astronautdinosaur.com Blog | Scott Listfield on art and sh*t.

June 23, 2011
by Scott Listfield
1 Comment

Jason Chase Makes Better Prints Than You

You need only glance over those links to your right to see that I’m a big proponent of online prints (buy ‘em!). I’ll almost certainly be delving into more detail about my experiences with various printing sites and technologies in a future post, but I’ve long been an advocate for artists to sell their work as digital prints for a number of reasons. It removes the burden of having physical inventory that you have to manage, sell, and ship. It can greatly increase your audience (to, say, the entire internet), and allows fans of your work who might not be able to afford an original painting to buy something of yours, of quality, to hang on their walls. And, of course, it can make you money, which all artists not named Jeff Koons should be interested in. These are all wins in my book.

"Eveready" by Jason Chase, original painting, 2010, oil on canvas, 24 x 66 inches.

Screen from Eveready print.

I’ll also admit that I like not having anything whatsoever to do with actually making the prints, since the sum total of my print-making oeuvre is some really pathetic etchings I made while in college. Thankfully, not all artists think like I do. Boston painter Jason Chase, one of my closest friends in the art world (or, for that matter, any world) recently said “Fuck digital prints!” (not really) and handmade a series of 12 silkscreen prints based on the painting “Eveready,” of a glass gun over some batteries, that he created for a show we were in together last Winter. Because he’s rather a bit more clever than I am when it comes to painting technique, he realized that if he got some high resolution images of the painting in it’s early stages, as he was layering the different colors, he could take those images and make a silkscreen print out of them. Which is precisely what he did. Even though I’m a big sucker for the ease and simplicity the online printing lifestyle has afforded me (I can be sitting on my couch watching Pawn Stars and be simultaneously selling prints online), as someone who does still paints things by hand (I’m secretly an antiquarian), I admire the dedication of taking it one step further and hand-making a set of prints. Of course, it’s easy to admire them since they turned out so darned nice.

"Eveready" by Jason Chase, 2011, 36 x 13 inches, acrylic screen print on board

"Eveready" prints, screens, and squeegee.

I went over to Jason Chase‘s studio a few weeks ago to help him pull a print or two. He was nice enough to let me help out, and I was nice enough not to accidentally spill printing ink all over the completed prints. Now, apart from watching some friends in high school make bootleg Led Zeppelin shirts, I hadn’t really make a silkscreen before, so it was interesting getting a view into the process. What I especially like about these prints is that, though they are obviously more handmade and organic than digital prints, each layer of color was taken from a photograph of the original painting, manipulated a bit in Photoshop, then translated onto a silkscreen printing frame. The end result shares the content of the original painting, has the feel almost of a crisp wood block print, and necessitated a rather sophisticated understanding of a number of different analog and digital media. Plus they look bad ass.

Detail of "Eveready" screen print.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the content of the piece (and whether the title “Eveready” has anything to do with the gun, or just the batteries). If you’re unfamiliar with Jason Chase’s work, hop over to his website and check it out. He has a number of different styles he employs in his work, but the overarching theme among them is of a childhood spent growing up with cars, toys, strip malls, and television, and how that’s shaped his outlook in life as an adult. Which should be a familiar idea to anyone who has seen my paintings. He’s also (pretty obviously) an extremely talented painter, and seems to regularly enjoy making me jealous of his ability to paint glassy surfaces.

Jason Chase's dog May is goddamn cute.

I went back to Jason’s studio this weekend to check out the finished results (and to play with his dog May). The “Eveready” prints, a series of 12, now done, are all in acrylic on board. Originally intended to have a white background, Jason did an early test print straight onto the unprimed board and changed his mind. The color of the board has a nice warmness to it, and the unprimed board soaks up ink a lot better than a primed version, which makes the black much sharper and consistent in tone. If you’re curious to see more, check out some additional images below. The prints just went up on his site recently, and already 3 of the 12 have been sold. If you’re interested in them (and you should be), make sure you send him an email, with the subject line “I wanna buy a print, mofo!”

: “Eveready” by Jason Chase, original painting, 2010, oil on canvas, 24 x 66 inches.

: “Eveready” by Jason Chase, 2011, 36 x 13 inches, acrylic screen print on board

: Detail of “Eveready” screen print.

: Proof of “Eveready” print.

: Screen from Eveready print.

