Platemakers and fishing line

This past weekend was pretty exciting for us, and not because of the Oscars. On Saturday, Jake and I drove to Massachusetts to pick up a platemaker for the studio! I'm going to be buying an imagesetter from a friend who just happened to have one that wasn't being used. I'm sure there will be a bit of a learning curve, but hopefully we'll soon be able to process plates anytime we want!

I had been resistant to this for a while, but my good friend Amber finally talked me into it (and found it for me). I was worried that it would be one more thing that we'd have to do, but when I calculated the cost savings I came around to the other side. We're in the midst of prepping for our accountant and the amount I spend on plates, paper and my studio shocks me every year. Most of these costs are fixed and I'm not about to switch papers, but finding a way to cut costs seems imperative, especially when Jake's current job is only contracted to last six months.

After we loaded the platemaker into the car we drove to Mass MoCA and spent a few hours wandering the galleries. If you haven't been there before, the space is just awesome. The galleries occupy old factory buildings and are HUGE. Over the next few days I'll post pictures from some of the exhibitions. Today I wanted to show a piece by Tobias Putrih, which was made from fishing line and a spotlight. Jake and I spent a lot of time with this piece. It was disorienting when we first walked into this gallery but once we figured that there was a "notch" in the piece, we were able to walk under the piece until it lowered into the floor.