Bleary Mountain [Dumb Box 34]

Mouser [Dumb Box 32]

Over the last week we finally got some rain (we've been suffering from a drought) and the rains washed the black bands off the side of Mouser. Much nicer, really.

White Mountain [Dumb Box 31]

Blanquette [Dumb Box 29}

Pond Garden (2003) Revisited

When I started painting books back around 2000 I created them in a size I could bind myself: around 6 by 9 inches. But in 2003 I decided to try a bigger one, Pond Garden, it measured 13 by 20 inches, and that was way bigger than I could handle.

So I took it to a bookbinder down the street, he'd been recommended by a knowledgeable friend; but when it came back the guy had cut my sheets and three-hole punched them! Turns out, the company I'd been sent to had changed hands the week before and the new owner just couldn't cut it. Or rather, he had cut it. And punched it. And ruined it.

I was miserable, but I learned from my mistake and from that point on, took my books to a true master binder, John Demerritt in Emeryville. No one does better work than John, he's an authentic genius when it comes to binding, knows every trick in the book (sorry about that), and has exquisite taste and a perfectly refined eye.

Recently I showed that first book to John and he knew immediately how to salvage it: he stripped it apart, cut and pasted the pages back together using thin strips of mauve handmade paper; finally he re-sewed the folios and I now have my book back––eleven years later.

How I appreciate John's expertise!

Happy New Year | Back to Work

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Each time I have an opening, I spend weeks in advance, dreaming at night of defecating in public; that's just part of my make-up, what I pay for getting to show my work. So 2013 was in large part filled with shitty dreams.

Over the holidays, my wife and I were talking with a number of artists and discovered many of them have similar scatological visions during their sleeping hours.

But now it's 2014, back to the studio, and how do the dreams deal with that? Last night, after celebrating New Year's Eve, I awoke to nightmare after nightmare of getting fired: in one John Maeda fired me for not being able to design well; in another I lost my job at the paper company I worked for when I was young, fired by a student who didn't like my teaching manner; it went on and on and on.

What can a guy do? But wish you a happy new year. And for all of you who are artists: may your shitty dreams come true.

Kenneth Baker's Top Ten shows of 2013

It's difficult to express the pleasure that Jack Fischer and I felt when we opened the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle and read art critic Kenneth Baker's "Looking Back at art in 2013." Along with shows of Richard Diebenkorn, Christian Marclay and Mark diSuvero, he included our September exhibition:

"Ward Schumaker: The Years of Pretty: Selections from Ten Years of Work––The Jack Fischer Gallery's inaugural show at its Potrero Flats location reintroduced a San Franciscan in his 70s whose work would earn him world recognition, were there any justice."

What can I say?  Except thank you!

Kenneth Baker Looking Back at art in 2013

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