October 2009 Archives

Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Left Panel and Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Right Panel by Mickey Smith

Happy October 1st collectors! It's Sara, one more time. The flu has most of us in the office down for the count so this note will be short but sweet.

It finally feels like fall and we have the perfect prints to mark the change of the seasons: Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Left Panel and Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Right Panel by Mickey Smith. This new pair is a brilliant follow-up to Mickey's enormously popular and entirely sold out MORE BOOKS and WORD STUDY editions. Like Austin Kleon's editions from earlier this week, Mickey's work aligns with our well-known affection for text, typography and all things related to books and media.

Unlike Mickey's previous two editions which stood alone, Left Panel and Right Panel are intended to work together, bolstering each other side-by-side. The images are excerpts from Mickey's first major public art commission at the University of Florida in Gainesville. The entire Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) is installed in the university's new biomedical science building on 40"x60" glass panels. The endeavor brought Mickey all the way to the Franz Mayer studio in Munich where she worked with a team to produce the glimmering final product: each photo was printed and fired on art glass and finished with engraved, lacquer-filled text. Sounds stunning, doesn't it?

Not quite so far from home, you'll be able to see Mickey's large-scale works on display at the NY Art Book Fair this weekend. Collocation No. 4 (TODAY)—a fifty panel piece printed on canvas—will be on display at the Invisible-Exports Booth #005.

The NY Art Book Fair
P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center
22-25 Jackson Ave (at the intersection of 46th Ave), Long Island City, NY

Preview:
Thursday, October 1, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. (tonight!)
Regular hours:
Friday & Saturday, October 2 & 3, from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 4, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

The NY Art Book Fair is FREE and open to the public.

Before running out and about, pick up your Smith prints lickety-split! If you're new to 20x200 and have been instantly smitten (can't say I blame you), I'll forewarn you now: these editions will go fast! Check out Jen's previous newsletters about Mickey's work to learn a little more about why it's so beloved.

Falling leaves, crisp air, books, art and more books and art? Is there a better way to kick off the weekend?

Mossball by Don Hamerman

This fine Friday we are delighted to bring a special twist to Browsing the Archives. Photographer Don Hamerman cast his savvy eyes on our vault of editions past with motivation from Ms. Bekman's own imaginativeness. In Don's words:

Inspired by Ms. Jen Bekman's ongoing series, Paired,in which she deftly matches the works of artists and poets, I poured through the 20x200 archives looking for pieces which complemented one another through energy, tone, color, rhythm or simply a visual affinity for their companions. Any readers of this blog who already own one of the featured pieces would do well to complete the pair.

Don, we couldn't agree more!

Eivind by Michelle Arcila and Untitled (Santa Barbara) (2009) by Liz Kuball

Liliuokalani Elementary School 2 by Juliane Eirich and Filter Samples by Jessica Eaton

Contact High by Jeff Lewis and Vogue JUL07:pg145 (Ripeness is All) by Lauren DiCioccio

Balloons by Juliane Eirich and Space and Illusion by Carrie Marill

That's all for now, collectors! I'll have more of Don's thoughtful pairings next week. Until then, why not have a peek at our archives. Perhaps you'll find a pair or two yourself!

Korczowa #2, 15/9/2009 12:14 by Bert Teunissen

Documentary photographer Bert Teunissen has returned from Poland to add 41 new images to his burgeoning index of people and their homes. Thanks to a grant from Blue Earth Alliance in Seattle, Bert will continue to travel far and wide to create more images for his Domestic Landscapes project that he describes in this way:

For the past 12 years I've been driving around Europe, building up an archive of houses whose interiors have not changed for decades. It is a project about light, and the era in which natural daylight dictated the architecture of a place, how it was used, and where you'd find the furniture. And, of course, I need the owners in the picture, because they are the people who keep it the way it is.

Watch the series develop here.

Bert's 20x200 prints Saugnac et Muret #1, 27/12/2005 11:27 and LA ALBERCA #6 1/3/2005 12:56 are available in our largest edition size.

20x200 edition-maker and globe-trotting photographer extraordinaire, Stuart Klipper, is included in the recently released book, Momento: Capturing Moments and Memories by Bill Westheimer, which takes a look into the unique and personal histories of cameras.

With each camera is a story told by its owner. The cameras were photographed using 19th century glass plate negatives, emphasizing how quickly the technology of past image-making has been made antique. The cameras capture our experience in mere fractions of seconds, but the cameras themselves endure to reflect the technology and aspirations of their eras. The memories we connect to the cameras are significant, sentimental and cherished. The cameras themselves evoke memories of meaningful moments in our lives that are as vivid and vital as the pictures they captured

Inside, among numerous others essays about the specific lineage of photographers' prized tools, you will find three pieces by Stuart on the histories of his Brooks Veri-Wide, Canon/Bell & Howell Dial and Hexar Cameras. Below is an excerpt from Stuart's History of the Canon/Bell & Howell Dial:

I was living in Stockholm a couple of times in the 60s and one time when I was sitting around with a friend in a konditori a photographer friend or hers – a Czech or a Frenchman, or maybe a Hungarian -- showed up and joined us. He quickly whipped out an object that was not immediately identifiable; but, he pointed it at me as if it were a camera, which – click, zip – it indeed was. At the time he had an exhibition of work he’d made with that selfsame camera – very raw and immediate Euro-nitty gritty grainy street pix. I’m not sure I previously knew of there being such things as a half-frame 35mm cameras, but this little beaut sure was. Thanks to the diminutive scale of the negs. it made, he was able to make the aforementioned style of photos.

It's fascinating to hear the stories behind Stuart's cameras, especially knowing the places to which they've traveled: Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, Alaska, Lapland, Australia, Israel, Sinai, Costa Rica, Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.

Icebreaker, Emperor penguin, Southern O., Antarctica by Stuart Klipper

And, while a great camera may make for an interesting story or three, Stuart's photography shows that it's truly the adventure, not the camera, that makes for a great photograph. Luckily for us, Stuart's editions Icebreaker, Emperor penguin, Southern O., Antarctica and Swell, Southern Ocean near 50 S, Antarctica are still available on 20x200.

think-make-think (second edition) by Clifton Burt

Sunny Tuesday greetings, collectors! Youngna here, standing in for Jen who is briefly in San Francisco, but excited to be returning to New York very soon. Team 20x200 is slowly recovering from hectic schedules and that nasty flu that's been making its way around the city, which we're sorry to say has us a bit behind on our shipping. We're still catching up, so recent orders haven't shipped as speedily as they usually do and orders made on today's edition, think-make-think (second edition) by Clifton Burt will need a little bit of extra time too.

think-make-think may look familiar to you collectors because it's true: you've seen it here before. We initially released this edition just before we introduced our $50 size, and were immediately sad about the timing because it has continued to be a very popular and inspirational print. So, we are back with a special second edition celebrating the John Maeda-inspired words for continued creativity. Maeda—graphic designer, professor, author of The Laws of Simplicity and President of RISD—is himself a beacon of design inspiration. In April of 2007, he posted a haiku on his blog which inspired Clifton's edition seen here.

