Chas Bowie wrote a really tight insightful essay for the show’s mini-catalogue entitled Total Money Makeover. Pacific Northwest College of Art’s UNTITLED magazine has just re-published the essay here. A choice snippet:

Monuments invariably testify to their own physicality as much as they do to the memory of the subjects they commemorate. Mandiberg’s installation of investment guides emblazoned with the logos of fallen banks is no different. The get-rich-quick volumes that comprise FDIC Insured were purchased from the dollar bins of Manhattan’s Strand bookstore, where they served as pitiful markers of their own failure. For every bank that the government bailed out or brokered into sale, Mandiberg laser-cut the fallen institution’s logo on the covers of tomes such as Nothing Down, The Business Bible, and Dress Like a Million. At more than 220 titles and counting, Mandiberg’s library of financial failure is built upon the promise of buying even when you have no money, trading when you have nothing to trade and profiting when you have nothing to provide.

The full essay is here

Graham Parker stopped by for a studio visit, and we had a great conversation. The highlight was when he told me to “choose my words less carefully.” In the description he writes:

First in a series of studio and show visits with contemporary artists. I’ve known Michael for some years – probably since a friend directed me to his Shop Mandiberg project. He’s recently been a research fellow at Eyebeam and is having an open studio there soon – mostly showing off work he has been producing with a laser cutter. He invited a few people along to do some studio visits in advance of that and I happened to have my camera with me when I went along. He’d set up a lot of work in one of Eyebeam’s main display spaces, so the effect was much more like a solo show than a regular studio visit.I asked Michael to talk me through a few pieces on camera and he generously agreed to do so – despite having no time to process what we’d just been talking about in our visit. It’s mainly shot under existing lights with a few stills dropped in, so the footage is a little grainy in places, but it should give an idea of what he’s up to.

I have short hair. For reals. This is the first good photo of it. I also have glasses now. I feel simultaneously older, and also very young: the last time I had hair like this I was 13.

Though mom has responded:

the last time your hair was short was post-mohawk, senior yr at CG

your graduation pix are evidence….

mom

I gave a lecture on August 8th at Dorkbot PDX entitled FAIL, WIN!, FTW?. It is a summary of my recent work experimenting with open licensing on physical objects. I explore what has worked, and what hasn’t, and some of the lessons I have learned.

Marisa Olson also spoke; her lecture is here

Marisa Olson and I are speaking at Dorkbot PDX this Sunday, August 7th, 7PM. The annoucement says:

We are extremely honored to have two distinguished artists from New York visiting Portland and sharing their work with DorkbotPDX. Please help us welcome these amazing and inspiring dorks from across the way!

I’m flattered to be called distinguished… !

I’m very grateful to Amber Case for patching us into the PDX scene, and Thomas Lockney and Jason Plumb for setting up this opportunity to share with some PDX dorks.

Sunday, August 7th, 7pm
Location: About Us, 107 SE Washington
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=107+SE+Washington+portland
http://dorkbotpdx.org/dorkbotpdx_0x04

“Black Market Type and Print Shop”
06.09.09

Author: Micah Malone

05.07.09-06.27.09 Feldman Gallery at the Pacific Northwest College of Art

Creating fonts can be a touchy subject, raising issues of intellectual property—touchier still when the fonts in question sample hand-drawn lettering from well-known works of art. However, for the exhibition “Black Market Type and Print Shop,” font generation becomes a clever game of connoisseurship. Curator Joseph del Pesco appropriated mostly handwritten texts from single pieces of art (or series of works) as source material for his exhibited typefaces, without seeking permission from the sampled artists.

Ironically, John Baldessari’s Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966–68, was originally meant to look impersonal, and yet the font generated from his work is more identifiable than anything else on view. Recognizing Baldessari’s presence yields one of the most delightful moments in the exhibition. By extracting only the handwritten text from artworks, thus ignoring original semantic content and rhetorical nuances, del Pesco frees the text from its context, though it remains bound by the artists’ authorial presence. Fetishizing well-known lettering has vast implications, including the potential for mischievous profits; yet here, it mostly just generates delicious fun, allowing viewers to match each artist with his or her font.

In a separate gallery—the so-called Print Shop—a computer awaits, loaded with the fonts in Adobe Illustrator. Visitors can design and print posters with their favorite “black market” font and are encouraged to add their creation to a forest of prints accumulating on a bulletin board in the same room. Amusing as it is to simply click the font menu and choose between Margaret Kilgallen, Duane Michaels, R. Crumb, and twenty-seven others, the results illustrate the font variety without ever spawning an inventiveness that surpasses novelty. This remains true in the first gallery, where, alongside del Pesco’s typefaces, text-only posters created from these fonts by participating “international artists” lack anything more than droll punning—making the implications of the exhibition’s font usage frustratingly safe.

“black market type and print shop” – artforum.com / archive.

Flickr Photo Download: Eyebeam Benefit Ver3.0, 06/16/09.