1. Juxtapoz has a new gif page full of gifs gifing gifs. Gifs on gifs on gifs on gifs.

2. Kate Pugsley added four new pieces to her TTP collection!

3. Chicagoans had a flash Soul Train line in Wicker Park to honor Don Cornelius this week.

4. A look at Google Street View as art. Related: Dogs on Street View.

5. C-Monster’s shots from the Outsider Art Fair in New York last weekend.

Last week I was paging through the interwebz and found the craziest thing EVER. It’s called “social media,” sometimes referred to as “the social medias,” and like 30 other people must have also found it on the Google web search site or something because it was POPPING.

There are so many social medias! What with Thumtback Press being an online store, I figured we should probably get involved. So I did what anybody would do and got a college student to do some research for me. Here are his notes on the different social medias:

- Twitter: where you say whether you take sugar in your coffee! Amazeballs.

- Facebook: pictures of cane sugar, pictures of coffee.

- Foursquare: this is where I put sugar in my coffee!

- Tumblr: reblog same images from Facebook (see above).

- Pinterest: lord if I know. Something about rectangles.

In an effort to stay on all the hottest poppingest things ever we too have started to get onto the social medias. We have everything now. We are the Wal-Mart of social medias. Come socialize with us!

]]> http://www.thumbtackpress.com/blog/2012/02/02/internet-digital-social-medias-lol-rite/feed/ 0 http://www.thumbtackpress.com/blog/2012/02/01/rip-don-cornelius/ http://www.thumbtackpress.com/blog/2012/02/01/rip-don-cornelius/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:07:27 +0000 thumbtackpressBen http://www.thumbtackpress.com/blog/?p=2758

Taking a quick break to pour some out for Don Cornelius, coolest dude around.

And here he is interviewing James Brown (with an Al Sharpton appearance):

Kate Pugsley, Gemelia

Kate Pugsley added four new works to her TTP collection recently, and it’s a good opportunity to look through some of her work that’s been on the store since last year.

This piece, Gemelia, always gets us. The texture and brushwork is as heavy as the glare of the woman. It adds a whole other dimension to the subject. What is she thinking? Where did she come from? At this point, we’ve started thinking that the color and semi-blandness of the background is unnerving, as if whatever she’s coming from (somewhere cold) is too ugly to show.

See for yourself:

You can see the rest of Kate’s TTP works here.

From left to right: Color Blind, It Starts, Rubescent, and Wunderkind.

You can see all of Kate’s TTP collection here.

1. Do you also have $58 million just sitting around the house? Sucks, right? Well now you could buy a medieval castle.

2. Or you could buy the house that Pablo Escobar was killed in.

3. Jenny Morgan’s portraits at Lifelounge. (Some NSFW.)

4. Ridiculous pasta tips and schadenfreude.

5. Video: new Matthew Dear EP is fire.

Images: Untitled (Zone Fighter W/Bear And Bird) by Steve Seeley, Delicious by Martha Rich, and Foxgirl by Oksana Badrak

People ask us about our name all the time. Thumbtack Press*. What’s a Thumbtack Press? You press a thumbtack, sure, but a Thumbtack Press is more of a noun, like a printing press almost.

Thumbnail sketches are something else entirely, so we’ll ignore them, and likewise with thumbing one’s nose, thumbs up and thumbs down, or being under someone’s thumb.

But remember with us for a second that moment when you first put art on your wall**. Remember that piece of cardboard or memory board or your innocent bedroom plaster wall waiting to be abused. Remember that moment when you first cut out a magazine clipping or a love note? Remember tacking it to your wall?

We still – all of us – put art up. And it’s not just “right click + set as background.” It’s tactile. It’s physical. We hang art.

For us, the thumbtack is a reminder of those moments. Trying to cut out the face of some celebrity crush so neatly, or constantly adjusting a piece so that it looks centered from across the room.

At lunch with our friend Peter Mars, he said Thumbtack Press is a noun – it’s me, it’s you, it’s us – but it’s also a verb. Press. Press up art into your home. Into your life.

____________________________

* – The name “Thumbtack Press” is really only as old as the word “thumbtack,” coined in 1884, which just so happens to be the year Eleanor Roosevelt was born, in case you care. It comes from the combination of two old German words: “tack,” a 13th century word meaning clasp, and “thumb,” which comes from words for fatty or swollen thickness. “Press,” on the other hand, has at least three roots: an old French word for “crowd,” the Latin “pressåre” (like, “to press”), and, of course, full court press in basketball.

