Found: CLOWNS!!!

Grafton Flea Market, $1 for the lot. Apparently photos of Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey clowns circa 1979. My neighbor was with me and said "Man, that's just wrong!" Yeah, clowns freak some people out, I know.

Semi-abstract stencils

More stencils designed for limited edition LP covers.

Damaged Photos 16

I'm trying to fill up an entire photo album with these. Looks like I'm going to have to start taking photos again to get enough raw materials.

(If you look closely you can see that the top photo in each set actually started as the same original, but disintegrated differently.)

Fun with Skulls

We didn't have the heart to shoot the third skull at the time, but seeing it here now makes me want to shoot it.

Burroughs again

I never know how the colors are going to come out, the green disappeared here for example-- apparently the shot blew it right through the wood with no splatter.

Found photos (Europe 1970's)

I had a whole photo album from these people, and after I removed these four photos I lost the album somewhere (but these were among the best photos in the album so no great loss.)

Self Portrait Stencil

( One eye looks a little messed up but I can fix that. )

Punk Rock Flyers, circa 1994

The good old days, being broke all the time, working in a dusty hot warehouse for just above minimum wage, and occasionally making flyers for the local rock bands I was sorta friends with. Unfortunately the very bottoms of these got cut off in the scanner, but you get the idea.

(click images for larger view.)

Found "zebra" photo

An old roommate of mine found this on the street in Boston when he was a bike messenger. The back reads "To Tyrone, Love Shirl, 2001." Poor Tyrone is bummed he lost this. (This was posted on a friends website several years ago as well, where it generated a lot of attention.)

Burroughs Stencil & shotgun blast pt. 2

Spray paint, stencil, house paint, shotgun, plywood board, measures about 2.5 x 3 feet.
(Sorry, no film this time)

Found and (subsequently) damaged photos 15

Four more photos found in a pile of abandoned property, and then damaged by myself.

Lonely Tree Stencil

Another stencil designed for a possible LP cover. It worked out better than I envisioned-- the white-paint version makes it look like the scene is shrouded in mist. (You can see I had to reinforce some areas with masking tape where the blade went astray.)

Found photo

Boomerangs thrift shop, Jamaica Plain (they actually had a basket full of old photos near the register, this was one of the better ones, mysterious and dark and damaged.)

Damaged Photos 14 (rejects)

For all the photos I damage only about half of them come out interesting, the others get tossed in a pile of rejects. Recently I began looking at the rejects for a possible large scale collage, and noticed these two that are pretty good. The bottom one is very early, when I couldn't figure out how to get the photos to disintegrate beyond a certain point, I tried scraping designs into them before abandoning that technique.

Stencil T-Shirts

When I was a teenager I made my first stencil, a Husker Du t-shirt using the classic Husker Du logo, a couple years later I made Radio Birdman and Magma t-shirts with stencils, and then I forgot about stencils for many years. When I started making stencils again about 7 or 8 years ago I recreated those, plus a bunch more obscure rock bands (Chrome, Univers Zero, Regressive Aid, as seen here, plus the comedy "Abba" t-shirt I posted a few months ago.) These don't always withstand washing very well (I've tried spraying with a sealing coat after the paint, which sometimes helps, but they still fade after several washes.)

Cheap Experimental Photography

When my Bazooka Bubble Gum camera finally broke (I couldn't get 126 film for it anymore anyway) I moved onto a cheap 35mm camera (like the ones they used to give away with magazine subscriptions, made to look like a fancy SLR but basically a point-and-shoot, yet another poor man's Holga), and here are a few of the psychedelic photos I took (using colored filters and/or multiple exposures.)

Far out.

Face Stencils vs. Photos

So after I made the last batch of stencils (specifically for possible limited edition album pressings) I decided the "face" stencil came out best and started making more. However none were as striking as that first face stencil (to me anyway), then I noticed the leftover paper from cutting the stencils looked more interesting than the final spray-painted stencils. . . so I took some photos of the leftover papers in various locales near my apartment. Now what the hell am I going to do with all these face stencils?

Found audio "puppy day"

I found this recorded acetate at a thrift store in Florida several years ago-- reminds me of the audio equivalent of found vintage photos. It's a kind of weird, awkward exchange, apparently from a local TV show (note how the girl gives her complete name/address/phone number-- something nobody would do today, and note the weird giggle and uncomfortable silence when she mentions how her sister is dead.) I had several of these kinds of mystery acetates in my record collection (none as interesting as this one), and recently decided to just get rid of them all (sold to a collector in Illinois, who may be posting them on WFMU's blog in the near future-- stay tuned.)

Found (and subsequently damaged) photos 13

OK, here's the story: a guy down the street was evicted last year, and when the landlord put his belongings out on the street the neighborhood descended upon them and pilfered anything they thought interesting or valuable (sorry Andy.) I was no different, and I made off with several envelopes full of photographs, plus several boxes full of slides. I think we all felt a little weird about it. I decided any photos that had double or triple prints were fair game for me to damage, so here are a couple that I damaged using different techniques.

Bazooka photos

Four more photos from my early 90's amateur avant/experimental photo phase. All these were done with a toy camera I got via mail order from Bazooka Bubble Gum.

Found photos

More found vintage photos. These were salvaged from beneath a pile of scrap metal in the Hockomock Swamp of Bridgewater Massachusetts (?!) Sorry for the lo-res scans (if anyone cares I can rescan at a higher resolution.) I have rescanned at a higher resolution-- click and see. I don't know what it is about vintage photos that I find so interesting. I don't think modern digital photographs will survive to have a new life the way these do.

Stenciled LP covers

I have been considering making limited edition LPs (of my own music and local bands I appreciate), with the idea that each release would be limited to 500 copies, and each cover would be a different hand stenciled cover-- these are test covers, trying out some possible designs. Spray painting 500 LP covers would be a long tedious task, and some of these designs aren't practical (the eyeball is too detailed and flimsy to withstand 500 coats of spray paint, and the rooster would take too long simply because you have to align the second stencil layer each time.)