It was entitled think-make-think, and to me it fulfilled the potential of Maeda's simplicity. Over the next few months, that haiku often found its way to the forefront of my mind. When our studio acquired the remnants of a discarded arrow sign, it was clear to me that think-make-think was a perfect fit, both in form and function.

The words of think-make-think sent Clifton digging for arrow sign letters in a Mississippi junk store to bring you the words in this new and vibrant form. It joins other text-based messages encouraging the innovative powers within like Matt Jones' Get Excited and Make Things (shown right) and Trey Speegle's paint-by-numbers piece, Can You Imagine. All three editions open the door to the limitless possibilities of creating things and finding encouragement in simple and meaningful phrases.

We also thought it'd be apt to re-release this print in honor of Make/Think, this weekend's AIGA Design Conference in Memphis, Tennessee. Our own Jane Mount and the talented Kate Bingaman-Burt (Drawings from July 2009, shown left)—who just happens to be Clifton's wife—will both be speaking there, which makes Jen even sadder to miss the event. The weekend will be packed with presentations, roundtables, lectures, and workshops led by talented design-industry professionals celebrating the practice of making new things and really thinking about them.

Make/Think
AIGA Design Conference
October 8–11, 2009
Memphis, TN

Look for Kate from 7:45–8:45 a.m. this Friday, October 9th at a roundtable discussion with Andre Andreev, Dan Covert, Nick Law, Bobby Martin, and Paul Sahre.

Jane will be on the panel, Wisdom of Communities | Inspiring Communities with Jim Coudal, Liz Danzico, and Derek Powazek, also this Friday, October 9th from 2:15–3:30 p.m.

We'll be back tomorrow and Thursday with extra special editions—a benefit and new photography from an old favorite. So long 'til then!

Disaster at 1:47 in the Morning, May 4, 2003 by Mike Estabrook

Google: God by Mike Estabrook

Greetings, collectors! Youngna here, once again, as Jen makes her way to SFO to board a flight back to New York. Today's two editions come to you from Mike Estabrook, a Brooklyn-based artist who morphs images from popular culture and mass media into politicized paintings, drawings, videos and animations. Disaster at 1:47 in the Morning, May 4, 2003 and Google: God frame the varied, sometimes-humorous, and mostly-absurd image results of Google searches within a painting that can live on your wall, rather than within the confines of your ever-transient web browser.

We are pleased to announce that proceeds from the sale of Disaster at 1:47 in the Morning, May 4, 2003, will directly benefit NURTUREart, the Brooklyn-based non-profit founded in 1997 to support emerging artists through exhibitions, educational outreach and community-building initiatives.

Mike's two paintings remind us that we're all subject to the temptation of the Google search, whether we are ego-surfing and entering our own names (which usually elicits a humorous and embarrassing selection of results) or exploring larger conceptual terms with loose image associations. Often, discovery of a person who shares your same name invites the imagining of an exciting alter ego: our own Raul Gutierrez shares his name with a Fu-Shih Kenpo knife fighting master.

Image searching also speaks to our fondness for making tangible visual associations, whether we are searching for conceptual terms like Disaster and God, or collecting and curating images we like for our blogs, ffffound! accounts, or tumblr logs. In Disaster, we see looming poison clouds (suggestive of a Don DeLillo-like airborne toxic event), disaster preparedness posters, a raging fire, and what appears to be the face of a chimpanzee. These are only some of the first twenty of 62,800 results discovered in 0.28 seconds, and Mike paints the familiar page-scrolling numbers guiding us to see the thousands and thousands more images associated with the search term—if we were to choose to look. That we can never see the remainder of his very temporal results adds gravity to the brushstrokes of his painted thumbnails of disasters.

There is also humor in Mike's searches; the first image in God gives us a red-haired Marilyn Manson above a result of a zoomed-in face of Michaelangelo's interpretation of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It suggests there is delightful randomness to be found in the ever-growing catalog of the Internet, and that our collective visualization of God today is not, in fact, the same as God tomorrow.

Speaking of God, if you're in New York, you can currently see Mike's work in person as part of the group exhibit God Doesn't Like Ugly. Within a Catholic church in Midtown Manhattan, Mike is exhibiting Popes, an installation of twenty-one 4'-tall popes made out of post-consumer cardboard boxes and decorated with paint and metal leaf.

St. Paul The Apostle Church
405 W. 59th St.
New York, NY
On view through October 30th

Last, but not least: Jen Bekman Projects is hiring! We're looking for passionate people who love art as much as we do. We will have detailed job descriptions available on our jobs page very soon. But if you are the best at what you do in marketing, product & project management, web development and accounting, you might be just the person we're seeking. You must also possess excellent written and verbal communication skills and eat/sleep/breathe social media, the Internet and, of course, art.

Send us your resume and cover letter today! But first, please review, and be sure to follow, our guidelines:

- Tell us what you're the best at, what you're looking for in a job and what you find most appealing and/or interesting about working at Jen Bekman Projects.

- Please include your cover letter within the body of the email. (Do not send as an attachment.)

- Include your resume as an attachment.

- Let us know when you can start.

- Use the subject line: [Your Last Name, Your First Name: Job Inquiry: Related Position (marketing, product & project management, web development or accounting)] and email to jobs@20x200.com.

Please don't be terribly formal. That's boring.

We'll be back once more tomorrow with a photography edition from a 20x200 favorite.

Emily Noelle Lambert's studio

Ciao collectors! I teach art to five-year-olds, and yesterday I printed the above photograph to share with them. I asked, "What do you think happened in this room?" and it was unanimously decided—this was a place where someone had made art, and possibly had left for a snack, or a nap. That someone is none other than 20x200 artist Emily Noelle Lambert. Emily will open a solo show, Little Deaths, at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art on November 5. The exhibition will unveil a new body of work including sculptures and paintings.

Little Deaths
Priska C. Juschka Fine Art
547 West 27th Street | NY, NY
Opening: Thursday, November 5, 6-9 p.m.

Emily's first edition is available in all print sizes.

