FIMPTRAVEL presents Great Dog Walks in Hamden Connecticut!

If you're in the area, you should try this dog walk. Let FIMP know if it's still great.

How To Be A Magician, In 3 Easy Steps

Life's Questions Answered

6 pages from "Life's Questions Answered by the good citizens of Hamden Connecticut, as found in the Hamden Journal Photo Forum".



The local paper would do a "man on the street" style feature every week, with photos and quotes from passers-by answering that week's question. I gathered these up, and presented the answers as published, with only one small tweak. I changed the questions.

New blog links for your reading and viewing pleasure

I added a few links to a few blogs that you should take a few minutes to check out:

More Regrettable Incidents in a Life Filled with Bitter Remorse, which you will find in the Blogs of Interest sidebar under "David Fullarton", because I couldn't be bothered to type "More Regrettable Incidents in a Life Filled with Bitter Remorse." David Fullarton makes pictures with words on them.

Simon Goode A talented book artist. Besides following his blog, you should check out his website, especially his wonderful book Agglutination.

Bike Snob NYC Some really great writing about things bicycle in New York City.

Slice Harvester Some really great writing about things pizza in New York City.

AL'S

Out driving around last weekend I saw a very large sign by the road that looked pretty much like this:



By large we're talking billboard size. I loved it for a couple of reasons. It gave you no clue about the business (store? restaurant?) except that it was owned by Al, and it got the apostrophe right. It was very legible. A good sign that said almost nothing.

So I started thinking about signs I'd seen that weren't as good as AL'S. I decided that if I were to be forced to open one of those fake stores in a place like Williamsburg or Epcot Center, I would name it:



Then I challenged myself to come up with a business name that would be so repellant that I would refuse to shop there. Not repellant due to political concerns, or the nature of the business, but from being the polar opposite of AL's sign. So here it is:



It gets the apostrophes wrong. The backwards "N" is in quotes, just like the annoying backwards "R" in Toys "R" Us. It doesn't tell you what you can buy there, but you know the place has a very sickly sweet smell that makes you wonder how the sales staff tolerate it for any length of time. It uses multiple fonts, and is hard to read. It has cute fake olde spelling.

Though, I have to admit, one of my favorite store names was one of the models for this. If you drive through Blawnox PA you will find "Pianos N' Stuff". I've always loved that name. I've never been in the store, but I'm always intrigued by the vagueness of the "stuff" combined with the much more specific "pianos". If it were my store, there would be mostly pianos, with a few mops, lightbulbs, and bags of dog food scattered about, and maybe one of those rotating hot dog grills or a cotton candy machine. Y'know, stuff.

American Dreaming

The cover and a two page spread from "American Dreaming", one of the artist's books that FIMP has mailed out over the past 10 years.

Makes A Lousy Gift!

The first two pages from "Makes A Lousy Gift! 6 Things You Shoudn't Give That Special Someone: A Catalog of Poor Choices for Discerning Persons".

Spring is in the air. . .

What with the snow melting and green things starting to appear around the yard, I thought I would post this energetically misregistered image from an old postcard, to help encourage Spring to keep springing.

Uncle FIMP reads "Once Upon A Time", the true story of Martha the Passenger Pigeon

Here's Uncle FIMP presenting the tiny book "Once Upon A Time" in its entirety.

Draw every person, eat every pizza.

The guy who is trying to draw every person in New York City made this drawing of the guy who is trying to eat a slice of pizza from every pizzeria in New York City.

Two great projects. Two great blogs.

Casting Call

When creating an angry piece of political satire, an artist or writer needs to pick just the right animal to portray a crazed power hungry military dictator. FIMP's book "Casting Call" presents 6 animals that didn't make it past their first audition for the part.

Still Waiting, Episode 2

Here's the sequel to "A Different Place, A Different Time, But Still Waiting", in which Estragon once again attempts to lighten things up with a joke:



Here's the first "episode", in the event that you want to watch them in order. A little film festival, no doubt.

Lousy Names for Boys

Have a new baby around the house? Here are two names for the little darling to cross off your list. Musky and Gristle are two of the excellent suggestions to be found in FIMP's "Six Lousy Names for Boys".

Right Answers Wrong Questions

Here are the first two pages from "Right Answers Wrong Questions". This is the only FIMP book where I made separate linocuts for each page. Linocuts reproduce wonderfully on the xerox machine! A couple of these tiny prints packed quite a punch. I made a separate edition of the Suppress Dissent linocut, adding a background plate and playing with the color. A pretty satisfying book.