** – Ok, you could put it on your ceiling, too.

The Jealous Curator wrote some nice words about us this afternoon and put up some good shots of work by Kimiaki Yaegashi (as you can see above), Lilly Piri, Martha Rich, Kate Pugsley, and Gianluca Foli.

Go page through their stuff and check em out on Twitter and Facebook.

Yeah so they’re from a while ago, but they’re still amazing. Next level gifs = “experimental animation.”

Heiko’s TTP collection is here.

Image: Pete Ryan, Handshake. You can see Pete’s TTP collection here.

(As told to Megan Freeman.)

“Just staying busy drawing.”

“I like the ability to show my work alongside peers who I admire. I like that if somebody likes my work enough to hang it in their home, they can.”

“Hahahaha, I cite Rasta? Awesome. Well, in that case, Jah is a big influence.”

“I LOVE fantasy books and movies, but you’d never really know it from my work. I have stacks of old children’s books my dad used to read to me – visually my illustration style can be seen plain as day in these pages. bright colors, simple drawings, etc.”

“My process involves a lot of swearing and self loathing. I read the brief I’m given and try to sum up the article in one sentence. I’ll also make lists of words that seem to describe the article and hope those yield some fruit. Then I spend a lot of time in my sketchbook, looking for gold. It’s never ever an easy experience, but the pay off of a great idea keeps me coming back.”

“I use acrylic paint, a silk screen, and linoleum blocks. Photoshop helps pull things together, or polish an image off.”

“Conceptually I remember seeing David Hockney’s work in high school and being really blown away by his ability to tell a whole story in one image. There are many modern masters of this in the illustration community: Guy Billout, Brian Cronin, Dan Page, Jon Krause, Alex Nabaum, Nick Dewar RIP, Shout, Craig Frazier – I do my best to keep pace.”

“There is a glut of illustration talent [in Toronto] – some people i know well, others only their work, but it’s cool to live in a city full of so many well known illustrators.”

1. As TTP owner Barry emailed, with the link to the video above, “DAVE COOPER ANIMATION!”

2. “Make a contemporary version of a modern day classic.” The Fox is Black’s re-covered books contest. Go enter it.

3. Shots from Less and More: the Design Ethos of Dieter Rams at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art via Domus.  Apple eat your heart out.

4. David Hockney and technology.

5. Vanity Fair did a long thing on Lucien Freud and psychology and stuff. RIP the legend.

When the TTP robots aren’t reconstructing Lego replicas of famous Roman wars or trying to draw perfect circles, they travel the world to find new artists. TTP is, after all, international through and through, and the robots do not like being told they are “parochial” or “limited in scope.” It makes them angry.

But just mention Kimiaki Yaegashi (above), Tatsuro Kiuchi (middle), and Masayoshi Mizuho (below), the Thumbtack Press artists from Japan, and watch the robots’ little teeth show through their grated smiles. They love the way they use color – never quite what you expect, always with some kind of pop or joke somewhere – but the robots especially love the harsh light in which humans come off in some of their work. Kimiaki’s work has that scathing sexual criticism; Tatsuro’s can feel like you’re spying on a distant, private human interaction. Best of all, Masayoshi’s work simply foregoes human subjects completely.

The TTP robots are particular in their taste. They throw a fit if anybody mentions weak willed or predictable art. And they have taken to Tatsuro, Kimiaki, and Masayoshi.

Hopefully now they’ll come back from Japan. The robots love Japan.

The Selby photographed Olaf Hajek’s Berlin Mitte home. Jealous?

(You can see Olaf’s TTP collection here. )

(Image: Bride Diving by Penelope Dullaghan)

Thumbtack Press artist Penelope Dullaghan runs a robust illustration blog/community over at Illustration Friday. The weekly contest, interviews, forum, and pick of the week combine to make IF a good resource for illustrators, no matter if you’re emerging or established.

IF also has a whole page of useful resources for illustrators, from links to other sites to materials.

Go look!

(Image: Mermaid Gold by Kate Pugsley)

First of all, thanks to everyone who responded to last week’s open edition prints blast. We thought it was important to be forward and open about our collection and why we sell open edition prints, and the responses I think showed that people appreciated it.

I want to follow up with one specific aspect that some people, including Justin Miller from Bound Staff Press, pointed out. With certain prints, namely those from woodcuts, linocuts, engravings, and similar mediums, every print that is painstakingly handmade – with the necessary tenderness towards ink and paper position, besides all the other factors – is original. Sometimes print runs have to be limited because running a lot of prints can affect the template. In that sense, there is a whole other category of prints that you could call “limited original editions.”  As Justin said in his email, “archival copies are not the same as original printmaking.”

