Lee Bontecou Working

This image is always at the front of my mind. It’s 1957 and Lee Bontecou is in Rome on a Fulbright working in her studio. There’s so much that is dear to me here—the widow, the shutters, the light, the shadows of the sculptures on the wall, her blue jeans, her turtleneck, her little nun haircut which she still keeps, how she seems like she’s jamming so much work into her time. It looks like a Vermeer portrait but instead of doing needlework or pouring water, she’s sculpting. Lee learned to weld steel frames that year and then she did insane things with them over the next 50+ years.

If it’s OK to focus down a bit more on her lewk, which is so blessedly consistent, I’d like to point out that here she is back in NYC at her Wooster Street studio, probably freezing, owning zōri + socks + blowtorch. And then, like, here she is now and I bet you she’s got slippers on underneath that table.

It pleases me.

Atsuko Tanaka

I. Untitled, from 1954

II. Electric Dress, 1956

III. Round on Sand (35 mm), 1968

Midwife Pamphlet, etc.

Super stoked to see UDON #1 so happily at home here. Thanks very much for the shout out Jordan and Joanna! And, at the end of the day, thank you Paul. Good man. Y’all got the fire under me to finally get this sucker up on our web shop. UDON is a two-sded poster publication. It costs $3 each and you can buy one here.

NOIZ Tonight!

Tonight.

NOIZ in the Works

Rachel Kaye paints a giant 60″ x 36″ piece of acetate + our friends at ZOO-INK = “NOIZ”
Thanks so much Rachel! And thanks, Tessa, for taking these beautiful shots!

Osborn/Woods: Two California Poster Artists

I was so excited to come across a 1969 interview with David Osborn and Charles Woods published in American Artist and shared on The Overprint. When I went up to Nevada City to interview Charles late in 2009, he was frail but still enthusiastically sharing his wealth of knowledge about the good old days of pre-computerized graphic design and printing. I got this frantic feeling that I had to get this information down and his work out into the world. We hosted the Osborn/Woods Poster Show a few months later and I believe Charles was pleased with it. Afterwards we went out for champagne & oysters at Foreign Cinema and talked about archiving his work and maybe publishing a book together. We never got that chance, and so it is especially wonderful to come across this detailed description of Charles and David’s “silk-screen process used for lithography” as well as a glimpse of the two of them working together.

Original “In Gold We Trust” postcards are available on our web shop here, and there are many more Osborn/Woods designs available in our actual shop. Also, definitely check out the wonderful (and affordable!) group of Osborn/Woods posters available on Etsy. I just bought a few more myself—never enough!

Rachel Kaye

RACHEL KAYE

NOIZ Night

NOIZ by Rachel Kaye

for Gravel & Gold Goods

Wednesday night

Come by to buy!

El Anatsui, Brooklyn

EL ANATSUI

Read about it and go see it at the Brooklyn Art Museum!

Tadanori Yokoo (Crazy Countdown to Japan)

Tadanori Yokoo, now I know your name, I get to see you everywhere! Blessings! At the very wonderful, sadly now closed MoMA show Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde I saw several very nice posters then at my silkscreen class I saw you being ripped off by a teenager. And at Kiosk, where I’m working Mondays, I get to enjoy and straighten your postcard that looks like this poster:

Yeeeeessssss, it’s a nice dark one. One can buy one from Kiosk on Mondays when I work there or any day of the week (except Sundays) or online here. Or if you got the cash, buy the book:

That’s it Tadanori, or fan of Tadanori or whoever you are. You buy the book because I’m saving up for Japan and I’d like to see. Just buy it and then bring it by Kiosk some Monday soon when I’m working and we can look at it together :^P