mja home

oh my dear blog, how i’ve neglected you. i know you forgive me.

let’s see, what’s happened since august? well, one thing is that i sold this piece!

“Exit Perspective” – 96″ x 18″, spray paint on steel

notice the back color. that violet gave the piece a good color-bounce-shadow that was a good contrast to the green on the front. i talked a little bit about the reason behind painting the reverse side a contrasting color back in october of 08.

closer look at my “signature”:

there are very subtle fades of greens and yellows at the bottom of this piece that are nearly impossible to photograph:

speaking of fades. the black toward the top of the piece is krylon ultra flat black. man, ultra flat black has got to be one of the best colors ever invented. notice how the ultra flatness of the spray paint makes the glossy black of the paint marker lines look almost brown. that’s how black this stuff is. WHY, OH WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DISCONTINUE THIS COLOR KRYLON?! WHY?!!!!

a closer shot of the grainy beauty of ultra flat black. this stuff is like velvet. it’s just a beautiful paint. it almost makes me sick that krylon no longer makes it.*

*well, krylon does still make a paint called ultra flat black, but it’s not the same as the old one. in fact, compared to the old one, the new ultra flat black is complete garbage! krylon should be ashamed.

anyway, thank you to the couple who now owns “exit perspective”, and thank you david at objct gallery for showing my work.

on february 1st i, along with my gal trista, moved into a new art sudio. circumstances had become such that i could no longer work at my old studio of 3 years because of the new medium i’m using (spray paint). it was a little sad to leave my old space. a lot of work got done there and it holds a few memories. i shared it with my good friend j. henry huppert and it was always a good environment when we were both there working. located on the second floor of the bokers building in downtown san diego, it was, unlike some of the other spaces in the building, a nice space to work in. it had 2 north facing windows with a good view and good light, beat up wood floors, and a nice little alcove to store finished work. not to mention a convenient, easy to walk to location. but alas, it was not to be. ol’ j. henry’s still holdin down the fort over there though. so i can still go back and visit the space – but it’s a little weird seeing it without all my things in there.

oh well…*head down. kicks dirt*

…good thing my new space is great!

co-owner of device gallery and sculptor greg botherton, and sculptor matt devine, decided to join forces and procure an entire warehouse in barrio logan for the purpose of building new studio spaces.

here’s the outside:

and the view when you walk in the front door (that sign’s from the old device gallery location.  their new space will be here.  they should be back open by may):

my studio is just up the stairs. the one with the door open and the light on:

and a couple more shots of the inside of the warehouse. looking towards the front:

and around that corner and to the right are the wash sink and bathroom:

and here’s a few shots of the reason i had to move in the first place:

and here’s some books with clamps for bookends:

i’m lookin forward to getting some good work done at that table:

when i first started painting arrowchitectural decograf i was using canvas. i’d buy them pre-stretched from blick. since i mask my paintings i need a smooth surface – obviously, canvas was a poor choice. in order to get a smooth surface i had to do 3 coats of gesso and sand between each one. the only advantage to canvas was that i could hang them as is, no framing required. but still, it was lacking. so then i moved to masonite. cheap, smooth, can cut it to any size. i also painted on other wood surfaces like hollow core doors and plywood. but it’s always bothered me that i don’t paint on metal. metal just fits better into the concept behind my work. i mean, graffiti was painted on metal trains and most of the architecture i love was built on a metal skeleton. a couple reasons i hadn’t started using metal yet – one, it’s expensive, and two, it’s hard to paint on metal with acrylic (as i’ll explain and show below). which leads me to the two reasons why i paint with acrylic instead of spray paint, even though it’s always bothered me that i don’t (again, it fits better into my world). first, acrylic is very fast drying. i can paint an area and within less than 5 minutes i can put masking tape right over it and won’t come off when i take the tape up. with spray paint you have to wait significantly longer than that before putting masking tape over a painted area. not that it would peel off, but if it’s not completely dry you’ll get marks where the tape was. the other reason for using acrylic is that there’s infinite possibilities for colors. i can mix 2 or more colors together and make any shade or color i want. you can’t do that with spray paint. even with companies like montana offering almost 200 colors, which is a lot, it’s nothing compared to acrylics range of any color i can think of.

so anyway, i decided to start painting on metal…with acrylic. i went to material sales in national city and picked up a couple scraps of aluminum sheet to test it out. when i was working as a preparator for mcasd i met a great guy named jack brogan (an absolutely astounding individual. a jack of all trades, master of everything kind of guy). jack was helping us install robert irwin’s “who’s afraid of red, yellow, and blue”. joey and i worked closely with jack for about a week installing that piece and along the way we got pretty friendly. anyway, i asked jacks advice on how to paint on metal with acrylic and he suggested i prime the metal with etching primer. he even gave me a can of it to try out. so i used it, and laid my first layer of acrylic down on top. then i masked out another section and when i pulled the tape up it took my first section of color with it. ugh. well, i turned that peice of metal over, primed the other side, drew out my design again, and started the painting all over (this is a couple weeks later). this time i had mixed in some gac 200 medium, as i had heard that it helps acrylic bond easier with metal. i didn’t mask another area like before, i just put some tape over what i had just done to test out the bond. it didn’t hold. the same thing happened again:

aaaaarrrrrrgggghhh!

that was the deciding factor. if i was gonna paint on metal, i had to use spray paint. so…i flipped the metal over again, sanded all the first try crap off with my trusty milwaukee orbital and some 80 grit, primed it, and drew out my design for the 3rd time (by the way, those little letters in the drawing are where i was pre-visualizing my color scheme. usually i do a marker color test on paper, but for this one i didn’t. i just wrote in the color because i knew exactly what colors i was gonna use)…

then…i went and bought some paint:

in the future i’ll probably order some montana or belton or some such paint, but for now i’ll be using krylon (not that krylon’s bad paint). the thing that sucks about buying krylon though is that it’s only readily available at 3 stores in san diego. the first two, ace hardware and michaels, sell it for almost 5 bucks a can, and they never have any good colors. the third choice is wal-mart. ugh. the very thought of stepping into that store makes bile rise in the back of my throat. but, they do have lots of colors at a cheap price (about $2.30 right now). and today i found some cool new colors:

some of the stuff i bought is part of krylons new line of cans. they have a lid that’s a hell of a lot easier to take off than the original (although not as cool looking), and they also have the dreaded “slit-spray” cap (it’s not all that dreaded in my case. since i’m just masking and filling in color i don’t need a cap with any kind of control).

ok, so i have my paint. i’m ready. i masked off my first area:

then filled it:

so far so good. i waited about an hour before i masked the next couple sections and everything was fine. i’ll wait until it’s done to show you the results.

there we have it. end of an era. and another journey begins.