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Printer: HP B9180 with Vivera inks — good for about 200 or more years.
Paper: InkPress Fine Art Matte, 220GSM — acid free for permanence.
Dimensions: 13×19-inch (A3+), no borders.
Print Run: four to six, God willing — there are three already on the dining room table, but “the estate” — such as the tawdry thing may be — may hold one or two in reserve.
I’ve cross-posted this entry from http://jsoppenheim.com, but in the future may post new inventory here first.
J. S. Oppenheim — All Together (Another WordPress Blog)
Music: I’m short on rigging for it, but have been out playing music real good for money (for once) for about nine months, and that’s going to continue. There will be a compact high-end PA system in my near future, and that will join the Mustang, guitar, and gig bag (mics, toys, wires) in getting me to private parties and, so I hope today, more bars and restaurants.
Photography: I’ve the challenge of placing the “Antietam Set” and perhaps reinvigorating the avocation and profession as energy and time have been sloughed into online intellectual life — I’ve had a wild ride along the crests of the Islamic Small Wars and the Middle East Conflict, and only a part of that participation would be indicated by the posts at Oppenheim Arts & Letters: Facebook has turned out the great battlespace and time suck (away from the fine and lively arts) in that realm, although one may add in the extensive reading associated with such an endeavor.
I know where my time has gone.
I just don’t know what I’ve gotten out of it!
In any case, for once, typing here from a staycation I’m calling “Summer Camp 2012” — me and “Kramer” . . . we go way back for this sort of thing — I feel for the first time in my life . . . all here.
No question I’ve been struggling with writing, music, and photography for some time, but never quite so out in the open nor so known, even if the standard involves old friends who have popped up on Facebook or my few acquaintance and friends (and fans) around town.
So I have started a new blog, rather experimental as an intimate journal and showcase, a place, perhaps, to be found now that I am lost, albeit, for once, more fully present than I have been in a lifetime.
“Old Simon” at Antietam National Cemetery.
Projects.
Aesthetically: internally consistent.
Thematically: coherent.
I’ve spent decades making pretty pictures, technically stunning pictures, sentimental pictures, but this late afternoon, one that marks the end of a long process over time, is the first on which I’ve printed (completed, done) a set of a dozen coherent, internally consistent interpretations of one of America’s great historic landscape: Antietam National Battlefield Park.
I’m having a drink over it, rum and coke, this still warm July afternoon, windows open, fans running, Joe Pass (“Bernie’s Tune”) coming down from a cloud.
Is this how it feels to have something finished, I wonder.
Must be.
Manhattan or Venice Beach or some little spot off the road, Cumberland Valley, twenty minutes driving north of all that death, glory, sacrifice, the announcement in blood of the beginning of the end of slavery (and “separate but equal”, truth to be told) in the U.S.A., it’s the same thing.
Although not quite a wrap — I could stand to print the set a few more times.
In any case, I have something to ship.
I’ve a minimum in mind.
The HP B9180 survived this round!
Specification: HP B9180 with the Vivera inks on A3+ (13×19-inch) InkPress Fine Art Matte, minimally bordered and at the bottom numbered by volume and print order (left), and signed (right).
Production Run: I’m tempted not to do another set! However, I’ve in mind placing six to a dozen sets, no more, of this project.
If the HP printer fails (beyond fast repair) on any subsequent order, then I’ll print on the Epson 3880 with the Ultrachrome K3 (with “Vivid Magenta”) inks.
I would like to tell you how hungover I am, but cannot, for I am only a little partied out.
🙂
And getting over it with coffee bean from Nicaragua.
However, if I weren’t fighting “Dunlap’s Disease” (as in, “honey, my belly done lapped over my belt!”), this would be fine morning hour for a cold beer.
Gig Snaps –> “If I’m to perform — guitarist, vocalist, singer/songwriter — I may bring a camera; if I bring a camera. what I shoot around the gig goes here” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/23673974@N04/collections/72157626640831218/).
So it goes, but here I may remove the “I may bring a camera” part, for the high-end point-and-shoot Lumix Lx5 fairly assures I will have at least that camera with me.
Greg Trumpower picking a tune out in the wilting heat of the late Fourth of July afternoon, 2012, Hagerstown, Maryland.
Dave Violet (L) and Greg Trumpower (R) pick one.
Greg’s friend Dave Violet has a fine ear and plays well, but as others of our cohort do between age, economy, and fate, he’s been struggling with health and house and here has borrowed Greg’s old Gibson, a little hard to play, stiff action, so Dave says. Pay him no mind on that — he’s very smooth and jazzes it up as if the old flat top had been built and setup just for him.
Finale – Fourth of July — Hagerstown, Maryland 2012.
Not bad for a hand-held point-and-shoot!
Well, it’s colorful.
Technically, hand shake and fire in motion may have conspired for effect.
It has been very cool working in three arts and along multiple parallel career tracks, but when one gets “inside” the less visible machinery and methods of an avenue of expression, it becomes very difficult managing (alone) each art (or research) system: I’d rather have recorded the fireworks with the D2x on a tripod, but . . . outside . . . public party . . . in town . . . Mustang parked a block away . . . chair and gig bag (day travel base camp) slung over my shoulder and guitar case in hand — one system per mission, please.
Of course, as all in production now — film, music, photography — locations come with their own package of encouragements by way of amenity, convenience, and security, so perhaps I will find my way to another house party but out in the countryside with ample parking and other music-supporting and photography-encouraging features.
We shall see!
In the meantime, enjoy my memory of my town’s fireworks 2012.
Communicating Arts - The Journal 