References to the abuse of pink and octopi, a nudie flip book sequence with an ode to spider webs voice over and a series of all-to-brief, intimate conversational excerpts found in the trailer for Eileen Yaghoobian’s doc about rock posters all leave me hoping it way to the states much sooner than later.

The film’s description and featured artist list from the site only serve to hammer the anticipation home. See for yourself:

Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. This unique documentary examines the creative spirit that drives these indie graphic artists. They pick through the dregs of America’s schizophrenic culture and piece them back together…Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivisectionists of America’s morbidly obese consumer culture.

Brian Chippendale • Art Chantry • Print Mafia • Andrew Bird • DMBQ • Clyde Jones • Ron Liberti • Tom Hazelmyer • Stephen McClellan • Bryce McCloud • Seripop • Ames Bros • Methane Studios • El Bado/William Ballard • Tyler Stout • Rob Jones • Jay Ryan • Mat Daly • Nick Butcher • Keith Herzik • Steve Walters • Shawn Wolfe • Noel Waggener • Jeff Kleinsmith • Mig Kokinda • Dale Flattum • Mike King • Dan Schlissel • Stainboy • Uncle Charlie • American Poster Institute

via: Eileen Yaghoobian / diedyoungstayedpretty.com

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Dustin Humphrey’s new work for the Insight DOPAMINE campaign and video does for surfing what Crazy Dan Sturt did for skateboarding with booms and other assorted means of breaking envelopes beyond the fisheye. Brilliant.

via: ffffound / designyoutrust

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My friend Jess Gibson has been busy in the NEMO basement making strides on his side film project with Portland designer Aaron Draplin appropriately titled, The Draplin Thing. From the sound of things at Jess’s site, editing is closing in on completion — just as soon as they get back from the World’s Largest Yard Sale.

Check out the new trailer (Draplin vs. USA) and join us in the ranks of those eagerly awaiting a deeper look into the mind of a true American original.

via: Jess Gibson / Draplin Design Co., North America

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New, official site for all things related to the show, There is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids. Updates, show calendar, galleries.. the works.

xeroxeyelids.com

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Needles + Pens have updated their site with new images from opening night of There is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids. They’ve also made the show Catalog/Zine by Rich Jacobs available for $5 along with #13 of his ongoing exploration in toner, MOVE.

Speaking of Rich, I just received word that he’s hanging the next installation of the show in London. More to follow…

Opening photos / Catalog / Move #13

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“Dan’s work bears the hallmark of his intelligence…”
—Liz Siegel, The Art Institute of Chicago

Artist, photographer and old friend Dan Estabrook, who’s show I recently posted about, has been included in Anthropy Arts, The Photographers Series. A new DVD series that provides the first comprehensive study of today’s most influential photographers.

That’s perfectly fitting description of Dan and his decades-long exploration of vision and technique which began around the time of our late-night Harvard darkroom stints, when he would sneak me in between skate and zine-making sessions.

From Anthropy Arts:

Working exclusively in 19th century processes, Dan Estabrook produces intimate, yet compelling photographs that illustrate the beauty of long forgotten methods.
- - -
Dan Estabrook discovered photography through the underground magazines of the punk-rock and skateboard culture of the 1980’s. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he worked with Christopher James, from whom he learned alternative photographic processes as well as ways to combine his disparate artistic interests.

It’s great to see another document serving up the recogntion Desta deserves. 

Dan’s skate zine Contort is also traveling with the show, There Is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids.

The Photographers Series: Dan Estabrook (trailer)

via: Anthropy Arts / Pathetica / Desta: Flickr

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Update via Needles and Pens:

Feb. 13, 2008
The great hive of the internet is buzzing about over the Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids show, look onward: GSD’s blog over at Altamont, Roger Bridges’ Strange Beautiful, Bernie McGinn’s Of Skateboards + Copy Machines, Andy Jenkins’ Bend Press, and Epicly Trife

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I’ve been working on a post for this show since Rich Jacobs contacted me through Garry Davis to be a part of it. That post has become an epic tome documenting my experiences in the early 80’s skate zine phenomena that despite my best efforts, shows no sign of being finished any time soon and has evolved into something else altogether.

So — I’m keeping it on the back burner, simmering until done.

In the meantime, There is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids opened last Saturday (2/9) at the Needles and Pens gallery in San Francisco. Billed as, “an art exhibition exploring the realm of 1980’s skate zines & xerox art from a small space in time (about 20 years ago), + what they do now.” and featuring “the zines & art of the original makers and xerox tweakers / stamp lickers / mail artists…”, the show was curated by artist/curator and zine maker, Rich Jacobs (Skate-Edge + Move). Though I remember Skate-Edge with uncertain clarity, I recently became (re)aquatinted with Rich via his posts on GSD’s myspace page and their semi-recentish zine collab, Be Quiet (Maybe You Should Try It).

Focused primarily on zines that merged skateboarding with art and blurred the lines between, the show documents a condensed sampling of a decade’s worth of xerox art spanning the early 80’s and 90’s.

