I Am Still Alive

Simple Precision 15

Here’s an overwhelmingly boring video overview of the steps involved printing on the new SP15. In the video, I am making the first test print on the press; it’s a kind of bastardized synesthesia I overheard not too long ago (more accurately described as a cross-sensory metaphor, I reckon).

Observant viewers will notice I accidentally printed onto the tympan paper (d’oh).

Noticeably absent from the video are any shots of cleanup or typesetting (both as necessary for printing as the printing itself, I’d say). Maybe if we are all lucky, I will make another equally engaging video focusing solely on cleanup (and somehow try to communicate in that video the peculiar joys of California Wash – the extraordinarily noxious solvent used to remove the ink).

The music here comes courtesy Van Dyke Parks – if you haven’t, it’d behoove you to listen to Song Cycle.

Printing on the C&P

Here is a video of me operating the C&P in the mess that was the studio about a year ago. I am printing one color of one side of a postcard. And as you can tell from certain possibly NSFW segments, treadle-operated platen presses are potentially the most erotic of printmaking apparatuses.

Edit: It’s not the size of the press, but the motion of the pressman.

David Ellis in the Roebling Hall booth @Volta art fair

Maybe Tim Hawkinson meets David Attenborough

Standup Paddle Surfer @ First Point, Malibu, CA

This guy spent all morning paddling up out of nowhere and catching waves that none of us regular surfers could catch.

El Matador Beach, Malibu, CA

A one-minute vacation in California