Business Card Homage to Ed Keinholz

Cut out one for yourself. For my latest exercise in vanity I made these “business” cards. To me they’re an homage to the great artist Ed Kienholz. Kienlholz was part of the “Cool School” art scene in 1950s Los Angeles. Some “experts” say Kienholz was doing the more-famous Rauschenberg’s “combines” before Rauschenberg himself. Ed was a renaissance handy man who made a living early in his career doing all sorts jobs from plumbing to carpentry. He had a pickup truck with “Ed Kienholz – Expert” painted on the doors. If he never made a piece of “art” in his life I would still consider this a masterpiece. I’ve displayed similar verbiage in a similar way on these cards. With my steelworker roots I can’t help feeling a kinship with the man.

I had them made at Zazzle, and I’ve always been happy with their service. That said, I’ve found that it can be tough to get the color to match on their “indestructible” card stock. Despite my choice of material I wanted the cards to appear worn and roughed up, like an old work truck. I found some brushes for Photoshop that made this effect pretty easy to achieve at Ubersuper. For darker colored areas I inverted the effect to make the wear areas lighter. Seemed to make sense. I like how the crease turned out, but I think some of scuffs and dirt are maybe a too little subtle.

Take a look at the late great Ed Kienholz doing who knows what atop the “expert” pickup. Genius.

New Letter Pillows Into Production

I’m going blind! Try staring at this stuff for a few days in a row and you’ll know what I mean. We are working on a print that will be used to make 16″ square pillows. The front of the pillow will have one large letter, and the back will have a similar pattern with a tiny anvil in the middle. I’m pretty happy with the way the graphics have turned out. These were made in Illustrator with one part multiple strokes and ten parts each of pain, suffering and tedium. It was worth it!

The letters were manipulated quite a bit to get the stripes distributed nicely. Some of them have clunky corners in spots, but I dig that because too much perfection can be boring. Depending on the letter’s shape it can be difficult to tell where the origin is.

They are already at the printer and we should have the fabric soon. Then, the real work of putting them together begins…

Any questions about how these are being made? Just post a comment.