I Am Still Alive

It’s nearly April and most all of the (few) posts I have committed to record this year have been to say that I am still around. Well, this one is no different, but I reckon that I will fill in some blanks and then resume posting more regularly (we’ll see).

It’s been a busy six or so weeks. I have transitioned from Brooklyn to the Pacific Coast – in Los Angeles for the time being – and am making my move northward in a few weeks presumably. I brought thousands of pounds of type, letterpress printing machines and most all of my other belongings (save a couple couches and scrap wood) along with me for the ride.

With all of that hardware safely in a storage facility (storage in West Los Angeles is plentiful and surprisingly affordable), I set about traveling a bit around the south west and even spent the first few weeks in March back in New York for the art fairs (Artlog had a booth at the Pulse Art Fair). I reckon flights back and forth between the West and East Coasts will be frequent (heading back to New York again in a few days for about a week actually).

Besides beach time, I have really been focused on coding. I built/am finishing a web application called Arlo that should be officially launching sometime next week. It’s an extraction of the Artlog portfolio system but, I figure, an enormous improvement on that system. It’s a hosted and flexible platform for web publishing and content management. Arlo is modular and will be deployed for several different types of users. Initially the setup is geared towards artists and creatives, but the plan is to tweak things in the near future for folks in bands and art galleries (letting them do a lot more online with greater ease and control than they are accustomed to).

I will be posting a bit more about it as the launch nears, but suffice it to say for now that I’ve spent just about every minute or so of my work days for the last couple months on Arlo. It’s a lot of work to make things easy for folks.

Arlo also represents a big shift for Artlog.com. Artlog is a partnership between myself and Manish Vora. It’s about a year old and we spent most of that last year exploring the art industry and figuring out where we fit within it. Part of the problem of Artlog is that up until this point I think we weren’t disciplined enough staving off feature-creep. Quite the opposite it was actually our ‘strategy’ to do as much as possible in the short term to see what worked and what didn’t (gauging feedback, user traction online and offline, financial benefits, and our own exhaustion). And it was indeed exhausting, but quite a bit worked in the process and we realized that it was time to focus our business.

So, a few months back we decided to strip as much as possible out of the Artlog app to really clarify the Artlog mission as a place to discover/share art information and art events. Most everything that doesn’t directly contribute to this goal will be pulled. Most of this work is ahead of me and it may take some time (as the only guy doing any development around here). Those orphaned features that we figure are most promising/useful will find new homes of their own like Arlo.

And to reflect this restructuring, we are now informally doing business as Ay Are Tee and Artlog and Arlo are the services that we produce. It’s a lot of names. I know. I think it will make more sense in time.

And that now bring us to I Am Still Alive. I started IASA as a design company three years back and in the meantime stopped doing any client design to focus on self-directed projects. At this point the plan is to use the business structure of I Am Still Alive to house my own personal side projects. So things may be a bit quiet around here (aside from blog posts) for a bit, but once I get settled up in San Francisco and get a shop set up there, I plan on resuming the printing business with renewed vigor and on relaunching this website then in the late Spring-early Summer.

And there you have it.

Artlog/I Am Still Alive ran on fumes for the past several weeks, but at this point it looks like we made it through fine – better than fine. All four big Artlog events last week were awesome.

• We met lots of new folks and showed great work here in the studio over the course of two sweltering days during the Atlantic Ave Artwalk.

• We spread the gospel of Artlog a bit during the Affordable Art Fair where we were the media sponsor and where we presented a booth full of work by Artlog users

• Konrad’s Chelsea Art Museum performance on Thursday was a big success – we provided some organizational & marketing support

• Friday’s Artlog Collect LES art walk was huge. 1,200 folks came out to see work at 24 Lower East Side Galleries and the New Museum. People at the participating venues were jazzed across the board and attendees could be spotted exploring the LES pretty much all evening event maps in hand. Big thanks to the participating galleries, the New Museum, our sponsors – Radeberger Pilsner, Christiania Vodka, A Casa Fox, Moscot, the Sixth Ward, Doyle & Doyle, Gallery Bar & LES BID – and to press that got us out there and covered the event – TimeOut, Daily Candy, Associated Press, Mashable.

Now that Nish and I have a little breathing room, we are plotting our next moves – shifting focus back to the site itself and angling in to re-focus and refine the tools over there.

Konrad played a set on the Rhodes in the studio here yesterday as part of the Artwalk. Kyle sat in on the guitar. At some point, I started recording from my laptop—forgive the quality, since it is from the laptop, the mic picks up basically everything in the room, reducing the track to lots of ambient noise. Have a listen anyhow.

Also, Konrad has a concert at the Chelsea Art Museum on Thursday.

I am opening the studio here for the next two days as part of this year’s Atlantic Avenue Artwalk. Artlog had an open-call and several artists from the site will be exhibited here this weekend.

I’m doing a letterpress demo here at 3pm tomorrow and attendees will keep the prints we run off. Sunday at 3pm, Konrad Kaczmarek will be playing a concert here in the space as well.

So feel free to stop on in and tell me I sent you.

NB. Don’t forget to visit Axelle Fine Arts next door for amazing silkscreen and Cannonball Press down the road.