: “Eveready” prints and screens.

: “Eveready” prints, screens, and squeegee.

: Jason Chase’s dog May is goddamn cute.

June 17, 2011
by Scott Listfield
1 Comment

Against Gaga

Loggins & Messina on a boat

Last weekend was my brother’s bachelor party. Although at first I didn’t really know most of the guys involved, an afternoon spent bowling, shooting pool, and shuttling my brother around town (in a curiously stained white top hat) gave me the sense that they were a pretty good group of guys. We spent the first half of our evening floating up and down the river from Boston on a chartered boat. It didn’t take long for the complimentary tour guide to give up pointing out the sites (which was fine because we all live here), and instead put on a selection of canned music they keep onboard to get you in the mood for boating. ’Cruising,’ the version with Gwyneth and Huey Lewis, ‘Sailing’ by Christopher Cross, and that song by Martha and the Vandellas they played while sailing in ‘One Crazy Summer’ kicked things off. At this point we had doubled back the way we came. I was ignoring the scenery and spending a good amount of time contemplating what other boat music might be coming up next. If you know me at all, you rightly assumed I was pulling for either ‘Come Sail Away’ by Styx or pretty much anything by Loggins and Messina. I have a strange warm spot in my heart for AM hits of the 70′s. I don’t know why.

Sadly, after an early flourish of self awareness, the music devolved into generic Motown hits that had nothing (as far as I could tell) to do with boating. At this point somebody in the bachelor party (probably me) made a joke about Lady Gaga for no real reason. It was met with stony silence. Then, one after another, people started to defend Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga. I was surprised.

Madonna's arms

Now, I understand that a lot of people like Lady Gaga. She sells a lot of albums. In fact, I’m probably going to get some rage fueled spam for posting something negative about her on the internet. So be it. My brother is a few years younger than me, as are most of his friends. But we are still talking about dudes in their late 20′s or early 30′s. I was not on a bachelor party cruise with 14 year old girls (thankfully. That would have been awkward). These were men, mostly with college degrees from quality universities. Men who I presumed were old enough to remember Madonna. And I couldn’t imagine anyone who remembered Madonna – the real one, who sang Vogue and Express Yourself, not the more recent version with Velociraptor arms – having any real interest in Lady Gaga. It’s not that I think she sucks. I just think her music is very very boring. It is a very stale replica of things Madonna did better 20-25 years ago. Even the over the top outfits and “accidental” side boobage is straight out of the Madonna catalog, and feels a little contrived to me.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I recall, back in the mid 90′s, whenever I’d buy an album that was European and involved in any remote way a drum machine or a synthesizer, inevitably there’d be some B-side remix by some dude with ‘Junior’ somewhere in his name that just repeatedly looped a couple words of the song over some canned Casio beat. For like 9 minutes. It was really annoying, and I quickly learned not to listen to the wrong side of CD singles (remember those?). Over the years, I had mostly forgotten about those failed musical adventures, assuming such things were relics of 90′s, about as fondly remembered as Everclear. Suddenly it’s become the only way to sell pop music in 2011. For instance, I accidentally heard a new J-Lo song the other day that sounded like it was being played at 8,000 BPM. And it had autotone. It was not awesome.

So I tried to argue that Lady Gaga wasn’t very interesting without sounding like too much of a snob. I mean, I am a snob. But I don’t make any pretentions that I have good musical taste. I have a ton of outright terrible crap on my iPod. My problem wasn’t so much that my brothers bachelor party liked (or at least defended) Lady Gaga. It’s why they liked her. Here are a few of the common themes:

Ke$ha

1. She’s better than Katy Perry, Ke$ha, and whatever other garbage is popular amongst 14 year olds. First off, nope, she isn’t. If you plotted Lady Gaga and that youtube girl who sang about Fridays on some kind of quality graph, the difference between them would be marginal at best, with the Katy Perry’s and Ke$ha’s of the world somewhere in between. Secondly, Ke$ha is almost certainly either a failed attempt at Andy Samberg style humor or a special effect from Industrial Light and Magic that has somehow become mildly sentient. Lastly, so what? There are much better things to listen to than Katy Perry and Ke$ha. Why are we comparing anything to them? In the 21st century, no one is forcing you to listen to the local popular music radio station. The underlying assumption here is that we have to listen to mass produced horse shit music designed to appease 14 year olds, and we might as well find the best of the bunch. This is the exact same argument people were making about Avril Lavigne over Britney Spears 10 years ago. “At least people in her band play instruments!” is what actual people were saying. History weeps for you, Avril.

