We were paper birds afloat in the strong southerly wind during a perpetual Fall that we never wanted to see the end of, and five towns later we can still see the yellow leaves as we smoke our cigarettes from the side of our van which we call the Rescue Chopper with it’s black trailer weighed down by the world’s first portable paper making studio.
Every time we load our lives into the van I am taken for a minute by the extremities that we have gone to just to keep the good times alive, patriots to a land long lost and completely forgotten.
We are lost in the land of the free.
I have a few mementos of the last weeks to pass and these are the only proof of that time that I can find. They are the only items which add to the legitimacy of the overwhelming feeling of something indefinably bitter sweet happening inside of me.
My hands are stained black from a weeks worth of ink and cleaning solvents, meticulously layered on when I couldn’t control my impulses to make.
We unloaded our studio in a few minutes like professionals do into a beautiful studio the likes of which I never thought I’d see. The walls were lined with squeegees, inks, brayers, printing boards, silk-screens, and cleaning supplies. Ah, to see evidence of my beloved screen-printing again, that love of mine which was taken from me when the D.I.Y. was slain at the hands of Our Lady Commerce during the summer that I was trying to get right with the financial world. But the D.I.Y. never dies.
I abandoned my post as a paper maker post haste, deciding instead to spend most of my time in the screen burning room talking to inanimate objects about secret plans that I had for them. I prepared a half dozen screens and waited for my fellow paper makers to leave for the night to go back to stay with the Maddy and E, the doting old people who were housing our absurd road show for the week.
I had prepared an image that I had been piecing together in my mind for years. I’d been hunting for the space to make this a reality since I’d first thought of it when I was hustling around Europe recovering from a month of over disclosure. It was what I really wanted to say about “that place” but could never seem to explain right.
I stayed late into the night. I finished the job.
“Did you ever see any torture?”
It tortured my sense of pride in humanity to see how simply we had reduced the most horrible thing I had seen in my life into doctrine. Since I first laid eyes on the book I’ve wanted to destroy it. It’s words provide a graceless veneer to the horrors of our actions and the tangled confusion of ethical labyrinths that we’ve built for ourselves. I think these words which hurt me so much to read say it better than I ever could.
This is what I saw. Every day. And we did it for you, America.
John, the director of the print program of the school we were at, had been hard with me. He is a printer of the Show, Don’t Tell class. I resolved myself to impress him. This piece earned me enough space with him so that he would show me how to do the litho plates that he had his students using.
These are really amazing things these plates. They allow a printer to access the same aesthetic as an offset printer without committing to thousands upon thousands of dollars of machinery. You are simply printing directly off of the same kind of plate.
I’d decided to make a gift for our host E who was aboard a battleship during Vietnam as a token of thanks. John showed me how to get the job done and a few hours later I’d finished this job too.
My Grandpa had been on a ship as well and I’d always kept his fondness of that experience in my heart. There is something about that affiliation which will never pass from a man’s mind for long. I was happy with my results, concluding that this is by far the most printerly piece that I’d made. It was an edition of ten two color prints which were all pretty well registered, most of them perfectly so.
Donna (another CPP member) and I busted out some cards that she’d had on her mind since our last stop when she’d gotten to print an image of a female marine that she loved very much. She could barely restrain herself from nagging at me while I completed her job and I was growing more curt by the print. I finally showed her how to print them herself to spare myself a freak out. I can’t stand being nitpicked while I work, especially when it is for free.
The prints turned our very well. She is a natural.
I am zeroing in on finding the DADA in my work. Next week we’ll be working with traditional style text reformatting and zine making which is at the heart of my passion.
It has become clear to me that I need to get myself to a studio where I could have full access to a print lab. I’m so close to figuring myself out as an artist I can feel it and I think that the only thing holding me back right now is access. Maybe I should go to school.
The Paper Trail 