Alignments
Joe Scanlan and astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat have collaborated on a complimentary suite of drawings titled Alignments and Entanglements. The drawings are inspired by Sparkly Kat’s role as a professional astrologer and Marcel Broodthaers’ third book of poetry, La Bête Noire. La Bête Noire was conceived as a fictional zodiac. It presents twelve short poems, each dedicated to a particular animal and each arranged on the page like a rebus that can be read horizontally or vertically or both. The book opens with a thirteenth, introductory poem titled “Zodiac.” Likewise, all of the Alignment and Entanglement drawings use the twelve-part celestial chart that was first invented by the Sumerians circa 3500 BCE and that is the basis for Western astrology as a blank structure for exploring color, composition, appropriation, and collage.
Letting Alignments speak for themselves is a testament to the passion and talent behind everything we do. It means we stand behind our Alignments with research and experience from actual problems we’ve defined, measured, and solved. Therefore, no decision, from printing and analysis to color mixing and application, is made lightly. And you’ll always see it in our Alignments.
We make these drawings to provide collectors with the most creative, direct, and informative artwork possible. They engender an atmosphere in which your prescient eye can flourish. We believe that only a great eye can recognize great art, so we only work with collectors who want the opportunity to shine. It’s our guiding philosophy, our promise, and our business model. We:
- Print a letterpress pattern
- Print it again without paying much attention to the previous registration
- trace images from our computer screen
- digitally print them on top of the letterpress patterns with a keen sense of scale and placement
From idea to production to viewing, beauty is (and always has been) part of our DNA. By combining our talents with your savvy mind, we’re able to produce work that is political yet elegant. We’re an open book. We know this artwork is probably not the safe choice for most collectors, and we’re 100% fine with that.