Included in the show are a group of zine makers occasionally referred to (by ourselves) as the Circle. Individuals who found each other through skateboarding, stapled xerox, and a short-lived art collective called The Basement. Friends who’s postal connections were also documented in I Check the Mail Only When Certain It Has Arrived (Bend Press, 1994).

Interspersed with current works, the show displays evidence of twin obsessions that foreshadowed today’s movement in contemporary art and continues to drive our own lives on one level or another to this day.

Thanks Rich!

NEEDLES AND PENS / MOVE 15: “There is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids”
Opening: SATURDAY FEB 9TH (6-10pm)
Curated by Rich Jacobs.
An art exhibition exploring the realm of 1980s Skate Zines & Xerox Art featuring the zines and art of the original makers with work from : Garry S. Davis (skate fate), Tod Swank (swank zine), Thomas Campbell (joke), Chris Johanson (karma boarder), Andy Jenkins (bend), Bernie McGinn (tiki), Kevin Wilkins (7 zine), John Dettman-Lytle (naughty nomads), Mark Waters (408), Rich Jacobs (skate-edge), Jocko Weyland (elk, revenge against boredom, author of: the answer is never), Dennis Remsing (rem zine), Dan Estabrook (contort), Tim Kerr (Big Boys), Chris Shary (burly obsession zine-uk), Ron Cameron (dope zine- a blockhead mag, and skate slate), Mofo (thrasher mag photographer ), Rodger Bridges (grim ripper, powerhouse, dancing skeleton zines) …and more!!

There is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids
Opening photos: Bluno / Flickr (p: B.McGinn)
New Gallery! GSD Photos

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I first met Dan Estabrook when he was working the counter of a skate shop in Boston during my first semester at art school. By the time I dropped out to work at Transworld, I’d spent the greater part of a year skating with him and a handful of locals, making zines, sneaking into his Harvard classes and exploring it’s red-lit subterranean catacombs.

Where I was content to continue exploring our rigged, Letraset® half-tone transfer printing technique for better photo reproduction in zines, Dan dug deeper into tin type, albumen, salt prints and other antiquated techniques and processes.

A lot of us made art at the time. Dan is one of a very few who became an artist in the true sense of the term. Not just because he’s maintained an active presence in contemporary art circles, but because he has continued to live a life of personal creation and expression as fully and consciously as he always did.

Just one hundred years ago, science could still claim palmistry, phrenology, and physiognomy among its disciplines, and even today we tend to believe that written on the body are the keys to decipher the secret language of the everyday. There is science, too, in photography — mixing salt and silver to represent the otherwise unseen details of the natural world. By processes physical and chemical, it is even possible to distill one’s breath, capture time, and give a material life to the immaterial. It is this alchemy that moves me. Using and emulating nineteenth-century printing techniques, and making visible the very physical materials of which photographs are made, I attempt to have seemingly anonymous photographs become highly personal objects. In these images a single repeated shape, a formation of flowers, or the patterns of dust and decay are almost legible texts, inscribed on the skin of paper, tin, and glass.
– Dan Estabrook, 1998

Desta is showing at DCFA until the end of December.

If you’re in the area — don’t hesitate:

Dan Estabrook, MUSEUM
1 November – 22 December, 2007
Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 West 25th Street, Suite 506
New York, NY

Wish I could be there, D.

via: Pathetica (work) / Flickr / DCFA / Edelman Gallery (bio) / Artnet

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Scorces is the strange child of two Charalambides members, Christina Carter and Heather Murray (formerly of Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast). Their label’s namesake is synonymous with their sound —beautiful, haunting and wholly other.

Scorces opened up the Thurston show at Doug Fir Lounge on 10.25.07. They also opened up my mind, utterly possessing it for the duration of their set. The concept of sirens kept returning, until my search for definition folded under the lull of their call and the weight of their performance.

Comparisons can be drawn to an associative vocal array ranging from the space whisper of Gilli Smyth to the thick and layered barrage of Diamanda Galas, but the closest reference I have to the resultant affect of Scorces is related to a new years party I attended many years ago in Coral Gables, Florida. That night, the drumming and chanting of three Afro-Cuban Santeros gradually culled me toward an extremely deep state of trance. Sans chemicals and completely without expectation or explanation. One minute I was following the building and wandering syncopations, the next — face to face with one of the drummers who was no longer drumming but instead, standing mere feet away from me. Nodding in knowing recognition as I slowly regained focus.

By replacing the drumming with the duo’s densely effected slide and pedal guitars and the chanting with echoed coos to wailing glossolalia, Scorces performance resounds as strikingly similar. It left me affected, haunted and yearning for more.

In the ensuing search, I found a live performance of theirs from Brian Turner’s show on the almighty WFMU circa 2003 with Double Leopard’s Marcia Basset. A gently psychedelic inversion of their more overdriven show last month but just as alluring and now, ripped and shared for offline listening until more winds its way from across the distant waves.

Scorces via: Brian Turner / WFMU (.ra)
One ( 25mb, mp3.zip, MF)
Two ( 22.1mb, mp3.zip, MF)

Related: Heather Leigh / s|b_tube: 01, 02 / Charalambides
Reviewed: Stylus / Tiny Mix Tapes

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