Tuesday Edition: Lauren DiCioccio

Vogue JUL07:pg145 (Ripeness is All)
8"x10" ($20) | 11"x14" ($50) | 16x20" ($200)
and
Vanity Fair MAY08:pg269 (and, incredibly, looking not a day older)
8"x10" ($20) | 11"x14" ($50) | 16x20" ($200)
by
Lauren DiCioccio

Tuesday greetings, Collectors! As I said on The Twitter earlier this morning, the brightness and lightness of today's editions from Lauren DiCioccio seem the perfect antidote to the dreary gloom outside our East Coast windows.

Vogue JUL07:pg145 (Ripeness is All) and Vanity Fair MAY08:pg269 (and, incredibly, looking not a day older) come from Lauren's ingenious color codification dot drawings series. She describes her process thusly: "To make each painting, I lay a sheet of frosted mylar over a magazine page. I assign a color to every letter (numbers are shades of grayscale) and apply tiny dots of paint over every character on the page according to my color-code." Akin to the experience of "solving a cryptogram" her end result is "a legible blur of dots in the form of the article’s layout — like a system of Braille for the color inclined."

I have to tell you — Ms. DiCioccio is definitely speaking my language! Her work mirrors my experience and affection for the printed page in a way that I'm just not capable of. Magazines all have their distinctive rhythms, and her work strikes right to the visual core. Magazines, multi-coloredness, systems and information design — oh my! Lauren's work is like the best candy ever to a girl like me. (And I'm not just saying that because they bring beloved button candy to mind.)

My obsession with magazines is a long-standing one. I've been haunting newsstands since I was a wee lass, and my appetites often border on the indiscriminate. Sure I anticipated the September issue of Seventeen as much as the next fashion obsessed pre-teen would, but it hardly stopped there. Everything printed and periodical was fair game — my stepfather's copy of Crain's New York, the glossy pages of the short-lived Mirabella, even my grandmother's copies of The Star, half-hidden in the guest bedroom, were a delight to peruse.

I was way ahead of the curve in mourning the death of print — the demise of fine publications like Spy, Seven Days and Jane set me reeling. I still get wistful for the days when Paper and Details were over-sized publications printed on newsprint that catered to the downtown set. My parents call me the "zine queen" to this day, and with good reason — I already subscribe to more than I can find the time to read, and still manage to rationalize gorging myself on broad array of additional titles every time I travel. (And you know that's not exactly a rare occurrence!)

Aside from my keen interest in the subject, I am pretty captivated by the objects themselves. Our printers worked extra hard to find a material on which they could faithfully reproduce the translucent ethereal quality of the originals. No small task, especially since we're all such perfectionists! The lucky ducks who got the Starn Twins' vellum prints will know exactly how particular we are. All's well that ends well — everyone's pleased as punch with the final proofs, which means that you all should get that same jolt of transparent excitement that I did upon first seeing Lauren's work.*

That lots of people will get to hold these bits of gorgeousness in their hot little hands is the whole point after all, isn't it? Sure, Lauren asks the big questions like "What will happen when we no longer touch information?" but her participation here speaks to the impossibility of that future. 20x200 is all about using the internet to put real stuff into peoples' hands. I welcome our digital future, but I don't anticipate it creating a viable substitute for that experience.

Speaking of experiences, I'm about to embark upon what promises to be an exciting one of my own. I've got another fantabulous edition to share with you tomorrow and then I'm off on another arty adventure. I'll be spending a long weekend in the South of France, where I've been invited to serve as a juror at The Hyères Festival. Ooh-la-la!

*Alas, this particular bit of particular-ness comes with a price. It took us longer than we anticipated to settle on a final version, so Lauren's editions will take a little longer to ship than usual. We expect that we'll be sending them out early next week, but rest assured — they're well worth the wait!

Previous Email : Edition Announcement #157 - Michael Lundgren

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