Agent Ribbons

One of our favorite bands, Agent Ribbons is going to play the opening for the Notable Lantern Eve show, which is really exciting. Agent Ribbons played the opening for Concordia/Discordia I, and since then, Graciela and I have been big fans.

They'll be playing with another great Sacramento act, Sherman Baker.

The latest two paper cuts.

location

The question of location is an interesting one for me. The fact that I live in LA and Richard lives in Sacramento has led us to adapt our methods of communicating and working with each other. We're in complete isolation of each other's work and there isn't a dialogue between us as far as content, themes, etc goes. I find this to be very liberating. During our previous show I lived for a part of the planning process in Sacramento so we were keen on having a conversation between our work. But now it's every man for himself, as the saying goes. Personally, I think that the isolation has left me to find my own strengths and work on the weaknesses that I could have easily relied on Richard to make up for. I had no idea what Richard was doing until I went to visit him in December and I don't think he really got a sense for what I was doing until I mailed him some of my work. I like the surprises we're able to each have in this journey to completion.

LA has inspired me in the sense that it's brought all of my Sacramento memories and experiences to the surface. A lot of my work is my psyche working out some of those memories and the feelings I associate with the people I knew, the person I loved and still love, the places I frequented, and simply put, my old life. It's incredibly romanticized which is probably the most evident in my use of color palettes. I need to be in LA to have the romanticization breathe true. LA has also kept me a busy bee which makes it easier for me to work quickly and not over-think my work. I'm incredibly proud of these pieces, which is saying a lot because I usually like 25% of what I do. It's a dual city work collection which required a dual city experience from me.

graciela: i'm a paper cutter

So a little bit about me...
I'm a graphic designer and so I use the same design tools I work with at my job to create my artwork. I did a collection of digital prints on canvas during the last Concordia/Discordia show but I wanted a change this time around. I wanted to create something that was more tactile, with mistakes, cheap to make, but stunning in composition. So I basically desgined a whole set of patterns, printed them out, cut them up, and reworked all the scraps into collages. I also integrated pieces of cloth, plants, buttons, and vellum into these pieces. I've always liked collages but I didn't want to take someone else's work and reinterpret it into a collage. I wanted to commit myself to creating every element on the scraps of paper so it could truly be my own.

My inspiration for the collage idea came from the person I love. It's a cheesy motivation but what else is there to inspire us than love? The piece I did about him is built on a pattern I created using his name. That idea lent itself to creating patterns for all the people I've loved. It was fun for me because I consider myself a type-lover but I'm also very conservative with the use of typefaces in my design work. But here, in trying to create patterns using names that were indistinguishable I got to use fonts I'd never dream of using in design. The end result is a visceral reaction to shapes and conversations of color.

Here are some teaser close ups of the first 5 pieces I did.

Richard: Coffee & Pigment Series

I drink too much coffee.
Way too much, in fact for someone who claims to be sensitive to caffeine.
(on a side note; I'm probably not really senseitive to caffeine)

For this show, I was looking for a way to visually quantify my coffee consumption in a way that a pie-chart just couldn’t do. So I combined my love for the aesthetics of a good stain with my love for coffee, and ended up saving half of my morning coffee and pouring it on a canvas.

I really liked where it was going, so I started adding raw pigments to my left over coffee.

(click to make these bigger)

Notable Lantern Eve

So I don't want to give too much away.
But here's how we came up with the name for this show:

Graciela: Hey Richard,
I got your text message the other day. We do need a
name for the show. I have no clue. I don't think our
work is even relatable in any way this time around.

Richard: as for a name
how you would you feel about an anagram?
notable latern eve
is an anagram for "not even relatable" (like our work)
so is
benevolent latera

Graciela: Aw. I love, love,
love, Notable Latern Eve. That's my vote.

Richard: That's actually my vote too.
it has a name.

Graciela: You know what I just realized, Notable Lantern Eve has
3 N's where as Not Even Relatable only has 2. Is that
still an anagram?

Richard: so it's an anagram for "N Not Even Relatable"
who cares?
no one will know but us
& it's still a cool name


Niandra La Des is suppsed to be an anagram for Aladdin Sane but it doesn't really work either.

concordia/discordia blog

this is the inaugural blog post.