The Leeper Park Art Fair was this weekend, and I’ve been waiting a literal year to go buy something printed on metal from Josh Merrill, and we went and did that this morning. And, damn it, this looks gorgeous in person, and I was excited enough about it that I got it hung the same day we bought it, which qualifies as a minor miracle. So naturally now, because I’m a schmuck, looking at my picture of it all I can see is that damn smoke alarm and that it looks too small over the couch.
In person, not the case. That’s a 20″ x 40″ print, and in person it doesn’t look that small. Also, and in general, prints on metal don’t seem to photograph well; the colors glow in a way that I find completely entrancing in person, and I love this piece. That said, instead of fighting with glare and such to take another picture from my phone, here’s the piece, entitled “New Day,” taken from his website:
In case you didn’t click on the link, that picture is taken inside of an ice cave somewhere in northern Minnesota and it was seventeen below zero outside at the time. Josh is a lunatic, y’all.
Okay, I admit it: once I got past the incredibly tedious “making books” section of this project, it ended up being quite a lot of fun, and the whole project probably took 12-14 hours over three or four days, including the early part where I glued some furniture together and then didn’t touch it again for a month. And now that it’s finished it looks great on the bookshelf, although I’m probably going to turn the lights off once the motion sensor in the front starts becoming annoying.
I still have a Lego set to put together in the next couple of days, so I probably ought to figure out where I’m going to put it when it’s done.
If anybody has any questions about the build, let me know. Those are rubber bands in that one picture; one of the walls was just the tiniest bit warped and I needed everything to squeeze together a bit while the glue set.
My apologies to David Foster Wallace, but never has a stolen (and lightly edited) headline been more appropriate for one of my posts, and I’m including the time I ripped off Roger Ebert.
If you spend time on TikTok, and specifically if you spend time on TikTok interacting with book accounts (“BookTok”), you have absolutely seen some ads for these cool little bookend diorama things at some point or another. I tried to find the actual ad so that I could embed it and was unsuccessful; it’s basically a video of someone putting the thing together with — and this is important — lots of satisfying-sounding clicks and snaps as he puts things together.
TikTok’s algorithm has me dialed in in a way I have never seen from any form of advertising before, guys. I have bought more shit because I saw it in an ad on TikTok than I have from any advertising source ever, and it’s not close. Do you happen to remember that metal scorpion from last summer? TikTok. The brand of shoes I’ve been wearing for the last, like, three years? TikTok. My wife? TikTok.
Okay, maybe not that one.
I had previously opened the box for my library bookend and closed it back up three or four times, having forgotten every time just how much a pain in the ass the initial few pages of the instructions looked to be. You see, there’s no clicking anywhere in this build. No snapping. What there is, is a whole fuckton of gluing. God, so much gluing. And cutting with scissors. And more gluing. And sanding. And holding things together at precisely the right angle until the glue sets. And more gluing.
Those books up there? That took three and a half hours. Each of those books is a separate piece of wood, which had to be popped out of a larger piece of wood, sanded down, and then the individual covers had to be cut apart with scissors, and then the covers had to be glued to the pieces of wood, and then the individual books had to be glued together to make the piles, meaning that 90% of the art on the book covers was going to be be completely obscured. All of those books have full front and back covers! You’ll never see them, because they’re glued to each other!
And then, because that wasn’t enough, there are the books in front, which are made by taking a 10″ piece of full-color printed paper, spindling it together to make mock pages, then gluing that together and gluing it inside a book cover, meaning that the books will never be opened, and the, again, legitimately cool designs on the pages will never be seen. That barrel in the back? Two pieces of wood glued together, then four full-cover newspaper pages (well, one was a map and one was, rather inexplicably, a massively oversized postcard) that had to be cut out, rolled as tightly as possible (I’m actually kind of proud of how good a job I did rolling them) and then glued in such a way that they won’t unroll when placed inside the barrel. Again, 90% of the art will never be seen.
I originally planned to finish this thing today and then do a post about the entire build, but again: that was three and a half hours and it was tedious as fuck. The rest of the build, in theory, looks more fun, and I’ve put some of the furniture and such together, but … Christ. This had better look Goddamned amazing when I’m finished with it.
Just another quick one today, but the link will be worth checking out. The Leeper Park Art Fair takes place in South Bend today or tomorrow, and one of the exhibitors is Josh Merrill, who was there last year as well, and who we specifically went looking for this year. He is a photographer and he does regular prints just like everyone else (we picked up a print of his “The Introvert” piece, if you go looking at the site) but what caught our attention is that he also does prints on metal.