20x200 edition-maker, Trey Speegle, just returned from a whirlwind trip to Paris Fashion Week where he was commissioned by designer Stella McCartney to create a runway backdrop in his signature paint-by-numbers style. When Youngna introduced Trey's second 20x200 edition, she gave interesting insight into his process:

Far from abiding to the uniformity of a painting with prescribed colors, Speegle's personal collection of 2,500+ vintage paint-by-numbers is a nearly limitless starting point for unique reinterpretation as he enlarges the picture plane, silkscreens it onto canvas, then mixes an original palette for each work.

At its large size, Trey's YES mural serves as both backdrop and centerpiece to the show. Trey remarks that the message "Yes" was intended to broadcast an aura of positivity, while the figures he painted are dressed in tones also exhibited in McCartney's collection.

Style.com has a video of the show featuring Stella McCartney's full collection and a brief interview with Trey.

Trey's first 20x200 edition, OK, is entirely sold out, but his second, Can You Imagine, is available in all sizes.

West Nineteenth Street (Yellow Dress)
by Joseph O. Holmes

Thursday greetings, collectors! It's Youngna for the last time this week, bringing you an extra special bonus photography edition from Jen Bekman artist and 20x200 favorite, Joseph O. Holmes. A few weeks ago we introduced West Forty-third Street (Yellow Cabs), and today bring you that edition's sister image, West Nineteenth Street (Yellow Dress). Yellow Dress illustrates why we are glad to have guys like Joe photographing the streets of New York every day: he captures moments that feel like you're looking at the movie-set version of the city we live in.

As Joe says in his own words, he is "learning the subtle art of twisting the elements of cliche in something archetypal," and so creates images that are equivalent to the New York most of us see only in our imaginations. Whether at the museum, in the park, or walking down a city sidewalk, Joe's photos embody all the New York-ness that both those who do and those who don't live here, romanticize.

While staring at these editions, Sara Distin pointed out that yellow really is a very New York color. Yellow cabs define the streets of Manhattan and the sheen of the evening sun reflecting off the city's many brick buildings during the magic hour, radiates an effervescent golden hue. Joe hones in on yellows of both aura and object in this pair of prints, intended to hang side-by-side.

Before we say farewell for the weekend, we want to remind you that the 2009 Second Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! is currently open for entries! The deadline to enter is Friday, October 23rd at 8 p.m EDT. Our panelists are very much looking forward to seeing your work, and we will continue writing about our contenders on the blog and featuring them on Flickr and Facebook until the Hot Shots are announced. Interested? Head over to Hey, Hot Shot! to see what the competition is all about and apply here!

It is only fitting that Joe was himself a two-time Hot Shot (Fall 2005 and Fall 2006) before being selected as an Ne Plus Ultra in 2006 and gaining representation by the gallery the following year. We've been fortunate to have the chance to work with Joe on all of the Jen Bekman Projects now, an opportunity that first arose by seeing his work in the competition.

We also want to remind you that Jen Bekman Projects is hiring! We are looking for passionate, art-loving people who are the very best at what they do in the following fields: marketing, product & project management, web development and accounting.

You must also possess excellent written and verbal communication skills and eat/sleep/breathe social media, the Internet and, of course, art. Sound like you? We can't wait to meet you! Send us your resume and cover letter today. For more information, visit the jobs page, which will soon have detailed descriptions of all open positions.

And with that, we'll see you next week!

Thread 2 by Don Hamerman

Happy Friday, collectors! Following the success of Don Hamerman's thoughtful selections from last week, I am delighted to offer you his second installment of doubled images from our archives.

You'll recall that Don found inspiration to pair his choices from Ms. Bekman's ongoing series, Paired. See his picks from last week here.

And now, let's have a look at Don's newest twin editions:

ny.08.#06 by Jennifer Sanchez and Cascade by Jessica Snow

Bookshelf 29 by Jane Mount and The Constellation of the Elephant by Alexander Beeching

Where is that Middle Way? by Emily Noelle Lambert and Fence by Railroad Parcel, Ashland, Oregon by Jeffrey Krolick

Fingerprint by Ky Anderson and Nonsensical Infographic No.2 by Chad Hagen

Feeling inspired to have a walk through our archives? I'm sure you'll find a few dynamic duos of your own!

Wish You Well by Gary Petersen

Later this week, edition-maker Gary Petersen will open his studio to the public for three days (Thursday–Saturday) as part of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts' Open Studios event. From the invite:

Open Studios is an annual event of the EFA Studio Program that provides an opportunity for curators, collectors, dealers, artists, and art lovers to see nearly 70 artists working in Midtown Manhattan in their studio environment.

There will be lots to see, but don't miss the chance to swing by Gary's studio (#403) and see what he's up to.

Squeeze by Gary Petersen

Gary's abstract geometric 20x200 edition Squeeze, (shown above), is still available in all sizes and you can see more of his work online.

Open Studios 2009
The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
October 15–17, 2009
323 W. 39th St.
New York, NY

Opening Reception: Thursday Oct. 15, 6-10pm
Open Studios: Friday, Oct. 16, 6-9pm
Open Studios: Saturday, Oct. 17, 1-5pm

[See the map for directions.]

Swingset, 2008 by Clare Grill

We are pleased to share that 20x200 edition-maker Clare Grill will exhibit work in Relocation, a group show curated by Los Angeles-based painter Aaron Smith at Sloan Fine Art. The opening reception will be held tomorrow evening, October 14 from 6–8 p.m.

Relocation features seven artists' interpretations of traditional landscape vernacular and in addition to Clare will includes the work of Erik Benson, Thomas C. Card, David Jien, Ryan Mrozowski, Marion Peck and Jean-Pierre Roy. The exhibition is on view through November 7, 2009 and the gallery is open Wed–Sunday, noon–6 p.m.

SLOAN FINE ART
Relocation
128 Rivington Street (@ Norfolk)
New York, NY 10002
212.477.1140

Clare's 20x200 editions, Cake and Assignment, are also still available if you'd like to be an collector of the fine paintings of Ms. Grill!

Reading & Writing by Jason Jagel

Autumnal Tuesday greetings, my collector friends! I'm actually sitting at my desk at JBP HQ, which is a rare treat indeed as of late. Being able to IM from midair (and everywhere else) means that we're never out of touch for long, but it sure is nice to be hanging out in-person with our fantastic crew. We're all feeling pretty energized by the gorgeous weather and the months ahead, which are full of art and promise.

Today's art — Reading & Writing — well... it's rather full itself! Positively bursting, in fact, with complexity, narrative, detail, color and inspiration. Read on for my take, and a bit of background on its talented creator, Jason Jagel.

