Danziger Projects (James Desk), 2009 by Joseph O. Holmes

JBG artist and 20x200 superstar, Joseph O. Holmes, was interviewed on Behance's creative productivity and organization blog 99%. Joe's series Workspace was the focus of the conversation, which is his "ongoing attempt to examine the quasi-private spaces people carve out of their public work lives."

From an excerpt,

99%: What makes a particular space interesting to you?

Joe: I'm immediately drawn to a workspace filled to the brim, dense and layered, accumulated over a long period of time. I like to believe that a workspace reveals much about the person who works there, but honestly, that aspect doesn't interest me. My main criterion is how it looks—the lighting, the colors, the repeating details. I'm drawn to the odd symmetry, to the overall shape of a space. And of course the things—the photos and tools and notes. Everything else—the usefulness, the organization—is secondary. I don't consider the project documentary or typology work; it's about the strange beauty of these accidental sculptures. But of course I'm happy if people take more from the images.

Read the full interview with Joe here.

For those of you in New York, you can also see images from theWorkspace series in-person; they are currently on view at Rag & Bone in Soho (119 Mercer Street). Joe's Prospect Park #2, of which there are a handful left on 20x200, will also be featured in Mixtape, opening at Jen Bekman Gallery tonight from 6–8 p.m.

Untitled (I'm an island of such great complexity) by Mike Monteiro

Tonight Friday, November 20, 2009, Jen Bekman Gallery will open Mixtape, a group exhibition featuring forty-five original works and limited-edition prints from 20x200, by thirty-six artists: Michelle Arcila, Ian Baguskas, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Christine Callahan, Christian Chaize, Jorge Colombo, William Crump, Jessica Eaton, Scott Eiden, Clare Grill, Chad Hagen, Nick Hardeman, Joseph O. Holmes, Jason Jagel, Roel Knappstein, Gregory Krum, Liz Kuball, Jeff Lewis, Yijun (Pixy) Liao, Scott Listfield, Paul Madonna, Sarah McKenzie, Mike Monteiro, Jane Mount, Tommy Perman, Gary Petersen, Colleen Plumb, Jason Polan, Tyson Anthony Roberts, Mike Sinclair, Jessica Snow, Trey Speegle, William Swanson, Amy Talluto, Ann Toebbe and Matthew Tischler!

If you're in NYC, we hope to see you tonight! If not, please visit the Mixtape exhibition page here.

Mixtape
Opening Reception: Friday, November 20th, 2009, 6 to 8 p.m.
On View: November 21st - January 9th, 2010
Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
(between Elizabeth + Bowery)
New York, New York 10012

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday - Saturday | Noon - 6 p.m.
Opening Reception: Friday, November 20th, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
On View: November 21st - January 9th, 2010

Faythe Levine's acclaimed documentary, Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design has just been released on DVD. What makes this even more exciting is that the packaging was designed by 20x200 sweetheart Kate Bingaman-Burt! Kate was one of many artsy superstars profiled in Handmade Nation, along with fellow 20x200 artist Jill Bliss. Get yourself a copy here, then browse prints by Kate and Jill.

Feral House #13by James Griffioen

Feral House #7 by James Griffioen

Good afternoon collectors! It's Sara on this sunny day. We're in the midst of moving to a slightly more spacious office which means that the chaos that is JBP HQ is even more crazy. Clattering keyboards and conversations are accompanied by that starchy sound of packing tape stretching over cardboard boxes. Yes, a move (!) even before we open our new show at the JBG, Mixtape, this Friday, November 20th, from 6 to 8 p.m. See you at 6 Spring Street?!

Yesterday we were all abuzz about the easter egg embedded in Jen's newsletter* and it seems to have struck a note in all of you as well—the promise of free art for the first five (correct!) responders sent a flurry of emails our way. Easter eggs near Thanksgiving-time? No we have not lost our minds; it's just part of the holiday goodness we're concocting to keep you on your toes as we unveil our master plan for the season of giving. We have all sorts of amazing editions lined up to share with you and we may be dispensing of a surprise or two along the way!

Speaking of surprises long in the works, we first approached today's artist, James Griffioen in early April, a few months after James entered the 2008 Second Edition of Hey, Hot Shot!. In photographing, writing and living, James gives due attention to a city that has been long neglected. Feral House #7 and Feral House #13 document two of many abandoned homes in Detroit. Now a strange sort of media darling, luring the likes of former NYT reporter Charlie LeDuff, the city is still sad, rough, unchanged and mostly un-bettered from all the attention. (James too is no stranger to the spotlight!)

As Thomas Morton notes on Vice, "Journalists love pictures of abandoned stuff." But then what? Writers and photographers go home, readers put their papers down and return to their relatively comfortable lives; heads are turned away again from the disintegrating center of our country.

