Idiots' Box

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January 17, 2007

Man Joe Rises

Okay. So, I've discovered a way to time travel.
Here it is:

So, like a week ago, I was still working on getting the wall painting done. In fact, I was really just starting. The problem was this: I had to actually figure out how I was going to illustrate Volume IV before putting it up on the wall. And, in order to figure out how to illustrate Volume IV, I had to figure out how it was going to play out on the wall. One of them Catch-22-type-dealies (incidentally, I am quite fond of Catch-22, partly because it was an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question that I just totally pulled out of my you-know-where and stunned my otherwise insanely superior opponents with). So, after figuring out where things were going to go (walls), I had to figure out what they would look like (book) then put them (book) back on the walls (walls). It was all very circular, and I finally got straight what it was I was working on, when, and where.

Once that was all figured out, I had to print everything out life-size to transfer to the walls. Matthew had kindly made me a 3D model out of matboard which I was going to use to sketch everything out on. However, after a few jostles to my desk while I was tracing something else, the whole thing collapsed in a pathetic heap, and then he accidentally used a bunch of parts of it to make a drilling jig until all that was left when I tried to put it all back together again was the ceiling. So, I ended out laying it out on the computer which worked a lot better. Sorry, Matthew.

So once the printouts were done, we had to transfer them onto the walls and ceiling. The longest and most complicated piece was a long panorama meant to run the length of the ceiling. We got it all taped together and made sure it fit before taping it up on the ceiling.

After that, we left Kate alone with some chalk and a pencil for 6 hours while we went home and ate crumpets. When we came back, the transfer was done. How's that for a prize-winning intern?

In order to know where the individual spot illustrations would go, I had to map out the writing. We didn't bother with transfering it, partly because that would take WAY too long and partly because it would be too messy to clean up and partly because I wasn't going to try to reproduce a serifed font on the wall, because that's just crazy talk.

Then, it was time to start painting. I believe this is actually the following day, though. Basically (not to give everything away) the book is fairly monochromatic. So we just needed to fill in most of the objects with grey, which we did first. Kate had realized after an hour or so of neck-cracking labor that a stool would be a most helpful accessory. That's what we pay the interns for - groundbreaking ideas.

Once the greys were filled in, I sent Kate home and painted in the black linework. This actually took a couple of days. The first night (Tuesday?) I felt like I was getting close to being done, but my hand cramped up and I couldn't hold the brush anymore without getting all twitchy and palsied. It was pretty ugly. So at 5:30 am I had to stop, even though in all other respects I was ready to finish it off. But the next day (Wednesday) I got it done - in the end, my favorite part of the whole deal was the skyline dripping from the ceiling down the front wall:

So as not to repeat ourselves, I will refer you to thebarnstorming for all the in-between bits. Head on over there, and you'll get the added bonus of seeing me shake my groove thing.

At any rate, the next night (Wednesday) I pulled another all-nighter and painted in the text. For the text, I used my real, nice gouache, instead of the elementary school-grade stuff I had gotten for the rest of it. Ooh, did it go on nicely! I wish I had used it for the rest of it, but it probably would have ended up being kind of expensive. The best part was how I was just about to start a new sentence (about at the 5 page mark in the book) and had a bad feeling that I had skipped something. In all my immaculate planning and laying out of the words on the computer, I had somehow managed to skip a whole page. So I had to improvise and cram it in the best I could, otherwise it would loop the whole rest of the text around so that it didn't end in the right place. WELL. If you're especially attentive, come to the show and look at the wall and try to figure out the spot where the text goes all crazy back and forth in a weird little clump - that's where it all happened. But I think I faked it pretty well. So, if you do figure it out, write in, and if you're right, I'll send you a prize. I might even send you a prize if you're wrong. In the end, it was 8am and I was pretty much done.

Thursday we were busy in book-making mode. Now that I had laid all of Volume IV out, we had to actually produce them. Matthew and Kate did an incredible superhuman job getting them all printed and trimmed and bound. They were pretty much working non-stop, while I ate some more crumpets. At around 3 in the morning, Kate started to wonder when we were planning on eating dinner and going to bed.

Friday I had to finish up a few things on our display - Matthew made a mock oversized book for Man Joe to rise up out of. I had to add in the words and attach the previously floating, legless Man Joe to the decapitated legs that were in the oversized book.

It was way fun. We were hoping people wouldn't touch and move the book around, but we both absentmindedly did both, even though we knew that there was nothing extra in the book (as in, no other pictures, blank pages, nothing, nichts, nada). Huh. There must be a psychological study in there somewhere.

At any rate, all of the art pieces were finally done. The question was, how many softcover regular books should we expect to sell? We had no idea. So, Matthew being the "positive thinker" insisted that we make an exhorbitant number of books. Which we did. Into the wee hours of Friday night.

We had been asked to give a gallery talk (along with the 12 other artists) - the challenge was thus to keep it short, but still make sure we got across what we were all about. We spent a lot of time agonizing about what it is we do and why (artists are supposed to have some sort of purpose, where nobody asks such things of writers/bookmakers. I guess because it is supposed to be self-evident with a book...). We're not really sure what we're all about, but we had a lot of ideas that made us sound halfway legit. After staying up late cutting, trimming, stapling and taping, we insisted that Kate stay up for another 20 minutes to help us practice our speech. She was gracious, but essentially told us to stop babbling on for so long.

It was excellent advice.

Okay. Time travel's done. It's now today again, and right now again. Time for bed. Good night!

Posted by ribbu at January 17, 2007 01:31 AM

Comments

Posted by: snikes at January 18, 2007 01:45 AM