Jason describes Reading & Writing as a manifestation of his "desire to make a novel-length work", correlating his relationship between artist and viewer with that of the writer and reader. His description brings to mind the conversation about the future of books and publishing that I had on Twitter over the weekend. Disjointed by Twitter's nature, thoughts and links were traded, plumbing a variety of perspectives: publisher, bookseller, writer and reader. Bob Stein's statement in his thoughtful post on the if:book blog succinctly summarized the challenge and potential of our reading future. "A book", he wrote, "is a place (where readers, sometimes with authors, congregate)."

Jason's composition, chaotic yet contained, also brings to mind my all-time favorite short story, James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues — introduced to me by my high school writing teacher Frank McCourt. It's a brilliant piece of writing and my favorite passage describes the musician's struggle between playing and listening in similar terms.

I'll end today's newsletter with where the excerpt starts. I urge you to read the entire passage and get your hands on the full story — it's totally amazing! Hopefully you'll enjoy piecing together the words and pictures and music described here, there and elsewhere as much as I have.

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air.

Yes, you read that title correctly, we are seriously giving away a $500 20x200 gift certificate with Filter Magazine!

In celebration of the upcoming release of the not-so-serious film (Untitled), starring Adam Goldberg (above), we've partnered with Filter and Line 6 to put together an unbelievable art and music gift package for one lucky winner: $500 of 20x200 prints and an amp from Line 6. The whole she-bang is worth $1,000 bucks!

Visit Filter's website and register for your chance to win. Then, start browsing the 20x200 archives to decide exactly which prints you'll pick up with $500:
25 8"x10" prints?
10 11"x14" prints?
2 16"x20" prints + a few more?
Or will you splurge and put your certificate towards an XL or XXL print?

The contest ends on Monday, October 26th, so register today!

Rodeo Stars, Strong City, Kansas by Mike Sinclair

Chilly Wednesday greetings, collectors! It's Youngna here on this brisk but sunny day in NYC, excited to bring you today's edition, Rodeo Stars, Strong City, Kansas by Hot Shot! Mike Sinclair. Jen, though she can't be here writing to you today, is also extra thrilled to bring you Mike's edition. It is part of a body of work she describes as "satisfying my idyllic image of America in a way that doesn't feel contrived" and adds that his images depict an "America I didn't grow up in" as a born and bred New Yorker, but still evoke a strong nostalgia. She associates his work with photographers like Justin James Reed and the American photography legends who captured the domestic national landscape in Where We Live, a book that accompanied the exhibition at the Getty Center.

Mike is one of the photographers who stopped our own Raul Gutierrez—also a Hey, Hot Shot! panelist—in his tracks during last round's review. Mike's selection as a Hot Shot has elicited excited reaction amongst the rest of the JBP-team and gallery visitors alike. His brilliant portraits of sun-dappled barbecues, fairgrounds, group fishing extravaganzas and street parades hit the hearts and minds of viewers who find dual comfort and wonderment in his images of these loosely organized forms of mass congregation. Seeking out quintessentially American celebrations and rituals in his Midwestern stomping grounds, Mike finds himself in crowds where he is often staring at the spectacle that everyone else is immersed in.

So, it is only fitting that in Rodeo Stars, Strong City, Kansas, we find ourselves gazing into the eyes (as seen by Mike) of the Roberts family: E.C. and three of his children—Gerald, Margie and Ken—all world champion rodeo riders. The billboard of these painted local heroes sits outside the rodeo grounds in Strong City, a grand and celebratory entrance to an annual event which welcomes visitors from far and wide.

Mike's edition is another in a series of recent 20x200 releases by our Hot Shots. Last week's West Nineteenth Street (Yellow Dress) comes from two-time Hot Shot and 2006 Ultra Joe Holmes, and two other First Edition Hot Shots, Michelle Arcila and Kurt Tong, have also recently graced your inboxes with their editions Kind Intruder, Eivind, Gosling Lake and RAF Vulcan XL-361. You can look forward to upcoming editions by two more of our 2009 Hot Shots, Parsley Steinweiss and Daniel Cheek, on 20x200 very soon.

One of the best parts of working with Hot Shots is we get to meet many of them in person, see their work on the walls of the gallery and collaborate with them on 20x200 editions like Mike's here today.

On this note, we want to remind you that the deadline to apply to the 2009 Second Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! is next Friday, October 23rd @ 8 p.m (EDT)! All entrants have their work reviewed by our top-shelf panelists and enjoy the potential to be promoted online, selected for 20x200, and exhibited at the gallery. Entering the competition is the only opportunity for photographers to have their work considered for 20x200, so we hope you'll submit your images!

To apply: submit three photographs from a single body of work using the online upload tool, with an entry fee of $60.

Our panel will select five Hot Shots for inclusion in a two-week group show at Jen Bekman Gallery in January 2010 and, in conjunction with the exhibition, editions of each photographer's work will be released on 20x200! If that weren't enough, each Hot Shot is awarded a $500 honorarium. At year's end, two Ultras are selected from 2009's ten Hot Shots. The Ultras are represented by Jen Bekman Gallery and slated for solo exhibitions.

A Square, the United States solo debut of Hot Shot Hosang Park is currently on view at the gallery through Saturday, November 7th, so if you are in New York, we hope you'll stop by to see his prints in person.

Apply here and see some of this round's contenders on our Flickr and Facebook pages. Have questions? Check out our FAQ page.

This week's issue of Time Out New York takes a look at the latest and greatest in home design. Lucky for us, 20x200 has been profiled as one of the "Best shops for affordable art"! Listed among several stellar retailers, Time Out declared that 20x200's success is a result the fact that, "people looking to buy art have an open marketplace in which to play". So, start browsing and have fun while you're at it.

Already a 20x200 customer and need a place to frame your artwork? Time Out has also compiled a list of the "Best shops for custom framing". Now you have no excuse to not to live with art!

Uman by Hosang Park

Howon by Hosang Park

Good Thursday to you, collectors! It's Sara today, with a reprise of editions from 2008 Second Edition Hot Shot and JBG artist, Hosang Park. Jen first introduced you to Howon and Uman back in March, just before Hosang was named an Ultra and slated for a solo show. And now, Hosang's United States debut solo exhibition, A Square, is currently on view at the gallery. The show opened a few short weeks ago and will be closing in just a couple more, on Saturday, November 7th, so if you haven't seen it yet, hurry in!

If you're not a New Yorker, I'll forgive you for not dropping by the gallery but I'd urge you even more to take a closer peek at Hosang's prints—the detail in them is spectacular! One of the greatest hurdles we face at 20x200 is making sure that the artwork translates as well on screen as it does in print. We do our very best but really, it's hard. You're in luck with these editions though; Jeffrey Teuton, the associate director of the gallery, put together a Flickr set of details of all the photographs that are currently on view in A Square for your close-viewing pleasure.