But if you are James, and you live in Detroit, you can't just look away. James instead looks harder. He looks at what happens not only when we stop seeing but when we leave things alone entirely. While Alan Weisman's The World Without Us is hypothetical, a "thought experiment", about just that—what would happen to cities and infrastructures if humans ceased to exist—Griffieon's photographs are reflections of reality. As people leave in droves, slowly but surely, green growth returns and dominates, covering and suffocating engineered, architectural elements until only the outlines of formerly solid structures are apparent.

While James notes that feral means "belonging to the dead," there is something reassuring about the ability of nature to recover and to reclaim. These old buildings are made beautiful again.

*For a chance at easter eggs hidden in upcoming newsletters, sign up for the 20x200 mailing list!

iSketch842 by Jorge Colombo

iSketch818 by Jorge Colombo

Tuesday greetings, collector friends! We've got all kinds of good stuff percolating in JBP land -- we're getting ready to open Mixtape at the gallery on Friday, announcing this year's last group of Hot Shots on November 30th, looking forward to exhibiting the original, OMG-so-gorgeous-in-person paintings of Ms. Sarah McKenzie at the PULSE art fair in Miami, we're hiring and we're putting the final touches on our holiday offerings. As is always the case at JBP, there will be a lot of crossover in our art ecosystem during this season of giving. 99% of the gallery show consists of 20x200 editions and originals, providing you a chance to peer into the future and reminisce about the past. ('Tis the season, y'know.) And naturally, there are lots of Hot Shots in the mix.

As for 20x200 proper, we're gearing up to unleash our Twelve Days of Festivus, which will commence on Monday, November 30th (big JBP day! mark those calendars!) We'll be featuring two full weeks of new editions and special treats for 20x200 collectors. To go along with our made-up holiday celebration, I am going to play a made-up character -- the Easter Bunny -- and will be liberally sprinkling easter eggs* over our online domains throughout the season. We decided to offer up a few appetizers today, allowing a few fast-acting close readers of this newsletter to get some of our ridiculously affordable prints for free.

I only decided to announce these easter eggs this morning -- there's never a dull moment -- and yet, our long-ago-scheduled iSketch842 and iSketch818 prints from the delightful Jorge Colombo are the perfect vehicle. Those geniuses at Apple, makers of the iPhone upon which Jorge sketches, are legendary easter egg pranksters themselves. And they're cooking up those pranks just a little to the south of San Francisco, where Jorge has been perfecting his sketching away game.

In keeping with the SF theme, the answer to today's easter egg question can be found in this interview by 7x7 Magazine, which happened in anticipation of the trip during which today's editions were made. Hometown hero that he is, however, we'd be remiss to not give homage to the magazine that's made him famous. Our beloved Mr. Colombo's iSketches have graced the cover of not one, not two, but three issues of The New Yorker. Which brings us to our easter egg question:

What is the name of Jorge's editor at The New Yorker?

The first 5 people to email the correct answer to easteregg AT 20x200 DOT com will receive a gift certificate for $62.50, with which they can purchase the 11" x 14" iSketch print of their choosing.

If you're late to the party in reading today's newsletter, fear not! We'll be laying a few more eggs on collectors before day's end, via Twitter and Facebook. So don't delay, follow us on Twitter today! And don't forget to declare your fandom via Facebook while you're at it.

*For a chance at all of our upcoming easter eggs, join the mailing list! They'll be going fast!

Prolific iPhone sketcher and six-time 20x200 edition-maker Jorge Colombo has posted an interesting look into the process behind his drawings called "Night Lights". The New Yorker, for whom Jorge does one iSketch a week, has also covered the process, but here we hear from the artist himself.

On capturing the likeness of a city, Jorge writes,

My Finger Paintings series, running in thenewyorker.com since last June, or published as prints by 20x200.com, has been a road map to plunder icons from the city I've lived in for the past eleven years. They're a bit of likeness portraits: stripped of recognizable indicators, what makes a landscape feel like New York and not like somewhere else? I don't shy away from famous buildings or vistas, but I'm happy when a non-descript stretch of street bears the details, proportions, light, and feel, that clearly brand it as Manhattan. A series I started last summer in San Francisco worked the same way: what's the shorthand to best convey this city? What does it really look like here?

On how drawing on a iPhone has changed his work, he writes,

It has been widely reported that my drawings are now made on an iPhone... Considering all the sketches and watercolors and photographs I have done in the USA for the past twenty years, my output in the Brushes app since I bought a G3 last February is still rather small...In the process, something has changed in my drawings. I discovered a brushstroke looseness I could have embraced ages ago, were I not busy with my precise watercolors. It all came from tailoring one's approach to better suit the tool. Sharp line work and controlled coloring are not that easy when you're drawing with your finger on a surface smaller than a credit card. But loose smudges, and bright layered colors, are naturals. So I simply embraced the language suggested by the equipment.

To read the rest of the piece, head over to Drawger and then stop by 20x200 to grab your very own iSketches.

