red alert all strange friends: new vibe pack, new supply drop, new style, is en route to your feed and potentially your life (if you want) right now. its a topic we havent covered in a minute. had this one cooking in the lab for a while now.
had the idea to periodically release some smaller fine art style prints from the studio in small packs with some stickers ive been printing along the way. did the first one sometime last year, made 40, they sold out, it was a good time. time for chapter 2
now its time for the [second] vibe pack. "second inkjection" - american cryptids print with the suite of theo-aesthetica stickers. some new. some classic. let me show you all about it in this thread. u can look for fun even if u dont want to pick it up
so, first up, the print. i wanted to make an image with some of my favorite, and some of the most essential, some rare, some well known, american cryptids. ive been working on getting this just right for a while now. i think i first started this last year in colorado.
so i have this really awesome printer here where the ink is almost more like paint. ill post a video of the print in a second. when ive done stuff like this, ive usually tried to base the feel and flavor of the image on a traditional printmaking technique, so it carries that vibe
last time i tried to land in kind of an etching or northern euro woodcut space. this time, i based the feel and flavor of this print on some japanese woodblock prints, specifically this image of white foxes carrying ceremonial flames at night by hiroshige, one of my favorites.
not that they look the same, obviously, but i can "go for" any flavor and feel i want so, i have found its useful to base the general timbre off something traditional so, thats what i used. the way the woodblock print utilizes fades and dark tones was perfect for this.
you can see how the print actually looks here and get a feel for the size. its printed on watercolor paper so it has a nice texture, its kind of thick, not to sound pretentious but i would call this a more fine art style print. im really happy with how it turned out.
theres a few older euro altarpieces and things like that from northern europe that have decorative writing around the outside, and its done so that when youre looking at the image the writing functions as a "pure border", but u can read it. the border says what cryptids are in it
we got:
- mothman
- dogman
- loveland frog man
- flatwoods monster
- bigfoot
- jersey devil
- pope lick monster
- skunk ape
- wampus cat
- various aquatic entities
and more. i tried to get the best selection possible
so yeah. could go on about that but really tried to capture a certain vibe and feel here. if ur on patreon you saw me working on this on and off for a while, started sometime last year, even collected visual descriptions and notes of things that should be reflected. good times.
anyway, moving on, the stickers. some people have seen some of these designs before, got some classics around, this first one is new though. theyre all vinyl stickers.
theyre all around three inches, which i have found is the largest i can print them without the effect being "woah, thats really large, what am i going to do with that". with pencil you can see how large:
also includes the holographic st odilo of cluny sticker, which you can see in the tweet below and in different lighting in the tweet above that. shiny. hes the patron saint of souls in purgatory
ive found its almost impossible to get these printed without some slight imperfections like a line or a bump or something so, just saying, but thats kind of the cool part of working with actual materials instead of pixels, imo. they look cool irl.
thats it. the set is $40 flat. that includes shipping unless ur in another country. comes in a small hard envelope to your house. i made 40, if it sells out super quickly ill make some more. thats the tale. thanks for looking at my stuff and hanging out on the internet with me
oh yeah i forgot the best part, i know this is going to push it over the edge for you, theyre signed on the back. hello big museum department. hello art world. hello sothebys ten million dollar opening bids. ten trillion dollar bids minimum by end of year (not financial advice)
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in the 1977 film ‘wizards’, one of the oddest movies ive seen, the earth is split between two opposing forces: one side uses technology, and one side has forbidden technology and instead uses magic. i thought this was an interesting lens to view the present AI discussion through.
the term “magic” gained its present english meaning at a time when our society was entirely religious. so, obviously, socially dominant religion with its hierarchy, history, and institutions used the term magic to denote what was outside it: witches, the occult, and such things.
however, we no longer live in that world. today, if we remove the baggage from the word magic, we have to be slightly honest and admit that talking to superhuman beings, items with supraphysical holy influence, casting out demons - this is all “magical”, as opposed to scientific.
jordan peterson’s ’clean up your room’ became a huge joke but no one ever mentioned that his second step was to try to make the room beautiful, because that involves committing to something, putting yourself out there, and engaging with beauty on your own terms as an individual.
to make an aesthetic statement in the form of creating something, like decorating a room, is to engage with the fear the above person describes. because you have nowhere to hide. someone is going to come to your room and say, “you picked that painting?”, and, you did. thats it.
really as much as im not a devotee of the guy the whole set up was pretty good. because once you make something beautiful, its like cleaning one thing in a dirty room. everything else that isn’t beautiful suddenly stands out as extremely not beautiful, then you have to fix that.
a long time ago i was reading this on the subway. old guy taps me. i take my headphones off. he says, "whats that book?". i say "its... a history of magic". he says, "does he say magic comes from God?". i said "uh... yeah, actually". he says "good." then just stood there quietly
this happened at the utica avenue subway station in crown heights which i frequented for some time. a few other interesting things happened there. once another guy started talking to me. he was black, and told me he had been privately studying with a rabbi for like a decade
...
apparently he was privately studying history and judaism with a rabbi, alone, and the rabbi had selected him for this process. i asked a lot of questions and the guy did not seem insane, and seemed to know some things that validated his story, but, i could not make sense of it.
the movie ‘jesus camp’ is the movie i’ve watched the most in my life. in a way, that makes it my favorite movie. at this point, i’ve probably seen it hundreds of times. there are times working at my desk where i’d put it on every day. admittedly, bizarre behavior. so, why?
[…]
if youre unfamiliar, the film documents a bunch of kids who are taken to an evangelical / charismatic summer camp. it’s meant to portray them as somewhat extreme: a small window into this dark undercurrent of american religious life, where kids are … brainwashed, basically.
i think this movie has followed me around for most of my life because ive seen it from every perspective. initially, i was teenager atheist who had the perspective of the film: that this was all basically evil
later i turned my back on that perspective entirely, and saw it again
one of my favorite stories about america is from a guy who moved to west virginia to be a pastor. someone organized a garbage truck route to come through an extremely rural neighborhood, at a time when this cost some money. a nominal fee was passed over to the residents.
[…]
it was a trivial amount of money, but the residents there were so incensed that someone would do this without asking them and then stick them with the bill that they stopped doing anything at all with their trash, and just threw it outside until the plan was called off.
[…]
later, this pastor, who was there for this, wanted to pave the road leading up to their also extremely rural church. wanting to avoid any conflict, he called a meeting and laid out his plan: a truck will come, and dump gravel along the now dirt road, at minimal cost.