X-PRESS Revisited Entry 6 (November 30, 2015)

Phew!! This will be the last post of the X-PRESS revisited. I scanned all of the materials, burnt them to a disk and handed them off to Mike Horvath. We will see what further collaborations might be in store for us. I have asked him to document our X-PRESS artwork in Wikipedia because he is such a gifted writer.

Mike is a published author. Mike wrote a collection of two novellas titled, Brighter Graphite”. Following are two online reviews of “Brighter Graphite”:

http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/contemplating-brighter-graphite.html

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6446049-brighter-graphite

Please check out his book – I absolutely love this book. If you are an artist you will definitely enjoy the book.

The last images of our X-PRESS collaborations follow. The image below is a scan of our poster for our last performance titled, “Shelf Life”.

The next image is a scan of the program for the “Shelf Life” performance. We wrapped this label around and adhered it to cans that we bought and stripped off the old label. We passed out these cans with this label at the beginning of the performance. We actually designed the label first and then used it for the poster.

The next image is a scan of the front and back of a business card we created and distributed at the time.

The last two images are scans of a magazine we published and distributed in the late 70’s early 80’s called “GAGZ”. We printed a lot of these and distributed them around Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

X-PRESS Revisited Entry 5 (November 20, 2015)

Here is the fifth group of X-PRESS ephemera that I have recently scanned for documentation. These images all come from our programs for our performances. Almost every performance we collaborated on was accompanied by a program. Usually a double-sided xeroxed paper folded in some way. These were passed out before the performance began.

The list of our performances are as follows:

1979 March 15 – “Time To Kill” at Ohio State University

1979 April – “Void Where Prohibited” at University of Akron

1979 May 29 – “Artistic License” at Ohio State University

1979 June 1,2 – “D-Program” at Ohio State University

1979 August 24 -“The D-Vice” at Ohio State University

1980 March 12 – “The Bachelor Party” at Ohio State University

1980 May 12-17 – “Ulterior Motifs” Hopkins Gallery at Ohio State University

1980 July 29 – “The Living End” Artreach Gallery, Columbus, Ohio

1982 April 1 – “Shelf Life” Experimental Gallery, Akron, Ohio

The first photograph is the program from “Time To Kill”.

The following is the program from “The D-Vice” This program was folded in thirds.

Following is the program from “The Bachelor Party”

Cover

Inside

X-PRESS Revisited Entry 4 (November 12, 2015)

I have processed more photos from the X-PRESS collaboration. The first photo is a poster for a performance we did titled, “The Living End”. The next photo is the front and back cover of our program for the performance. It is a xerox paper double sided and folded into thirds. The following photo is the inside of our program for the performance.

The last photo is a promotional piece that shows a design of the logo we created for X-PRESS at the top of the page. I am unsure where the photo of the rats came from but we added the words “Rat Race” at the top.

X-PRESS Revisited Entry 3 (November 5, 2015)

I have processed more photographs and ephemera from our collaborations. The performance photo below is from a collaboration we titled, “Void Where Prohibited” . We were invited by Sandra Amitay at the University of Akron to install artwork on the construction fence around a site of a parking deck in April of 1979. We decided to dig a hole under the fence. It was raining so we donned black trash bags as raincoats, the time was 2:30 pm. Just after we finished digging the hole and were about to attach a sign above the hole with the title, “DEFENSE”. We were stopped by R. Henry of the University of Akron Security department. He wrote us up and stated in his report, ” I informed David Hartz…and Michael Horvath…that they are to fill in the hole under the construction fence for the new parking lot deck and (sic) the west side. They had legitimate papers from the University of Akron to hang “items” on the fence, but not to dig under the fence into the construction site. If they have any questions, I informed them to contact our office.”

We filled in the hole and then came back at 5:00 pm with a pair of newly purchased handcuffs and locked them to the fence on the other end of the handcuffs we attached a wire cutter along with a sign that said “LOOPHOLE”. Sometime between 8:00 pm and 9:15 the next morning, “LOOPHOLE” was completed. Someone had cut the fence where the handcuffs and wire cutter were hanging and stolen them, leaving a hole in the fence and our “LOOPHOLE” sign.

We published a small xerox booklet that had all the documentation for this collaboration.

The next photos show one of our first performances which was to issue Artistic Licenses to the audience. I have photos of the front and the back of the licenses here.

The rest of the photos are promotional items for various performances.

X-PRESS Revisited Entry 2 (October 28, 2015)

I processed a bunch more photograohs from our X-Press collaboration. The photos below with the white rats was a performance in Columbus, Ohio. We always pushed the limits of the audience’s boundaries so we always wanted some separation between us and the audience. This performance took place in a long narrow gallery and there was no real natural boundary between us and the audience. So we bought two white rats and tethered them to two bricks and figured that the audience would not cross this psychological boundary. They did not. The wonderful photographs of the rats were taken by H. Michael Sanders, a colleague of ours.

The other photos were taken during two other performances and are very badly shot photographs. Nevertheless, they are the only documents of these performances other than the programs and promotional material we created.

X-PRESS Revisited (October 20, 2015)

My old friend Mike Horvath recently moved back to Ohio from New York city and we have been talking about all the collaborations and performances we did in the late seventies and early eighties. We formed a collaborative enterprise which we called X-PRESS. It should be depicted with a circle around the ‘X’. We created a lot of ‘Brand X’ products like small print publications, labels for cans, video and films which were all usually incorporated in performances that we created. These performances were Dada inspired and were designed to only be performed once. We created approximately eight performances.

We are talking and meeting again to collaborate again – perhaps with another film or another publication. As preparation, I have been digging through all of our X-PRESS documentation and processing it for us both. We are thinking about publishing it to the internet in some fashion – so I am preparing the files. I seem to have saved the bulk of our documentation. For this first installment I have posted several of the promotional photos I have saved from our checkered past below.

Odd Markings on a City Sidewalk (October 9, 2015)

I am always fascinated by the strange markings that surveyors and city employees place on our streets and public places. They are always very cryptic and puzzling. I recently noticed these markings that I photographed below. I love the way they have no regard for grass or plants or gravel and just spray paint their glyphs on whatever happens to be there.

Open House at Essex Studios (October 2, 2015)

Essex Studios will be having an Open House this weekend on Oct.2 & 3 from 6pm – 10pm. Essex is located at 2511 Essex Place, Cincinnati, Ohio 45206

www.essesxstudios.com

My studio is on the second floor – room 268. I will have a lot of present and past work available for viewing and purchase. Below is a colored pencil piece that I recently completed.

Bike Trail Glyphs (September 17, 2015)

As riding my bike on the bike trail, I came upon these strange glyphs. They were impossible to read – obviously warnings that had been so distressed that most of the message had been erased. Yet I found them interesting as some kind of alien glyphs. Below are some photos.

Ohio State Fair 2015 miscellaneous (September 9, 2015)

This was my favorite work of art at the fair in all the professional fine art exhibitions, the high school exhibitions and all the youth exhibitions. This piece is titled, “Birds Quiet Monsters” and was created by Henry Hess at St. Timothy Middle School.

I loved this sheep all dressed up in full regalia.

This cake was in the cake decorating competition. It did not win anything but i thought it looked very tasty – much like a Wayne Thiebaud  painting.