I was doing school in November full time, pretty much completely slammed. I missed my friends and figured that since I was pretty much tied down with school, I’d like a good, productive excuse to get in touch with them more. So I decided to put together a book on this website called Blurb.com.
I’d seen my friend Travis Conner put a book together on there called Black Lines and was really impressed that someone I knew could just go online and put together something so cool, that you could hold in your hands and relate to in real space. Thematically, I thought about drawing, painting or photography, something like that. As for including lots of people, these seemed like they might run into the same pitfalls; obviously if you’ve watched your friends doodle there’s usually someone who’s a lot better with a pencil than others. That tends to intimidate people who are on the fence about contributing to a project.
So, in the interest of democratizing the process a bit, I decided to choose a medium that I’d seen 7-year-old kids have enormous success with- cutting paper. I figured if it was approachable even for them, then lots of people could go for it. You could do something that looked really simple and silly, or you could do something really tedious and ornamental, and have, possibly, the same degree of success and satisfaction.
As it turned out, the book I compiled drew from a wide range of my friends, some who’d considered themselves (rightfully!) to be professionals, and some who shied away from showing art before. Everyone who sent me something managed to get him/herself out of a comfort zone, and flip it up a little bit. Dan and Hannah (of DayTripper Gallery) were opening up shop, and we felt like it was a great time to have a show to support our book, Cuts.
I was doing school in November full time, pretty much completely slammed. I missed my friends and figured that since I was pretty much tied down with school, I’d like a good, productive excuse to get in touch with them more. So I decided to put together a book on this website called Blurb.com.
I’d seen my friend Travis Conner put a book together on there called Black Lines and was really impressed that someone I knew could just go online and put together something so cool, that you could hold in your hands and relate to in real space. Thematically, I thought about drawing, painting or photography, something like that. As for including lots of people, these seemed like they might run into the same pitfalls; obviously if you’ve watched your friends doodle there’s usually someone who’s a lot better with a pencil than others. That tends to intimidate people who are on the fence about contributing to a project.
So, in the interest of democratizing the process a bit, I decided to choose a medium that I’d seen 7-year-old kids have enormous success with- cutting paper. I figured if it was approachable even for them, then lots of people could go for it. You could do something that looked really simple and silly, or you could do something really tedious and ornamental, and have, possibly, the same degree of success and satisfaction.
As it turned out, the book I compiled drew from a wide range of my friends, some who’d considered themselves (rightfully!) to be professionals, and some who shied away from showing art before. Everyone who sent me something managed to get him/herself out of a comfort zone, and flip it up a little bit. Dan and Hannah (of DayTripper Gallery) were opening up shop, and we felt like it was a great time to have a show to support our book, Cuts.
I gathered together with lots of folks from those in the book and beyond to put together the art show that is running at Day Tripper right now, at 101 S. Addison street, across from Lamplighter coffee. It has many of the pieces from Cuts, as well as others, and a mural and a teepee. You will see awesome work from some people whose work you may already follow, aswell as some people who are standing in some new, well deserved light. If I were to list all the people I’d like to thank right now, this body of text would be twice as big as it is. Thanks, though, to everyone who helped all of these projects bloom. I love you all.
-Check out our book CUTS!
-Check out daytripperrva.com to see Dan King and Hannah Morgan’s gallery Day Tripper!
Thanks!
–Marshall Higgins