David Bowie

2. She’s creative. You know, because she wears meat and won’t put on pants. I won’t embarrass anyone publicly, but somebody in the bachelor party actually mentioned David Bowie. I thought for sure he was joking. It didn’t seem like it, but let’s just say that he was. Regardless, anyone who’s spent a few minutes in or near an art school will recognize this as steps one and two of introductory performance art: 1. Get naked, then 2. Wear food. Does this make her more interesting than Rhianna? Maybe. But it doesn’t make her music any more palatable. And it doesn’t make her David Bowie. Frankly, the art world is overflowing with people who are annoyingly and gratuitously weird, often without the skills to back up their strangeness. I’m a little tired of it.

Beth Ditto

The fact is that there are people making danceable pop music (Gaga territory) that does not suck. I mean, I haven’t really paid a lot of attention to what’s popular in music for a long time, but I do still (in theory) like music of the pop genre. And I can think of a number of artists that, if you like Lady Gaga (or even just tolerate her), you should listen to instead. For instance, you might know Beth Ditto, singer of The Gossip. She’s got some fashion world bonafides that feel less contrived (Jean Paul Gaultier), and is weird in a way that seems like it didn’t originate in a focus group. Did you know she recently released a solo EP that sounds like what a Lady Gaga album should sound like? I’m actually not a huge Gossip fan, but Simian Mobile Disco produced, and they do good shit. I could get all music review-y and trot out words like slinky and soulful, but I sound like an idiot saying things like that. So instead, just listen to it.

I Wrote The Book by Beth Ditto

There are also a surprising number of Australian bands that are making really good electronic music, too. The Presets, Cut Copy, Miami Horror, Empire of the Sun. They’re all worth checking out. You know what, just go buy some songs off of this iTunes mix I made. If, after listening to it, you still prefer Lady Gaga? Well, to each their own. I have my own indefensible songs on my ipod, so I won’t judge you (yes I will). But seriously, at least maybe consider listening to some Madonna instead?

Against Gaga: The Official Mix

June 14, 2011
by Scott Listfield
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Triian Jewelry, and a New Painting

Ring by Triian

Ask anybody who’s been involved with the Boston arts scene for more than 4 years, and they probably know Brian Burkhardt. I’m guessing that anybody involved in the arts scene in Miami over the last couple of years knows him too. One of Boston’s most talented and outgoing sculptors moved down south in 2007. After a few years in the sun and a few shows at Nina Johnson’s great Gallery Diet in Miami, Brian shifted focus again. When I spoke to him last winter, he had recently married Trisha Brookbank, also a very talented sculptor, had combined their prodigious talents, and were making these really unique pieces of jewelry that looked for all intents and purposes like geology gone haywire. But they are all made by Brian and Trisha out of synthetic and reclaimed material. They called their jewelry work Triian.

I had a chance to check out a few of these pieces in person last time I was in Miami, maybe a year and a half ago, and in the mean time their work has made its way into the Anthropologie catalog and a number of high profile fashion magazine spreads and blog posts. When Brian called me this past winter, he was interested in having some of his friends in the art world create special pieces inspired by Triian. He was hoping to align the brand early on with a certain artistic sensibility, much like Absolut Vodka, or Louis Vuitton. He gave me pretty much carte blanche to do whatever I like, with the results to be shown on their website, www.triian.com, under “Collaborations.” I liked the idea, I like the work they are doing, and I liked the other artists they had collaborated with already, including by coincidence my wife’s old art school roommate, Suzanne Coady of girlyhandwriting.

Triian by Scott Listfield

So, obviously, I painted an astronaut. I liked the idea that Brian and Trisha had created these tiny worlds, and since my work is very much about the exploration of different worlds (or just weird parts of our own world), it seemed natural to have my astronaut explore the crusty bejeweled surface of their sculptures. Check out the painting I made. Then check out some more examples of their work below, or learn more about Brian and Trisha’s jewelry at www.triian.com, or order a piece at their Etsy shop.

