May 13, 2009

ART & MEDIA | THE LOVE OF PRINT


My love affair with magazines started very early on—in the days of LOOK and Life, Esquire and BAZAAR—and with my discovery of a few issues of Flair scattered among all the books in our Connecticut house [only 12 issues of Flair were ever created by genius Fleur Cowles]. The love affair continued with Vogue, Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan, People, Interview, The Face, The New Yorker, Town & Country, New York Magazine, Elle and Elle Décor, Vanity Fair, W, Gourmet, Martha Stewart Living, Departures, Saveur & Garden Design, Fast Company, the Cottages & Gardens Publications, C California Style, Hello!, The World of Interiors, The New York Times Style Magazines, and a renewed love for House Beautiful [under the editorial expertise of Stephen Drucker]. I've experienced magazine heartbreak with the folding of European Travel & Life, Mirabella, House & Garden, Vogue Living, and most recently Domino.

It's no surprise that the following "color codification dot drawings" by artist Lauren DiCioccio are beautiful compositions to my magazine-obsessed eyes.

Vogue Jul07 pg 145 [Ripeness is All] and Vogue Jul08 pg 132 [what exactly are we breathing]

To make each image, Lauren places a sheet of frosted mylar over a magazine page. She assigns a color to every letter [numbers are grayscale] and applies tiny dots of paint over every character on the page according to her color-code.



"My work investigates the physical/tangible beauty of commonplace mass-produced media-objects, most recently: the newspaper, magazines, office papers and writing pads, plastic bags, 35 mm slides. These media are becoming obsolete, replaced by the invisible efficiency of various technologies. In some cases, this transition is a good thing-faster transmission and distribution of information, streamlined systems, openness to user input, less waste. But a hole is left behind by the disappearance of these everyday objects. What will happen when we no longer touch information? When newsprint does not rub off onto our fingertips? When we no longer write longhand? The tedious handiwork and obsessive care I employ to create my work aims to remind the viewer of these simple but intimate pieces of everyday life and to provoke a pang of nostalgia for the familiar physicality of these objects."

I hope Lauren's beautiful work creates enough pangs of nostalgia that the presses keep running for years to come. Prints of Lauren's [color codification dot drawings] can be found at 20x200 and more of her work can be seen on her website.

images: courtesy of the artist and 20x200

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