up to the festival. On the day of the festival the carvings are inked and printed with the aid of a real steamroller.

GO CANADA!

via MAKE article

above link also provides more pics!