Jeffrey, who is wearing a bow-tie today and feeling jazzy (the rest of the JBP crew is wearing coats inside and feeling cold; the heat is off on this forty-degree day and the super is, ironically, out sick) graciously chimed in with a few words about the prints:

There are so many intricacies and details to be discovered. In Uman, there are paths that have been created by those trying to move quickly and directly through the park. There is no evidence of time to follow the meandering paths; instead, the most straight and direct routes are carved into the ground creating a geometry all their own.

Sometimes, disuse of parks is the greatest evidence of our tastes and desires. Jeffrey continues on about Howon:

Howon seems to be one of the oldest of all the parks. The bright colors are starting to fade and small signs of neglect creep in. The cracked, uneven ball court, the build up of leaves and fading veneers reflect the forthcoming fates of each of the more polished and newly finished parks: unvisited and unattended.

What isn't revealed in that bite-sized interview is that Hosang shares our love for NYC and giant-sized hamburgers, particularly those served, where else, but in a park. If you're also a fan of public spaces, architecture and design, you can meet us at the gallery, next Tuesday, October 20th at 6:00 p.m. for the City Walks Architecture Tour with Alissa Walker. You'll be able to see Hosang's show, get your dose of architecture and indulge in one of our other favorite foods—gelato. Come one, come all!

And my last note: If you're a photographer looking for the best way to gain exposure, support and recognition for your work, then apply to Hey, Hot Shot! You can upload your photos from the comfort of your own home. Youngna gave you the deets yesterday; I just want to make sure you don't leave till tomorrow what you can do today! Time is running out. The competition closes next Friday, October 23rd at 8:00 p.m. EDT.

Knick Knacks by Tamara Thomsen

20x200 artist Tamara Thomsen will be happy to host you in her studio in Brooklyn this Saturday and Sunday, October 17th and 18th from 1-6 p.m. Tamara is a participant in this year's A.G.A.S.T. (Annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour) which organizes over 100 artists to share their spaces and their work.

From the A.G.A.S.T. mission statement:

The mission of the Annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour is to provide the public a unique opportunity to visit and engage one-on-one with working artists for the purpose of gaining a broader appreciation of the various types of visual art media. The intimacy of the in-studio experience encourages an educational dialogue between the visitor and the artist. The visitor is able to see the process and methods of making art in the environment in which the art is created. We believe the artists and their work constitute a vital piece of the fabric of urban life by linking community together through the arts. By opening his/ her studio free to the public, an artist affords a community member a chance to encounter a new stimulating artistic environment, ask questions, and expand his/ her appreciation of visual arts as they are being created in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.

You can find Tamara and her studio here:
94 Ninth Street, 4th Floor, Studio 48
Cross Streets: 3rd Ave and Nevins
Brooklyn, NY

13th Annual A.G.A.S.T. Tour
Saturday and Sunday, October 17-18, from 1-6 p.m.
Download a map of the tour here before you set out!

Tamara has two 20x200 editions available to you, Stairway and Winter Kitchen. Additional works from the same series, Chambers, will be on view in her studio this weekend. Sneak a peek here.

Untitled (Nymphenburg) by 2007 Hot Shot Gregory Krum

Holy smokes! The deadline to apply to Jen Bekman Projects' photography competition, Hey, Hot Shot! is this Friday, October 23rd @ 8 p.m (EDT).

Hey, Hot Shot! offers photographers at all stages of their careers unrivaled opportunities for exposure and advancement. All entrants have their work reviewed by top-shelf panelists and enjoy the potential to be promoted online, selected for 20x200, and exhibited at Jen Bekman Gallery. Now in its fifth year, the competition has been acclaimed by curators, critics, educators and journalists alike.

The guidelines are simple: contenders submit three photographs from a single body of work using an online upload tool, with an entry fee of $60.

Incomparable Exposure:
Our panel will select five Hot Shots for inclusion in a two-week group show at Jen Bekman Gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition, editions of each photographer's work will be released on 20x200.

Additional Benefits:
Each Hot Shot is awarded a $500 honorarium.
At year's end, two Ultras will be selected from 2009's ten Hot Shots. The Ultras are represented by Jen Bekman Gallery and slated for solo exhibitions.

All entrants are reviewed for participation in 20x200; entering the competition is the only opportunity for photographers to have their work considered.

In addition, as always, our writers will select contenders to feature daily on the Hey, Hot Shot! blog throughout the entry period.

Apply now:
We only accept submissions online, via this website.
The deadline for entries is Friday, October 23, 2009 @ 8 p.m (EDT).

Hot Shots will be announced on Monday, November 30, 2009.

There is a $60 handling fee for your entry.

Submissions are open to everyone, from anywhere in the world!

Questions?:
Check out our informative FAQ, follow us on Twitter or find us on Facebook.

Check out the index for all previous Hot Shots, visit the Hey, Hot Shot! blog or look at our photo sets on flickr.

Apply Now!

Lisa Congdon, 20x200 edition-maker and co-owner of Rare Device, one of our very favorite San Francisco stores, will be exhibiting her work in the gallery area of the shop. Lisa and Amy Ruppel will share the space, paying homage to the "cloven hoofed, horned, furry" animals of the family Bovidae.

Both Amy and Lisa have chosen five different Bovids to articulate in their own styles, including the Yak, Duiker, Bongo and Chamois. Not to be limited to the 2-D, the installation will also include horns, antlers and a fake fur chandelier.

GENTLY BY THE HORNS: NEW WORK BY AMY RUPPEL AND LISA CONGDON
Opening: Friday, November 6, 2009 7–9 p.m.t
Rare Device
1845 Market Street
San Francisco

Can You Imagine by Trey Speegle

Two-time 20x200 edition-maker Trey Speegle will join a handful of artists in throwing an "Art Jamboree" in Soho this weekend. The event will feature an independent art sale, where all work costs $50 or less! It looks to be a great chance to pick up some artwork and to meet the artists themselves, who'll be doing the selling. Trey will be on-site with his work (Saturday only), so don't miss this chance to pick up one of his prints!

ART JAMBOREE #2
All work $50 or under
Saturday, October 24 & Sunday, October 25, 1–6:00pm
10 Greene St., 2nd & 3rd Floors

Artists include:
Billy Erb, Brent Van Horne, C.A.T.S. (Collective Arts Thinking Space), David Yarritu, Dino DeGuiceis, Fernando Santangelo, Holly Hein & Bryson Brooks, DJmeatnmore, Jason LeBlond, John-Paul Phillipe, Kenny Scharf, Josef Astor, Lourdes Sanchez, Martin Keehn, Matthew Burcaw, Michael Ingulli, Richard Haines, Raphael Sanchez & Kathleen White, Roz Allen, Santiago, Scott Lifshutz, Trey Speegle, Grace Kim, Julia Chiang, Tony Cox, Leah Durner, Lower East Side Girls Club and more!

