Author: splicer

This past week­end at Flax’s pen fair I was able to put my hands on the Water­man Edson Dia­mond Black. There is in fact some­thing real­ly amaz­ing abut the pen. I can’t put my fin­ger on it and it may just be the rush of antic­i­pa­tion, but writ­ing with the Edson was elec­tric. At first I could­n’t stop my hands from shaking!

I was in a big hur­ry to get back to Open Stu­dios, and only there at Flax … Read the rest

For some time I’ve mar­veled at the con­sis­ten­cy that cal­lig­ra­phers are able to main­tain when doing their work. Every­thing else is just know­ing how to move a pen to get a par­tic­u­lar shape, flour­ish, or effect. No indi­vid­ual part of cal­lig­ra­phy is all that mys­te­ri­ous, but actu­al­ly get­ting the let­ter­forms the same again and again, that’s a skill that has so far elud­ed me.

Posts on the Foun­tain Pen Net­work led me to Paper­pe­na­li­a’s hand­writ­ing method of writ­ing by mov­ing from … Read the rest

Sat­ur­day after­noon I went to the Pen Fair and Sale at Flax Art for one pur­pose: to give the Park­er rep­re­sen­ta­tive a hard time.

I should back up and explain why that was nec­es­sary. The first fact you need to know is that Park­er is owned by San­ford, the com­pa­ny that makes Sharpies. San­ford also owns Park­er com­peti­tors Water­man and Rotring.

Rotring is one of my favorite pen com­pa­nies, for a lot of rea­sons. First, they make an excel­lent Rapi­do­graph, one … Read the rest

The Mis­sion Arts Foun­da­tion did a great job of get­ting the word out, but a lousy job of pick­ing a week­end. Mis­sion Open Stu­dios this year com­pet­ed with KFOG Kaboom on Sat­ur­day and Moth­er’s Day on Sun­day. After a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly busy start Fri­day, there was very low traf­fic on Sat­ur­day. That’s what hap­pens when you try to com­pete with a free con­cert and fire­works. Thank­ful­ly, Sun­day picked up the pace.

I did very well sales-wise, but it’s telling that the major­i­ty … Read the rest

Fri­day night was the open­ing recep­tion for Mis­sion Open Stu­dios at Art Explo­sion, where I keep my stu­dio. The last cou­ple of weeks have been a fren­zy of prepa­ra­tion, and the last cou­ple of days espe­cial­ly so. I have a new large-for­mat pho­to­print called Immor­tal­i­ty and a new series of pho­tographs from a shoot on Mount David­son at night. The Mount David­son pho­tographs came back from Pho­toworks about an hour before the recep­tion opened and last night the wire that … Read the rest

(My apolo­gies for get­ting this post­ed so late… I wrote it out yes­ter­day and came home to find it still sit­ting unpub­lished. Whoops!)

Please come by my stu­dio this week­end and see some of the work I’ve done in the last few months!

This Spring the Mis­sion Arts Foun­da­tion is hold­ing a neigh­bor­hood-wide Open Stu­dio week­end, and I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing along with the rest of Art Explosion.

I’d love to see you there! I’m in Stu­dio 16. The … Read the rest

Reg­u­lar read­ers of Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look will recall that I’ve recent­ly writ­ten a bit about the low­er-end Park­er foun­tain pens that hold such a dear place in my heart. By coin­ci­dence, my stu­dio part­ner asked if I would look at the pen I gave her as a gift a cou­ple of years ago. It has been skip­ping and she’s been hav­ing trou­ble get­ting it start­ed. I wrote recent­ly that every pen I’d ever giv­en as a gift was a Water­man, but … Read the rest