: Ring by Triian

: Ring by Triian

: Ring by Triian

: Bracelet by Triian

: Ring by Triian

: Triian by Scott Listfield

June 13, 2011
by Scott Listfield
1 Comment

Josh Luke: Signs and Symbols

Earnest by Josh Luke

So a few months ago, out of the blue, I got a request to be an artist mentor for a student in a low residency Masters in Fine Arts program. This was immediately interesting to me for a couple of reasons: 1) I got paid. 2) I don’t actually have an MFA myself. For those who don’t know, in

A Manatee

the art world there’s really only one degree: an MFA. I don’t have one, which means teaching is pretty much out of the question, unless it involves crayons and paste. In fact, at various points over the last 10 years, specifically times when my fulltime job had become a bit of a drag, I had contemplated entering one of these low residency programs myself. They sound fun. You live wherever you want, you can have a job if you like, you make art on your own, and a few weeks a year you go to wherever the school is based and do some intensive learning. While you’re on your own, you check in a few times with a local artist mentor who tells you what you’re doing wrong, chain smokes, and looks bitter. Apart from the chain smoking, I was flattered to be considered for the role. Truthfully, it didn’t occur to me at first that my Mentee (or Manatee as I started calling him) might actually be good. Well, folks, meet Josh Luke, talented fucking painter.

"Pre-vinylite" by Josh Luke, on view at Guerrero Gallery in SF.

Those of you paying attention to recent developments in San Francisco might recognize Josh’s work as being within a school of sign painting that has started getting some gallery attention out there. Just this past March, Ben Eine had a show at White Walls Gallery that attracted a fair bit of notice from the Juxtapoz and Arrested Motion folks. Josh is part of the New Bohemia Signs crew, who have a show up right now at Guerrero Gallery, another great venue in San Francisco.

Orchard Skate Shop

Josh recently moved to Boston, bringing his flashy West Coast sign painting skills to drab New England. People in the Allston area might recognize his handiwork in the sign for the Orchard skate shop. I’m hoping more business owners catch on to the fact that hand painted signs in general look way better than their cheap vinyl counterparts. I mean, there is a reason that everyone in the world thinks San Francisco is a beautiful city. OK, sure, it’s probably the hills, the sweeping vistas of the bay, and the neat Victorian architecture. But the fact that sign painting thrives there doesn’t hurt the charm either. I wouldn’t mind if Boston (along with some other cities of note) wholesale copied whatever the hell San Francisco is doing. For that matter, lets get us a bean like Chicago’s too. People like it when their city is pretty. The fact that I felt the need to write that depresses me.

In the mean time, Josh just wrapped up his first semester in the Art Institute of Boston’s low residency MFA program. He’s working on combining his sign painting vernacular with more of a fine art thing. Check out some more of his work below, including some really stunning works on glass, with gold leaf, influenced by 19th century currency. It was a real pleasure being his mentor this past semester, and I hope that when he quickly surpasses me in fame and notoriety (um, if he hasn’t already), that he will let me ride his coat tails. Check out more on Josh Luke and his business, Best Dressed Signs, at his blog and facebook page.

: United by Josh Luke

: United by Josh Luke

: Alphabet by Josh Luke

: “Pre-vinylite” by Josh Luke, on view at Guerrero Gallery in SF.

: Earnest by Josh Luke

: Orchard Skate Shop

June 8, 2011
by Scott Listfield
0 comments

ArtVenue, artists, and the internet

So in the last year or two I’ve noticed a lot more sites popping up trying to leverage the internet to generate income for artists (and for themselves, of course). I think it is absolutely vital for artists of all levels to have an online presence that goes beyond a web site with some pictures. Unless you’re Damien Hirst and can toss diamonds on any old skull you find, you’re probably interested in expanding your audience and getting some extra income. I certainly am.

The good news is that there are a number of great prints sites out there now (which I will almost definitely delve into in a future post) serving various portions of the art market (genuine art collectors, young dudes who like cool things, people who have bad taste, etc.) There are also different sites for different types of artists (mid career, emerging, still painting in my mom’s broom closet, etc.) I’ve personally been involved in some way with a handful of them, and have served as a totally informal consultant (read: unpaid) on others. Some of these sites are intriguing and some, of course, are less so. Even if the sites themselves suck, it’s reassuring to see that people are attempting to find solutions to creating a market for art online. With brick and mortar art galleries still closing regularly (and certainly here in Boston there has been a kind of artpocalypse going on since at least 2008), it’s worth it for us artists to try to see what opportunities lie elsewhere.