We have some exciting news to share with all of you at 20x200: we're growing! We've closed a first round of funding, raising just over $800,000 of support from an inspiring group of people. Techcrunch broke the story earlier today and below is the piece featured in the NY Times' shortly thereafter. The funding was led by Tony Conrad at True Ventures, who wrote about his excitement for 20x200 on their blog.

We'll have more to say in upcoming days, but couldn't wait to share the news!

Click below for the rest of the article!

Trucks, Seattle by Tommy Perman

In addition to being an accomplished visual artist, 20x200 edition-maker Tommy Perman is also a musician in the Scottish collective / experimental pop band, Found. Tommy and his band just so happen to be in NYC this week to perform two free shows for the 2009 CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival. The first gig is happening tonight Thursday, October 22 at The Rose in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Found will also be playing this Saturday, October 24 in the Central Park Bandshell at 3 p.m.

There are just nine days left to help 20x200 artist Kevin Cyr launch his project to build a Camper Kart through Kickstarter! It all started last year on a trip to Beijing, where Kevin discovered the beauty of a Chinese 3-wheeled flatbed bike. His lifelong interest in RVs and vans led him to create the Camper Bike, a functioning sculptural piece that combines a flatbed bike topped with an American cabover-style camper.

With your help, Kevin hopes to finish the Camper Kart, a mobile unit built into a shopping cart which conveniently accommodates and transports the individual. Check out more information about his and other artists' projects at Kickstarter, a new communal way to support and fund ideas through the web.

If you support Kevin with a pledge of $40 or more on Kickstarter, you'll receive one of his ten artist proofs from his sold out 8"x10" 20x200 edition of Berry. There are a few more 16"x20" and two 30"x40" prints remaining here. –Jacqueline Frole

Meier's House by 2008 Hot Shot Juliane Eirich

This week has been an exciting one for Jen Bekman Projects, as you may have heard! This announcement has introduced Hey, Hot Shot! to an entirely new audience, and we've fielded numerous requests about the competition. We want to give everyone some extra time to enter, as this is the last chance to submit work in 2009.

So, we're extending the deadline for Hey, Hot Shot!'s last round of competition in 2009 to next Tuesday, October 27th at 11:00 p.m. (EDT).

And don't forget: editions of each selected Hot Shot's work will be released on 20x200. In addition, every entrant's images are considered for 20x200 editions. Take a look at work by Hot Shots we've featured on 20x200 in the past.

Have a great weekend; we look forward to seeing your entries!

Cover illustration of The Wild Things by Rachell Sumpter

20x200 star Rachell Sumpter was chosen to illustrate the cover of the soon-to-be hipster classic The Wild Things by Dave Eggers. The Wild Things is based on the screenplay that Eggers co-wrote with Spike Jonze for the film Where The Wild Things Are, which you've probably seen and have strong feelings about, unless of course, you've been off the grid for the past two weeks.

20x200 edition prints by Rachell are in dwindling supply. Of her two editions, Grande Finale and Cave Dwellers, only 13 remain!

See more of Rachell's recent illustrations on her site.

Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Left Panel by Mickey Smith

A large-scale diptych by book-loving 20x200 edition-maker Mickey Smith is included in the group show SIDE BY SIDE opening at the Esopus Space in New York this Tuesday. The piece that Mickey will display, EBONY is part of her Volume series, from which her three 20x200 editions MORE BOOKS, WORD STUDY, and NATURE are sourced.

About the series Mickey writes:

The act of hunting for and photographing these objects is fundamental to my process. I do not touch, light, or manipulate the books and words – preferring to document them as found in the stacks, created by the librarian, and positioned by the last unknown reader. I focus on simple, provocative titles that transcend the spines on which they appear to create conceptual, language-based, anthropological works.

Mickey has also created a 16-page artists project and 20"x30" two-sided removable poster, which will appear within Issue 13 of Esopus Magazine. The magazine will hits the stands on November 1st, but you can get a sneak peek at the opening reception of SIDE BY SIDE, which doubles as the Esopus 13 Launch Party.

SIDE BY SIDE / Esopus 13 Launch Party
Tuesday, October 27th, 6–9pm
Esopus Space
64 West 3rd Street, #210
New York

Artists Include:
Jeff Gibson, Oliver Herring, Peter Krashes, Alex Masket, and Mickey Smith.

Business Week, one of the most respected publications in the industry, had some very nice things to say about 20x200's big news!

John Tozzi writes,

Sell fine art prints over the Internet? No VC would seed this idea, most wouldn’t even take a meeting. This is one of those cases where execution made the difference. Bekman made it work from scratch. Now 20x200 has a track record and cash coming in. Now she can raise money to expand.

The full article is available online at their New Entrepreneur Blog.

Ciao collectors! Images and words have a symbiotic relationship which Ms. Jen Bekman intimately understands. Her visual and poetic memory is keen as she entwines the two on her blog, Personism. The above image by Penelope Umbrico, Suns from Flickr, reminded Jen of a poem by Mark Strand:

Luminism

And though it was brief, and slight, and nothing
To have been held onto so long, I remember it,
As if it had come from within, one of the scenes
The mind sets for itself, night after night, only
To part from, quickly and without warning. Sunlight
Flooded the valley floor and blazed on the town’s
Westward facing windows. The streets shimmered like rivers,
And trees, bushes, and clouds were caught in the spill,
And nothing was spared, not the couch we sat on,
Nor the rugs, nor our friends, staring off into space.
Everything drowned in the golden fire. Then Philip
Put down his glass and said: “This hand is just one
In an infinite series of hands. Imagine.”
And that was it. The evening dimmed and darkened
Until the western rim of the sky took on
The purple look of a bruise, and everyone stood
And said what a great sunset it had been. This was a while ago,
And it was remarkable, but something else happened then—
A cry, almost beyond our hearing, rose and rose,
As if across time, to touch us as nothing else would,
And so lightly we might live out our lives and not know.
I had no idea what it meant until now.

Penelope will be showing new work a group exhibition, Between Spaces, opening at P.S.1 this Sunday, November 1st.

From the press release:

Adopting the role of alchemist, the artists in Between Spaces reform and shift the aesthetic and cultural connotations of their materials. Notions of presence and absence are highlighted, evoking the space in between.

Between Spaces will remain on view through April 5, 2010.

Between Spaces
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
22-25 Jackson Ave | Long Island City, NY

Pick up Penelope's prints, including one to benefit Aperture on 20x200.
See more of Penelope's work on her site.
Follow Jen's poetic Paired series on Personism.