The Quantum Theory of Monkey Superposition

This is the first two pages from FIMP's book "Understanding Quantum Mechanics".

Did you know that the typical "wave" travels in a clockwise direction at about 20 seats per second? Or that the quantum theory of monkey superposition can be used to elect a president? Amazing stuff!

This book got me in a little trouble at an open studio session. I had a bunch of little books out for the browsing public. One of my younger readers, maybe ten or so, studied this book and noted the "Hello Kitty" that I had used for Schrodinger's cat. She looked up and said, "That's not very nice." I was properly ashamed of myself.

Be Better!

A two-page spread from the FIMP book "New Year's Resolutions, Or How To Be A Better Person".

Do I dare to eat a peach?

A two page spread from the FIMP book "Startlingly Lifelike Tableaux: Illustrating Dramatic Moments from Great Works of Literature".

Dirty Words

Subscribers to the FIMP Book of the Month Club will soon be receiving "Dirty Words" in their mailbox. Fortunately the opaque envelope the book is mailed in will hide it from the neighbors, preventing subscriber embarrassment.

This month's book, besides being an excuse for me to put a "wiener" on the cover, was a response to the ban by the Menifee Union School District of the smut-filled Merriam Webster's 10th edition dictionary from its elementary schools. Apparently nobody pointed out to these officials that a kid generally has to have encountered a term in another context before looking it up in the dictionary. Odds are Merriam Webster's definition of "oral sex" ("oral stimulation of the genitals", in case you're curious and don't have the dictionary handy) is a lot less exciting than whatever sent the inquiring student to the library in the first place. If there is a problem, it's probably not with the dictionary.

Now in all fairness, and I do mention this in the book, the school district in question has eased up on its ban, now allowing parents to "opt out" of allowing their children access to the dictionary. My understanding is that they are also considering allowing children to opt out of learning the alphabet, as it was pointed out at the recent school board meeting that any number of obscenities can be written by an innocent student once he or she is given access to the letters by which they are spelled.

All that said, this month's book was really just an excuse for me to indulge in some puerile potty humor, for which I am rightfully ashamed.

COPY JAM!

This 8.5" x 11" painting/collage on paper, "Chester Carlson, Inventor of Xerography", is my contribution to PRINTERESTING's upcoming event, COPY JAM!

On Thursday March 25, PRINTERESTING will host a reception at Philadelphia's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. This event will coincide with Mark Remarque, the 2010 conference of SGC International, and the city-wide festival Philagrafika 2010.



"COPY JAM!" will be an interactive print event. During the party, fifty works by fifty artists will be displayed in a grid on the wall. Upon arrival, each guest will be handed a complimentary ticket that can be exchanged for one black & white photocopy of any work the guest chooses. There will be no sales; one ticket equals one copy. Copies will be made LIVE in the gallery for one night only!



I tried to make something on paper that would truly be a printing plate for the xerox machine - a piece that was only artwork when it had turned into a contrasty, black and white xerox. And I also wanted to use materials that seemed very inappropriate to the task at hand - a nice chunky painterly collage. The subject matter is a celebration of innovators and thinkers who made xerographic art possible.

So, March 25th, Philadelphia, be there and get a print. It's an open edition, you make the art when you press "print".

Is that Orson Welles slinking off into the shadows?

Sometimes the porch light goes all "Third Man" on me. It's very noirish out tonight.

"Negative Volume: Snow"

I'm working through some minimalist sculpture/environmental art ideas. I call this most recent piece "Negative Volume: Snow".

That Dream, Y'Know?

The latest FIMP Book went out in the mail yesterday, and as I was assembling all of the little envelopes I realized that the whole premise of the book was based on a pretty shaky assumption. The first two pages of the book describe a dream that I am guessing is, in some form or another, pretty universal. But if any reader of this month's book is a super-well-adjusted sort that never has "I'm totally unprepared" anxiety type dreams, I'm afraid "That Dream, Y'Know" isn't going to make much sense to them. Sorry about that.

That wasn't your usual "you're so virtuous" kind of cookie.

Last night I received probably the most useful fortune ever from a cookie.

Estragon Tells Vladimir A Joke

Here's the latest offering from FIMP's Cinema department.

Christmas Lights + Snow