Sandwiches

DB EMBOSSING

Our new Prima Donna of Sales and Marketing is way into all things paper and thus she's way into letterpress, embossing, foil stamping, die cutting, folding, gluing (we could go on cause she sure does). So by way of preparing for her global sales and marketing blitzkrieg she enlisted Platte River Letterpress (in the neighborhood, not at all sucky) to get busy with some embossing, die cutting and letterpress printing (with mini business cards to boot!) on her behalf. Here's a shot of the front of the fancy-pants folder she's having made with the embossed "db"—very fresh—and a shot of the female side of the die. Solid copper, mofo!

MASS MoCA: SOL LEWITT WALL DRAWINGS 579 AND 792

How long can we keep this up? A long time, it turns out. Though many of Lewitt's subtle pencil drawings (on balance, our favorites) don't photograph for shit the big bold graphics make for fine content on a photo blog—which at the end of the day is mostly what this Sandwiches nonsense is. In fact, we're not even sure most of you can read. For those of you who can, and for those very few of you who actually enjoy it, click on these titles for more information on the drawings: Wall Drawing 792 (left) and Wall Drawing 579 (right).

MASS MoCA: SOL LEWITT WALL DRAWING 1211

So it's clear from some of the questions we've been getting that not everyone knows who Sol Lewitt is (or was: he died in 2007 after having planned this show in detail). Well, shame on you if you don't know. Call him a conceptual artist or a minimalist if you must, but really, most of those labels are silly and don't have much meaning if you haven't seen the work. And the work? There are the sculptures and the works on paper but here we've been showing his wall drawings, or versions of his wall drawings anyway. We say versions since they're never exactly the same from show to show: each of the drawings begins as a set of instructions or a simple diagram that's then executed by someone else—in this case a small army of someones working for six months. Good thing the show will be up for 25 years else all that effort might have seemed a total fucking waste. For more on the show and on Lewitt, click on this link to visit the retrospective's website. Above are a pair of shots ofWall Drawing 1211. And, really, do yourself a favor and get to the museum to see the show at some point in the coming decades. What the hell else are you going to be doing?

MASS MoCA: THE GEOMETRY OF LIGHT

A second piece from the Material World: Sculpture to Environment show at MASS MoCA. The Geometry of Light by Alyson Shotz.

MASS MoCA: WHITE STAG

A piece from the Material World: Sculpture to Environment show at MASS MoCA. White Stag by Wade Kavanaugh & Stephen B. Nguyen.

MASS MoCA

A break from the Sol Lewitt posts for a day on MASS MoCA itself, a museum compound of 19th-century factory buildings on 13 acres in North Adams, Mass. The history of the buildings (formerly the home of Arnold Print Works and the Sprague Electric Company) can be found through the link in the text above—no need to bore you with it here. Needless to say the building was repurposed into a major contemporary art hub and is a stunning success (though some of the lighting is headache-harsh). The Lewitt show alone consists of more than a hundred pieces on three floors, all of which demand serious wall space. Of course there are other shows running concurrently, including one of site-specific sculptural installations that, sorry to say, made much (by no means all) of what we saw at Embrace! at the DAM seem a little undersqueezed. More on a couple successful pieces in later posts. Here, a few shots of the MASS MoCA buildings and grounds.

MASS MoCA: SOL LEWITT WALL DRAWINGS 413 AND 414

More from that fine Sol Lewitt show at MASS MoCA, this time Wall Drawing 413 and Wall Drawing 414. Both are sets of 24 ink washes, installed on opposing walls in a handsome gallery. More on the show and on the museum will follow in future posts.

MASS MoCA: SOL LEWITT WALL DRAWING 51

Occasionally you need to get the hell out of Dodge and on this day we got way the hell out—all the way to North Adams, MA for a field trip to MASS MoCA. A gorgeous, complicated place (more on that later). Here, the first of perhaps many posts on the museum in general and Lewitt drawings in particular. Below, and after the jump, Wall Drawing 51: All architectural points connected by straight lines, executed by others at other times on other walls the world over.