I’ll save in depth discussion of various print sites for another time, but one thing I’ve heard talked about a lot but have yet to see (until now) is an online tool that directly leads to actual real physical show opportunities. So I just heard about a new site called ArtVenue that seems to want to do this. Go ahead and watch their video below. I’ll wait here.

How ArtVenue Works

Now the caveat here is that it clearly seems to be inclined towards cafe and restaurant venues. I like to think that I’m a little closer on the spectrum to mid-career (at least in my head), and my focus is definitely on trying to get the attention of galleries, museums, and people who wear monocles. But it makes me wish something like this existed when I was a bit younger. There’s a couple of really smart things they’re doing that I haven’t seen elsewhere:

1. Even though the end result is an exhibit in a physical location, all the action takes place online. Including the sale. As a young artist you can bid on shows online, which gets you much better exposure then wandering around your neighborhood with business cards. If you get the show, they stick QR codes up on the artwork, and if a buyer is interested, they scan it in with their smart phone. The money changes hands online (I presume), and all parties (artist, venue owner, and website) get their cut. This is waaaay better than just hoping someone will pay you some money and then hoping you can find a way to split it three ways.

2. Websites are everywhere, but actual shows have to be local (um, duh). This place is starting up first in Boston. Which is cool because I’m here and I’d like to see how it goes. But it is also cool because Boston has an enormous population of young artists. There’s like 4,000 art schools here. Seriously. Google it. A lot of these young artists move on to New York (or elsewhere) after a while because there isn’t a great market for art here and not paying your rent and eating Ramen gets kind of old fast. If something like this takes off, more of those young artists stay in Boston. Hopefully, with a stronger base, the local art market grows, and people slightly further up the ladder (like me *cough, cough*) reap the rewards. Ramen for everyone!

Of course, their basic business model is still entirely dependent on sales of original paintings. I get nervous when I hear that since (even though prices for younger artists will be relatively low) selling original works is always hit or miss. Always. Selling prints is way safer, because if you have a good image, it’s way easier to find 100 people online willing to spend 50 bucks than it is to find one person anywhere willing to spend hundreds or thousands. Plus selling original works usually involves shipping, which can be cumbersome and expensive, and who covers these costs? Surprisingly a lot of places that do sell originals online don’t have a great plan in place for what to do if they actually sell something. ArtVenue makes a little more sense, because presumably the artist, the shop owner, and the art buyer are probably all in the same city. But I’d still be very curious to see if they can actually make money on this project. I hope they do. And then I hope someone starts a similar site which aligns artists who paint astronauts with guys who own Ferraris.

June 7, 2011
by Scott Listfield
0 comments

I have a blog now

So I did a google search on “Is blogging dead?” and came up with a bunch of stuff from 2009. Since it’s halfway through 2011, I thought “What better time to start a blog, right?” Um, right? Well, I never liked doing things when they were popular, anyways. If I can’t be ahead of the curve, let’s drift safely behind it, shall we? With that, I welcome you to my blog, where I might on occasion post about my art, other people’s art, gallery shows that do not suck, gallery shows that do suck, and some general thoughts on the art scene here in Boston, where I live and paint astronauts.

During the day, when I’m not making paintings, I work as a designer for a great website called PatientsLikeMe which helps people with serious medical problems meet others like themselves, and monitor their symptoms and treatments more effectively. So I’m interested in design and health, too. But more broadly, I’m interested in how the internet is beginning to intersect with the art world, where art and commerce meet (or, uh don’t), and also where design and a whole bunch of other stuff happen together. While I’m generally a little depressed about the state of art galleries, given today’s bleh economy, I think there are some really interesting things happening now in the online world. I’m hoping to use this place as a forum to talk about some of these things. I think us artists, if we haven’t already, need to start looking at the internet as the way forward. It’s cheaper and easier to make fans and sell works online than it ever was in galleries. I’m very curious to see how technologies that didn’t really exist 5 years ago – print on demand, iPhone apps, massive art blogs, non-cheesy sites that sell art – can help artists carve out a career for ourselves.

I’m also interested in music and fashion and architecture, so if the mood suits me, I might go all Kanye West in here and post a picture of a couch or something. We’ll see.