Waiting Dangerously in Rio by Scott Listfield

Rainy Tuesday greetings, collectors! It's Youngna here, very excited to bring you today's irreverent and blue-sky-filled edition, Waiting Dangerously in Rio from Boston-based painter, Scott Listfield. Jen first paired one of Scott's paintings with a poem by James Tait on Personism after coming across his work on Booooooom. Scott took note of the mention in Jen and Booooooom curator Jeff Hamada's conversation on 20x200, and wrote in, with the sense of humor that is also apparent in his images:

Forgive me if there is another "Scott, the astronaut dude," because lord knows I don't want to step on his toes. But if you were indeed talking about me (and I think you were), I'm incredibly flattered you mentioned me (I don't even mind being called 'the astronaut dude'), particularly as someone you would like to see on 20x200.

So we are here today with Scott's edition, which occupies the mysterious place between the Mesozoic era and Stanley Kubrick's imagined future. Listfield paints the strange and unusual present, where both astronauts and dinosaurs roam—though rarely together. In Waiting Dangerously, a suited James Bond-like figure leans on his DeLorean, the famous sportscar released in the early 80s with gull-wing doors that flap open to reveal a fiberglass underbody. The car was made iconic in the Back to the Future series, where the vehicle acts as a time machine, taking Doc and Marty McFly to the year 2015, then back to 1885. As they dart around, the modern and archaic intersect in oft-comical ways, much like they do in this painting, where a fully-suited astronaut serves casual company to the car.

If you've ever visited Scott's website—he is the envy-inducing owner of astronautdinosaur.com—you'll see he also incorporates myriad pop cultural and tongue-in-cheek sci-fi references in between the frequent astronauts and dinosaurs. He writes, "from Lost in Space to the Jetsons to Jurassic Park, it seems that popular culture fostered this space-age perception of the future." So, it makes perfect sense that in his paintings an anonymous astronaut is hanging out at a laundromat with Boba Fett or roaming a city street next to a giant statue of the Notorious B.I.G.; this is simply Scott's version of a very probable and imaginative present.

Before we take off for the day, we want to remind you that your last chance to apply to Hey, Hot Shot! in 2009 is TONIGHT, October 27th at 11 p.m. (EDT)! Our panelists are excited to see the submissions of this edition's contenders, who have entered work from all over the globe. If you want a sneak peek, we've been writing about them on the HHS! blog, sharing entries on Flickr, and will continue to do so until the Hot Shots are announced on November 30th.

Don't miss out on the opportunity to have your work reviewed by our stellar panel, a chance to exhibit at Jen Bekman Gallery and the potential to release work here on 20x200.

We'll be back tomorrow and Thursday with brand new editions, including one from a recent Hot Shot, so see you back here then!

Shortly after today's edition by Scott Listfield was released, we received an email from a dedicated reader. Vittorio Mezzano wrote in,

My congratulations for all the good work that you've been doing and for the great images that we dig so much (and sometimes buy), but this time you have to make a correction: the car in the painting is not a DeLorean at all, rather is a 1968 Bertone Carabo, a one off prototype based on an Alfa Romeo P33. You have to be forgiven though, since the designer of both cars is the same: Giorgetto Giugiaro.

And, a quick Google search (not that we didn't trust you, Vittorio) proves that he is correct!

Waiting Dangerously in Rio by Scott Listfield

While we're sad this was not the car used as a time machine in Back to the Future, we're now very glad to know the true model of the car in Waiting Dangerously in Rio.

Collectors! Not too long ago we let you know about 20x200-artist Kevin Cyr's ambition to build a Camper Kart ("a functioning sculptural piece that seeks to explore aspects of housing, mobility, and autonomy. It is also largely about self-reliance and making do with less.") Kevin has been raising funds for the construction of the Camper Kart on KickStarter.com and is only $310.00 and four days away from his goal of $2,000.00!

Watch this video to learn about his intentions:

Then please consider pledging your support here!

Go, Kevin Go!

Contact Sheets by Parsley Steinweiss

Contact Sheets
8"x10"($20) | 11"x14"($50) | 16"x20" ($200) | 24"x30" ($1000)
by
Parsley Steinweiss

Wednesday greetings, collectors! I'm glad to be back! With all my recent dashing around the country and lots of exciting news here at JBP, time has simply flown by faster than I can believe. It seems just yesterday that we were mulling over the work of today's edition-maker, Parsley Steinweiss at the 2009 First Edition Hey, Hot Shot! panel, and now here we are with Contact Sheets for you on 20x200!

Soon after that, Parsley was named one of our five Hot Shots and we were able to see her work on the walls of the gallery, where the pages that comprise Contact Sheets became even more material. If you haven't seen them in person, you must: they are amazing. In fact, I went back to the gallery to revisit the prints several times, captivated by how different the digital version was from the printed photograph, thinking that I'd really like to own one myself!

Parsley is also amazing—after meeting her in person, I can say that she more than lives up to her name! She is also a dedicated collector of both object and print material just like I am and if you've seen my apartment, you know that books and magazines are piled up in every crevice of my living space. So, upon seeing Parsley's Stacks, which befittingly take their name from their macro-view of the books, papers, magazines, journals, sketchpads and photographs in her abode, I felt an instant kinship.

Contact Sheets, specifically, brings up another personal obsession: the photograph as an object, and the murky line that lurks between. Each of the individual sheets in Parsley's "stack" is a two-dimensional object and record of her own creative history. She has compiled the sheets, with various edge color, tension and thickness, into a three-dimensional pile, then photographed and had them beautifully printed into the image you see here. In one sense, a greater distinction is created between the image and the original contact sheet because the photograph is no longer identifiable in its first form. From another angle, the distance between the object and image is diminished by the return to a print as a single sheet of photo paper—that which was originally stacked.

And so we open up a debate about the transposition of the thing into an image of the thing. In our recent Summer Reading exhibition at the gallery, we looked at the book as art object, the object (books) as photograph, and the object transformed into two dimensions to be used as the medium for the art. Each of these pieces, as with Parsley's, reveals a great duality in photography: the image is more than a representation of the object, and the object is more than is apparent in the image.

As you can see, we could go on and on with this discussion! But I'll instead leave you with this poem from Wallace Stevens, who also immerses himself in the eternal debate between the idea and the thing itself:

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

       —Wallace Stevens

20x200 edition-maker Jane Mount's popular Ideal Bookshelf 1, JMM is featured in the current issue of Angeleno Interiors magazine.

