shelflife by visitor

I can’t believe I released this thing almost a year ago and keep forgetting to mention it. I posted about Volume 1 of BUT THEY DON’T BLINK last year. That volume was a series of 5 hand-painted posters addressing the hardships facing families in what remains today, an uncertain job market. The relevance of many of the tableaux depicted in that volume has been amplified by events having occurred since its release.

Volume 2 OF BUT THEY DON’T BLINK tackled the decaying US social safety net. Now, more than perhaps last year when it was released, do the tableaux in this volume bear weight. Beyond this administration’s rhetoric and circumlocution–very few of the topics discussed in the first 2 volumes of BUT THEY DON’T BLINK have been substantially addressed. The issues broached by BLINK still plague a massive percentage of Americans. Instead of embarking on a long-winded diatribe about those issues, I’ll just share the images I drew:

Each of the 3 volumes of BUT THEY DON’T BLINK consists of 5 individually hand-painted 18×24 inch posters, a block-printed mylar cover and a removable, screw-bound, plastic and cardboard spine. The folios are each signed, numbered and rolled into hand-printed kraft paper blueprint bags. Volume 1 & Volume 2 are available from Printed Matter for $60 each. Volume 3 is in production.

Here’s an 8-minute long reduction of the hour long process required to make each copy of BUT THEY DON’T BLINK. I wish I had documented the illustration, stencil making and stamp making processes. Too late now. I’m not going back and faking it for the sake of documentation.

I’ll do one of these for FORE in the next few weeks.