The Egg

The Egg is sort of an orphan from a larger idea – I wanted to make a beehive-shaped dome lined with white fun-fur and lit by large, glowing eggs. There was no time or space to make such a beast, but I did make a prototype egg.

I am very fond of using things in a non-standard way in my work, mostly because so many common items have multiple useful properties. In this case, I wanted to set LEDs in a parallel array to make the “filament” of the lamp, so, rather than diligently wire them together, I cut two narrow strips of copper foil, soldered LEDs across the gap (using tiny, tiny resistors that also resist hand-soldering by neophytes) and joined the ends in a circle, and then repeated the process to make another circle. Then I hot-glued them together in a sort of butterfly shape (also using the glue to insulate them from one another) and attached wires.

I searched hardware stores for an appropriate hollow cylinder to contain a battery and battery-holder, and ended up finding a plastic toilet-paper holder almost exactly the right size. I pulled it apart, cut off the sealed end, glued the wires inside and soldered the leads of the battery-holder to the wires.

I bought an ostrich egg shell off the internet, built a mold box and poured a silicone mold for the egg. I cut the mold open, retrieved the egg, stood the “guts” of the lamp in the bottom (having first sealed off the end of the battery tube) and poured clear resin in two stages. One day later, I unmolded the whole thing, popped in a lithium-ion battery, and enjoyed my new lamp.

Professional Work
(some things I've printed for other artists)

Metal Plates

I was asked in the winter of 2011 if I could figure out a way to etch images of passport pages into stainless steel plates for artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. He had been referred to me for another project, a conventional screen print on a stainless sheet, by one of his students a few months previously, and had apparently liked the work enough to keep my name on file.

Printing on steel is one thing; etching it is quite another, especially to the degree of precision that they wanted. But they had tried every conventional method to get this piece made, and had had no luck, so I said I’d give it a shot.

I researched and experimented and discovered that, by wonderful coincidence, my favorite water-based screen-printing ink set firmly enough to act as a resist for acid. So I developed a technique where I would convert the images to very fine halftones (100 lpi), screen print them onto the plates, bite them in acid and then clean off the ink, leaving a pattern of etch wherever the metal had been exposed and mirror finish where the ink had been. The plates were used in a piece called Untitled 2011 (Passport to the underworld), first shown as part of his “Fear Eats the Soul” show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.

We have etched the same set of images twice more, on copper plates, for the piece Untitled 2013 (passport to the middleworld), which has most recently been exhibited at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Projects for Rona Yefman

Israeli-born, New York-based photographer and artist Rona Yefman makes some of the most beautiful and strikingly intimate images in the world, and I’ve had the great privilege of screen printing a number of them for her. Taking commercial t-shirt printing as its point of departure, the work we’ve produced together sits on various sides of the junction between fashion, installation art and photography. It has been shown in numerous venues in the United States and Israel, and our collaboration is ongoing.

Graphic Design
(for myself and others)
My DIY Screen Printing Guide
(Click the image to read)