I cannot properly represent to you how amazing this man’s work looks when printed on metal. The colors absolutely glow in a way that no .jpg on a website is going to show correctly. What I need you to understand is that most of his framed metal prints were going from around $1700-$2300 at the show, and he was selling them at that price, and I was doing my level damnedest to convince my wife to pick something up. I’m serious. I’d have dropped two grand on this guy’s work in a heartbeat, and I wouldn’t have felt bad about it at all afterwards. And now that I know that he sells his work straight from his website, I’m going to pick something and start legit setting money aside every paycheck for it.
His shop is here, and you need to take a few minutes and look around.
I asked one of those AI art programs for your phone to create an image based on the words “Mr. Siler” and “Mr. Siler in his classroom,” and I find the results utterly delightful:
Pictured to the right here is the current logo I’m using for my YouTube channel. I like the basic idea of it; it looks enough like me that anyone who knows me recognizes it instantly, I actually own that shirt, and he’s playing video games.
That said, the look on his face is … off, and it’s really obviously a Bitmoji; the style of those things, even if you don’t recognize the particular pose the image is in, is instantly recognizable.
I know some artists, but I’m not sure any of them are appropriate for what I’m looking for: I want to redo the logo image for my channel, and I want something that is reminiscent of this, and in a cartoony style (that’s where everyone I know falls down; none of them are what I’d ever describe as “cartoony”) but I want something that is unique and looks like me without obviously being from some specific site on the internet that is reproducible by anyone who can find the proper settings.
If you know anyone, please let them know, or if you feel like you are such an artist, drop me an email with pricing and a portfolio link. We can talk details then. To be clear, this is to be a planned gig; I have a budget in mind and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable amount, but we’ll see.
Also, this one’s going to be kind of stream-of-consciousness, sorry about that.
I just took a shower– yes, it’s 3:00 in the afternoon, it’s also Saturday, shut up– and while I was in the shower I was, as one does, putting together a blueprint in my head for the dedicated library that I will eventually have in the house that we don’t have yet. I am not joking when I say I have been thinking about this room for most of my life, and until I live in a house with this room, built to my specifications, I am immortal, because I plan to die in my library with my feet up and a book in my hand and simply am going to refuse to go any other way.
This isn’t about the room, specifically, but it’s what led me down the path: thick, plush burgundy carpet. Two expensive leather chairs, the type with hand-driven nailhead accents (this, roughly, but I’m picturing a slightly lighter leather) and two matching ottomans, each with a reading lamp on a chairside end table, facing a fireplace at an angle. Behind the chairs, an executive desk. Bookshelves lining the walls up to an angled ceiling with exposed beams and skylights. Behind the desk, the shelves would come into the room at 90 degree angles to the walls, too– as many nooks as the room could hold.
And above that fireplace, the piece of artwork I have pictured above. That’s a style of artwork called bunka, which is basically painting with needle and thread. While it’s done with a pattern, the entire thing was done by hand– and this one specifically was made by my grandmother. She made enough of them that she had seven children and most of her grandkids have at least one piece by her in their homes; we have two, this one (technically my uncle’s, who gave it to me for safekeeping at one point when he was moving a lot, but he’s never getting it back) and another of Scamp from Lady and the Tramp that hung in both my room and my son’s room when we were very young.
My grandmother was crafty as hell, and we all have tons of stuff that she made, ranging from those bunka pictures to ceramics to intricate Christmas ornaments made with beads and fishing line. I don’t know if she ever drew or painted with, like, actual paint— I suspect not, because if she did surely we’d have some examples around– but she must have always been making things with whatever the hell spare time she managed to find while raising seven kids.
And thinking about all of that got me wondering what my grandmother would have done if she’d had access to a 3D printer. And … man, that’s a rabbit hole. I have often lamented my lack of ability to Make Things, which honestly is probably more of a reflection of my unwillingness to spend the time learning how to Make Things, but more and more lately I’m pushing the TikTok algorithm toward showing me people who are doing art of some kind or another, whether it’s painting or sculpture or 3d art or carpenters or resin art or miniature painting or Gunpla or god those people who make like entire D&D castles and taverns and scenery sets out of styrofoam and shit, they’re amazing, or digital artwork or oh my God the cosplayers and there was a bookmaking account that I really love that went dormant on me and I really miss it. I actually bought a bunch of bookmaking supplies and managed to make a little notebook for my son, which to my great gratification he still uses and carries around with him a lot, but I’ve not yet started a second one.
Grandma just, y’know, went out and made stuff, while her grandson sits around and wonders what he could make “if he had time,” when he’s spending 20 hours a day fucking around on his phone and not raising seven kids.
In lieu of a post, please accept this drawing a student did of me today:
She was actually quite unhappy with it, which is kind of mind-blowing considering this is ten minutes of work on my fricking whiteboard with a marker. Talented kid.