About her series Jane writes,

When I look at a shelf of books I see huge clouds of ideas stuffed down into humble packages. We people like to show off our books on shelves like merit badges, because we're proud of the ideas we've ingested to make us who we are, and want to display our insides for others to see, hoping to make a connection or impression. I think this is endearing and charming, and also makes me feel a bit sad for us. And yet when I paint someone else's bookshelf and they have some of the same books I do, I feel inordinately joyful about it, and about them.

You can only grab the magazine if you live in LA, but no matter where you are in the world you can take Angeleno's advice and pick up some "primary-toned tomes" of your own from 20x200. Or, if children's books aren't your bag (but how could they not be?), Jane's other editions depict shelves of Moleskine notebooks and an eclectic collection of grown-up books.

In the Ballpark by Tatsuro Kiuchi

Hello collectors! Making up for my absence as of late, I have a special bonus edition on this grand Thursday. It's that time of year again; the leaves are falling, the air is getting cooler and baseball buffs are getting all riled up. To bring some serenity to agitated and excited fans, we present In the Ballpark by Japanese illustrator, Tatsuro Kiuchi.

Celebrating the World Series has become a bit of a tradition for us at 20x200. Don Hamerman's Found Baseballs have always been a big hit and Mark Ulriksen's Babe and Stars and Stripes are going, going, just about gone! So I was pleased as punch to find this diamond among Tatsuro's work. I've been ooohing and ahhhing over many of his drawings and you can rest assured that this won't be the last you see of Tatsuro on 20x200. We know we're not the only fans of his work and think there may be more than a few converts among the slew of you!

But for now, I'll keep this note short and sweet. I first found Tatsuro on the cover of Poetry Magazine, so it's fitting to leave you with—what else—a poem! This one's by Marianne Moore and comes from Poets.org's great archives.

Baseball and Writing

(Suggested by post-game broadcasts)

Fanaticism? No.  Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
   You can never tell with either
      how it will go
      or what you will do;
   generating excitement--
   a fever in the victim--
   pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
      Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
      To whom does it apply?
      Who is excited?    Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
   puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly
      back to plate. (His spring
      de-winged a bat swing.)
   They have that killer instinct;
   yet Elston--whose catching
   arm has hurt them all with the bat--
      when questioned, says, unenviously,
   "I'm very satisfied. We won."
      Shorn of the batting crown, says, "We";
      robbed by a technicality.

When three players on a side play three positions
and modify conditions,
   the massive run need not be everything.
      "Going, going . . . " Is
      it? Roger Maris
   has it, running fast. You will
   never see a finer catch. Well . . .
   "Mickey, leaping like the devil"--why
      gild it, although deer sounds better--
snares what was speeding towards its treetop nest,
      one-handing the souvenir-to-be
      meant to be caught by you or me.

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
   He is no feather. "Strike! . . . Strike two!"
      Fouled back. A blur.
      It's gone. You would infer
   that the bat had eyes.
   He put the wood to that one.
Praised, Skowron says, "Thanks, Mel.
   I think I helped a little bit."
      All business, each, and modesty.
        Blanchard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer.
    In that galaxy of nine, say which
      won the pennant?  Each.  It was he.

Those two magnificent saves from the knee-throws
by Boyer, finesses in twos--
   like Whitey's three kinds of pitch and pre-
      diagnosis
      with pick-off psychosis.
   Pitching is a large subject.
   Your arm, too true at first, can learn to
   catch your corners--even trouble
      Mickey Mantle. ("Grazed a Yankee!
My baby pitcher, Montejo!"
      With some pedagogy,
      you'll be tough, premature prodigy.)

They crowd him and curve him and aim for the knees. Trying
indeed! The secret implying:
   "I can stand here, bat held steady."
      One may suit him;
       none has hit him.
   Imponderables smite him.
   Muscle kinks, infections, spike wounds
   require food, rest, respite from ruffians. (Drat it!
      Celebrity costs privacy!)
Cow's milk, "tiger's milk," soy milk, carrot juice,
      brewer's yeast (high-potency--
      concentrates presage victory

sped by Luis Arroyo, Hector Lopez--
deadly in a pinch. And "Yes,
   it's work; I want you to bear down,
      but enjoy it
      while you're doing it."
   Mr. Houk and Mr. Sain,
   if you have a rummage sale,
   don't sell Roland Sheldon or Tom Tresh.
      Studded with stars in belt and crown,
the Stadium is an adastrium.
      O flashing Orion,
      your stars are muscled like the lion.

       — Marianne Moore

20x200 has been listed among the "best in affordable art" on p.236 in the November issue of InStyle Magazine! Pictured above is Victoria's Peak, Hong Kong by 20x200 edition-maker Emily Shur, which you can pickup for yourself right here. And don't forget: sign up for the 20x200 mailing list to receive weekly announcements of our new editions.

We've been featured on Lucky Magazine's Lucky Right Now blog! The article, titled "Rad Affordable Art", highlights one of our recent favorites, Nonsensical Infographic No.1 by Chad Hagen. Kamping Kabins by Ian Baguskas, whose work you can look forward to in the upcoming exhibit at Jen Bekman Gallery, is also featured.

Elise writes "There will always be a debate about whether art can be affordable. I am firmly, firmly in the yes camp—beauty is a pretty relative thing, don't you think? Thus, the brilliance of sites like 20x200.com."

We couldn't agree more.

Untitled by Kurt Tong

New work from a series titled In Case it Rains in Heaven by two-time 20x200 edition-maker and 2009 First Edition Hot Shot Kurt Tong opens next Thursday at Fotofest in Houston. The group exhibition International Discoveries II features 18 images and a video by Kurt and will be the first public showing of these works documenting folded paper funerary gifts from China, such as the paper roller skates above. The series was also recently awarded second runner-up honors in the editorial category of the Photography.Book.Now competition (where another one of his series, People's Park took the grand prize). Of In Case it Rains in Heaven, Kurt writes,

Traditionally, many Chinese believe that when a person dies, he leaves with no earthly possessions and it's up to their descendants to provide for them in their afterlife until reincarnation.

In the last 50 years, more and more elaborate items are made out of paper as offerings for the dead. Cars, servants and houses were common sights at funerals. As consumer culture takes over China, Joss products have become more and more outrageous. While this practice is officially banned in China, it has always been tolerated.

If you're in Houston, don't miss the chance to check out work by Kurt and the other five international artists who are "being featured by FotoFest as outstanding ‘discoveries’ in the world of contemporary photography."

International Discoveries II
Fotofest
November 5–December 19, 2009
Houston, Texas
1113 Vine Street, Houston, Texas, USA

For more information, see the press release (pdf) and check out Kurt's work online.

Kurt's 20x200 editions, RAF Vulcan XL-361 and Gosling Lake, are both available in all sizes from 20x200.