As always, we really appreciate you all responding to us with your thoughts. It’s what makes the TTP community special. Feel free to email us anytime at feedback@thumbtackpress.com or get at us on our Facebook or Twitter.

Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 artist edition by Fernando Chamarelli.

1. Haruki Murakami covers from around the world.

2. Issue 8 of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest is out. Something about “Grassroots Modernism.”

3. Thanks to Illustration Friday’s Penelope Dullaghan for her kind words this week. Go look at Penelope’s TTP collection.

4. Bookshelf porn.

5. (Above) The trailer for LCD Soundsystem’s swan song is out. Whoa.

(Image: Nick Dewar, Simplicity)

Like the dismembered head of an unpopular king, the phrase “limited edition” is tossed around a lot these days. But what does it mean exactly? Limited edition of what? And are there unlimited editions? Can anything be unlimited? And as long as we’re into editions, what does “open edition” mean? Why does Thumbtack Press sell open editions?

Join us on this bullet train and we’ll explain:

• Whenever you hear edition, you know whoever said it isn’t talking about originals. You know because otherwise you would’ve heard the term “original.” The original is the original, art’s holiest kernel.
• Prints are reproductions of the original. If the original work is the kernel, then the prints are the beautiful ears of corn it produces. These reproductions can be made in a number of different ways, but in today’s world they involve big complicated words and just trust us the production details aren’t important.
• In order to control the volume of a certain piece, some artists (or their representatives) limit the number of prints released into the market for sale. Hence: limited edition prints.
• Limited edition prints are also a way in which to drum up support or hype or buzz. “Buy now,” you might have heard once or twice or a million times recently, “before the whole run is sold out!”

Enter open editions. Open edition prints are prints that are not limited to a certain number. So there is a potentially unlimited amount of prints that an artist could allow to be reproduced as open edition prints.

• (Yes, they could be called “unlimited editions” or “limitless editions” but open sounds better.)
• (Oh don’t be so difficult.)
• More often than not nowadays, open edition prints are produced in the same way as limited edition prints. We’re talking that top of the line archival ink on archival paper process that will not fade until after the Armageddon (or 75 years – whichever comes first).
• We at Thumbtack Press sell open edition prints.
• Why? Because we’re not the Steins. We don’t have a trillion original pieces of art hanging on our walls.
• And anyway, limited edition prints are often prohibitively priced. In our world, the world in which 99% of the world lives, many limited edition prints are simply unattainable.
• Enter open editions (again). They are always more reasonably priced than limited edition prints.

Open edition prints are the most democratic and accessible dissemination of art possible. That’s why we do it.

(As told to Megan Freeman.)

“Most of the time the bright dots stand for positive emotions, the doodles for negative ones.”

“Deer Hunter (above) is based on Velázquez’s painting Prince Balthasar Charles as a Hunter. When looking for photos on which I can base my paintings I often find disturbing pictures of children posing proudly in front of their hunting trophies. I can’t understand that people think of hunting as a amusement. I wanted to express this incomprehension in the painting.”

“Principally I don’t like to think about categories. I paint things that I care about and I paint them the way I like it. It’s not important what kind of category this could fit into.”

“I’m trying to find a better approach with my paintings. The elements I add to the environments represent certain thoughts or feelings that are connected with my experience of nature. They can be pleasant as well as nasty.”

“I’ve liked being outdoors since I was little. As a boy I used to build hiding places in the bushes or looked for secret paths along the river. I loved climbing trees and building dams in the brook. What I liked most was wandering through the woods off the beaten tracks. For as long as I can remember, these enterprises always stirred my imagination in a very special way. Later I sometimes took a camera with me, only to find out that the photos didn’t reflect my experiences at all.”

“Recently I tend to start with acrylic paint and change to oil when the picture is almost finished. I can work faster with acrylic, but oil is more suitable to give a painting atmosphere and a more natural appearance.”

“Sometimes I paint a landscape first and only when it’s finished I start thinking about what I can add to it. This was the case with Assimilation (below). I had to continue working on the finished landscape with strongly thinned down paint to create the transparency. Then I used several layers of paint to reduce the transparency again.”

“Excluding for the moment that Pop Surrealism still doesn’t have the status it deserves, I’m pretty happy with the current art scene in Germany. This hasn’t always been like that. A couple of years ago, only conceptual art was taken seriously and rambling about artistic positions took up more space than experiencing art. I think this has changed a bit now.”

See the rest of Heiko’s TTP collection here.