Recent 20x200 edition-maker Scott Listfield, whose work will appear in a group show later this month at Jen Bekman Gallery, is included in icons + altars, a group benefit show opening TONIGHT (Friday) at the New Art Center in Newton, MA.

icons + altars features work by 106 regional artists who have created work specially for this exhibition + sale to benefit the New Art Center. Artists respond to the themes of "icons" + "altars" in many media including painting, drawing, photography, mixed media, ceramics, + sculpture.

Scott's painting, 7 Eleven (above), is instantly recognizable for its irreverent humor and juxtaposition of the surreal and banal. The painting, along with the other 105 pieces in the show, will be sold using a ticket system for $250 a piece. The money raised will benefit The Center's public arts education programs.

If you can't make it out to the opening tomorrow night, or to the show which runs through December 13th, you can still check out a selection of work from the show online.

Prints of Scott's edition Waiting Dangerously in Rio, are available from 20x200 in all sizes!

icons + altars
New Art Center
61 Washington Park, Newtonville , MA

On View: November 13 - December 13, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, November 13, 6-8pm

Untitled #6 by Jessica Bruah

Wednesday greetings, my collector friends! The crisp air and colors of the season have me walking about in a haze of cinematic nostalgia. And while I have memories specific to my own history—a certain flower-patterned corduroy* jumper and the woolly tights that went with it, a full harvest moon that hung improbably low in the sky on Halloween night when I was 6 or so—it's the nostalgia of movies that capture this time of year in eras and places that have little or nothing to do with my own experiences that have me most captivated. Today's edition hits that cinematic sweetspot similarly. (And not to mention alliteratively!)

Untitled #6 is our second edition from talented photographic tale-teller Jessica Bruah. When we last visited our heroine in Stories #46, she'd ransacked the supply closet and gone a bit overboard with the Post-it Notes. In today's edition we find her in a considerably more explosive situation.

The tableau Jessica's created in Untitled #6 brings to mind two of my favorite yesteryear fixes: Todd Haynes' gorgeous Douglas Sirk homage, Far From Heaven, and the series that's been the toast of basic cable for a few seasons now, Mad Men. Our circle-skirted protagonist looks like she's hitting the road with her Samsonite in tow, and burning down the house she's leaving behind to ensure that there's no turning back. And who could blame her, really? Life in the bell jar sure wasn't the fairy tale it was made out to be—just ask Betty or Cathy Whitaker!

*Today is Corduroy Appreciation Day, afterall!

Chemical Schematic by William Swanson

Balmy November greetings collectors! It's Sara filling in for Jen on this eerily warm afternoon. Temps are supposed to hit the high sixties today even with winter supposedly right around the corner. I don't want to beat the global-warming-dead-horse with a stick but I am—this unseasonable weather is strange, isn't it?

Still, not pulling on the winter wools just yet is pleasing, almost as pleasing as the pinks and purples in today's edition from William Swanson: Chemical Schematic. Pretty as it is, Swanson's palette is also unsettling.

Swanson highlights the direct relationship between the variety of colors that appear as the sun falls over the horizon and the level of pollution in the air. The more brilliant a sunset, the dirtier the sky, and yet we still ooh and ahh over it. Just as we're happily forgoing a hat and gloves for now, we take an odd pleasure in conveniently forgetting the facts surrounding glowing skies in the evening hours. Ignorance is bliss! But, cleverly, Swanson inserts reminders of human interference in his paintings—an architectural grid, evidence of an oily pool of water and slightly foreboding skies.

Just as last week's edition from Tyson Anthony Roberts hinted at our ever-changing environment, Swanson's work fuses our planet's past, present and future, foreshadowing sparks, glory and doom. As the boys over at DCKT said, "Holding to a belief that disaster can be a transformative process, Swanson's spaces play with end into beginning as in all natural cycles."

Time is like the East River by William Lamson

Artist William Lamson will open a solo show this Thursday, November 12 from 6-8 p.m. at Connecticut's Artspace. Lamson's exhibition will compliment his installation, Long Shot, which is currently on view in The Lot space outside of the gallery building.

From the press release:

Equal parts director and performer, Lamson explores oppositional forces and ideas through his actions and interventions, which he documents in still photographs and short videos. His performative experiments reveal tensions between success and failure, stability and instability, and strength and weakness, while speaking broadly to notions of temporality and interconnectivity. In his straightforward yet multi-layered works, Lamson marshals the principles of action and reaction to challenge viewers’ perceptions of gravity or basketball, for example, in order to create new moments for discovery.

The show will remain on view through December 19th.

William Lamson: Time Is Like The East River
Artspace
50 Orange Street
New Haven, Connecticut
Opening: Thursday, November 12th, 6-8 p.m.

Lamson's two 20x200 editions are available in rapidly dwindling supply:
No. 13. 3/11/2006 (plane lifted by men)
No. 6. 8/6/2005 (plane)