One from the vault

Posted on February 5, 2011 by adihle

Starting a couple years ago, I began photographing my process. I’ve got a couple new ones in the pipeline, but from time to time will put up some old work with process shots, and maybe shots of the posters pasted up. This is a poster I did for Jay-Z’s promoter in spring 2010. I features three overlapping split fountains (color fades), the edition of finished posters turned out to be about 40, about 20 over that amount experienced print mistakes and needed to be trashed. Multiple split fountains can be tricky…

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Telling tales out of school / Mt Pleasant Temporium

Posted on January 17, 2011 by adihle

Fire Studio is working with the new Mt Pleasant Temporium, plus planning a workshop for local elementary school students. More on that soon… Bigfoot is up there for a reason. Fire is also a sponsor and a retailer at the space, opening in February 2011.
From the Temporium site:

The Mt. Pleasant Temporium is scheduled to open at 3068 Mt. Pleasant St. NW [this February]. The Temporium will feature handmade goods for sale from 30 local, independent crafters and artists, as well as special events that include autobiographical and theatrical storytelling, crafting, trunk shows, educational panels, and live music. The Temporium is a temporary, pop-up retail space and is scheduled to [be open for one month].

Store photo by Pat Padua

Edit: due to ongoing construction, the Temporium will open in mid-February, not January. Hence the brackets in the quote above. Stay tuned.

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Meow Mix #4: Wood-Ink-Paper

Posted on December 18, 2010 by adihle

This is our fourth year doing the Rock N Shop poster. Made just prior to the plumbing being hooked up to our utility sink (necessary for screenprinting), this is a six-color poster using limited silkscreen for the background split-fountain (color fade) plus the white text, and additional colors using woodcut printing. I use exacto-cut balsa wood. Woodcut printing doesn’t require much running water, just enough to clean the little ink brayer.

Advice: check the water resistance of your woodblock ink prior to pasting any posters outdoors…

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Barrelhouse: the Sex, Drugs, and Rock N Roll ish

Posted on December 16, 2010 by adihle

The good folks at Barrelhouse were kind enough to ask me for an illustration for their Sex, Drugs, and Rock N Roll issue. I was persnickety enough to offer a redesign including the cover titling. The cover includes found images and patterns, and some of my own illustration. The thumbnails at bottom are sample cover treatments.

before redesign

Barrelhouse is a literary journal produced in DC, draws from a large pool of contributors, and has a nationwide distribution. Barrelhouse hosts regular readings at Wonderland in DC, at 1101 Kenyon St NW. This issue is to release later this winter and will be available at specialty and national bookshop, including Barnes and Noble.

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Hey, come over here

Posted on November 14, 2010 by adihle

Pleasant Plains Workshop is hosting a studio grand opening party sunday, November 21! PPW is the home of Fire Studio and artist Kristina Bilonick. This is the studio-warming for our studio/store space at 2608 Georgia Ave NW in DC.

Come by ‘the Plains’ on Sunday, November 21st between 1-4pm and see the new digs, try your hand at screen printing, enjoy some neighborhood refreshments and check out our wares.

We’ll also be unveiling our first art-window installation by DC artist and designer, Billy Colbert.

Street parking is generally available nearby and is free on sunday. We’re located along the 70, 71, and 79 Metrobus routes, and a 15 or so minute walk from the Columbia Heights or U Street Metro Stations.

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Iota smells like the undead / the TUS Halloween poster

Posted on November 1, 2010 by adihle

The crowd last night: zombies, French maids, devils, vampires. I’ve been making poster for These United States for about four years. They are as fun to work with as they are to see play, I recommend insist you see them when they come to a town near you.

This is a ten-color screenprint, printed in two all-day print sessions. The edition is about 75, about half printed on newsprint and pasted, and half on poster stock.

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Printing the 826DC posters, all 900 of them

Posted on November 1, 2010 by adihle

I seldom print things I didn’t design, owing mostly for time/print capacity, but I gladly made an exception for friends Kira Wisniewski and William Bert, with whom I had the pleasure of working on the first Call + Response show earlier this year. The posters were designed by the hyper-talented Oliver Munday as part of the effort to build 862DC’s Museum of Unnatural History.

The Museum of Unnatural History is a wonderful collection of fictional paleontology. The Museum is part of the national 826 effort, which is “a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization with locations in eight cities across the country. [Their] goal is to assist students ages six to eighteen with their writing skills, and to help teachers get their classes excited about writing. [Their] work is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.”

This is a series of four posters, two colors each. All told, this was a print run of about 925, Fire’s biggest ever. They are available for purchase at the Museum in Columbia Heights, DC. For more information about 826DC and the Museum, please visit their website.

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Dirty at heart, Fire by name

Posted on September 29, 2010 by adihle

After five years and thousands of prints I’m growing/mutating Dirty Pictures into a broader company with a bricks and mortar location near Howard University, in the heart of DC. Fire Studio will continue with the handmade-poster tradition and will broaden a bit, to include other things I do including other design, curatorial, and illustration work.

Why the change? I’ve been working under the name Dirty Pictures since shortly after graduating in 2004, with the aim of purely forming a silkscreen poster company and generating a large body of work and in general just having a hell of a lot of fun drawing, designing, and making the finished prints.

Dirty got to a point where we had plenty of clients and recognition, but I found the name to be limiting. I still love the name but find it limiting for obvious reasons when working out there with clients who aren’t rock bands. “Dirty” design in the wider scheme of things has also recently become a word associated with an approach to design that is heavy on style and light on substance. Introducing filters in photoshop to give the design a handmade appearance, et cetera. Systems used to suggest a process via digital means. Whereas Dirty Pictures, and now Fire Studio is process-intensive, using silkscreen, letterpress, and hand-drawn illustrations. The “dirt” is evidence of the means of creating.

coming soon!

opening later this fall

Anyway, as mentioned above, Fire Studio will have a physical location. The space itself is to be called Pleasant Plains Workshop, which I and the talented artist/printmaker Kristina Bilonick will be sharing. The space isn’t quite ready for prime-time yet but will be later this fall, complete with a small store in the front and a print studio in the back. We’ll have open hours on the weekend, I do hope you drop by when it opens, I’ll keep you posted.

We’ll be present this year at Crafty Bastards for the 5th year running, look for Fire Studio, booth #85.

thanks for reading,
Anthony

ps—a note on this website: it’s still teething. I’ll be updating it with past work over the coming days and weeks. I’m leaving comments turned off, but feel free to leave feedback on the Fire Facebook page.

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