Copy Art How To

Want to learn how to make copy art or more tricks? Master techniques in easy to follow steps with exercises found in this on-your-own workbook. The basics of the art form are covered with a series of lessons and tips written for both the novice and artist wanting to find out more about making great art on a copy machine. Created as a companion to workshops taught by master copy artist Ginny Lloyd you can use the workbook as a reference for years to come. Lists of resources to help you explore further.

Let's Make Copy Art - NEW Book

 

New workbook available for students who have attended my copy art lecture and workshop(s) in the past. It will also be available for students in upcoming workshops. Let's Make Copy Art details - English, 40 Pages, coil binding for easy note taking,dimensions (inches) 8.5 wide x 11 tall, black and white interior. Includes: brief history of copiers and copy art, step by step techniques, illustrations, lessons, and robust reference info. Students in my workshops can own a copy for $12 + shipping.

Flash - Copy Art Show Review - Click to enlarge

Artweek, June 19, 1982/Volume 13, Number 22

Early Computer Graphic Art & Artistamps

In the earlier post “Copy Art Exhibition” I wrote:   

I used to spend hours late into the night working on Fortran programs for a class, using teletype and keypunch cards. The computer geeks – the ones working night shift running the mainframe so large it was housed in a separate building - would invite me into the inner sanctum to show me early computer graphics capabilities, enthusiastically discussing little known developments and inventions in the works such as the Cray super computer. They told me of the day when everyone would have their own computer and we would be able to create art on computer systems. I believed them!

This was back in the 70s before computers were on every desk and computer graphics became commonplace.  The word processors with small (minute according to today’s standards) memory chips were the closest thing to desktop computers. I’m sure this sounds like the stone age to kids today.

Having access to anything computer related was limited to very few university researchers and large corporate employees. One such researcher was Dr. Wolfgang Bauer, a physicist at UC Berkeley, who had left the university and had started a business developing a high end graphical system he called Gravitronics.
 

When I met Dr. Bauer in 1980 he was looking for an artist who could use computers or at least understood what computers could do to help him by testing the graphical possibilities, to try to find the limits. He’d had been running into walls just trying to find an artist not afraid of nor timid with computers. I described my limited background, including some of the things I wanted to try to accomplish in my art work. I sounded like a match to him.

I would meet with him at his place of business and we would test the computer. From that work I was able to create three issues of artistamps, called my Gravitronics Series, and postcards. To give you a perspective each of the manipulations of the stamp imagery was created from the same one image per issue. Sometimes entering in numbers on the image's axis was a shot in the dark but eventually I started to be able to predict an outcome.

Wolf as a person was a very interesting man in that he was friendly and open minded about art. Plus we would discuss what is now known as quantum physics at our meetings. I was invited to his home a few times to visit his large family and wife.

The system eventually went on to become the real-time meteorological graphic systems we see on the weather channel.
 

I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to work with Wolf for this led to larger opportunities such as: a space residency (to be written about), teaching computer graphics at a college (CAD, PC paint, and Macintosh desktop publishing) and training many of the company employees of the numerous startups and corporations in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area.

Today using the computer to make artistamps is commonplace. In the history of computer graphics you may find early artists using computers but in the history of artistamps I’m recognized as the first artist to use computer graphics to make artistamps (per Artpool Research Center and Rod Summers collection).

My Early Artistamp History

Like many people who get into making artistamps my first encounter with the wonderful world of stamps started as a kid reading the ads in the comics I would buy. I ordered some with my allowance and used to enjoy looking at them. I even traded with the other neighborhood kids at times. I didn’t know what to do with them though and no one in my family knew either so it seemed.

Later in the 60’s as an adult I married the son of Frederick William Doolittle, Jr. who did know about stamps. An ardent stamp collector, specializing in U.S. Parcel Post and Tobago collections, my past father in-law won numerous medals in international competitions. He published many articles and lectured on the subject. He served as president and librarian of the Baltimore Philatelic Society, one of the oldest in the United States and host to many annual conventions and meetings for United States and international organizations.

He thought I was humoring him when I showed an interest in his collection. The one thing I wondered about was who made the stamps and how. He thought it was a bit of a fantasy when I said I would one day make some of my own.

“What could you use them for?” he asked one day.

“I didn’t know, perhaps showing them as framed art.”

So these were the seeds that would sprout into a full blown obsession, at times it seems, to make my own artistamps. One day in the 70’s I encountered an ad in a catalog that offered, for a small fee, to turn a photograph into stamps. They had gummed backs and could be used to decorate gift wrapping, envelops, stationary, scrapbook pages or anything you could imagine. They came in sheets of multiples. So it went to the photobooth and sent in a photo from the strip. I used the resulting stamps in one-of-a-kind pieces and for my mail art.

Then in 79 I began to organize the Copy Art Exhibition. Artists from all over the world sent in art made with copy machines including sheets of artistamps, mostly using the color copier but some in black and white, with fictitious countries, made up names and elaborate stories to go with them. This is when I started using Gina Lotta Post with my artistamps.

At that time there were only two other women I knew of who were making artistamps.  However with the men there were many more participants. With some of the men there was a lot of jockeying for power based on unwritten rules of who did what, when, including elaborations on or even out rate inventions of dates. Stories ran rampant, and generally operated upon what I call the rule of firsts was commonplace. The rule of firsts was a game of who left the starting gate first or who had the most issues or who did something first, much like guys returning from a fishing trip. This determined the pecking order in a small circle for quite awhile.

Being a woman, unless I had made artistamps back when women still suckled children in the cave, there was very little respect nor mention of my work and accomplishments in the field. When I asked one artist why he never mentioned me in his writings about the history of artistamps, his answer was - I needed him more than he needed me. This was after we had traded several full sheets and he’d made three different portraits of me for his own editions.

People ask why I stopped for about 18 years from participating in the mail art and artistamp networks. By the end of the 80s I’d observed elaborate kill the competition behaviors amonst several of the participants. I didn’t want to be around this energy anymore. Only a handful of people were spoiling my fun in a very competitive environment but I retired from the scene as I needed the time for my spiritual pursuits. I continued to make artistamps and did a lot of photography during this time, traveling when possible, running a consulting firm and most importantly getting my spiritual life on track. This was all before the artistamp museums, Artistamp Mailing List and IUOMA existed. Now I sell my work to collectors and institutions while actively trade with other artistampers.

If you want to know more about artistamps check my blog Gina Lotta Post Artistamp Museum blog,  the Wikipedia page or Google the other resources mentioned here.

Copy Art Exhibition

I came from a background in photography. I’d experimented with pinhole cameras, Dianas, infrared film, and various darkroom techniques during my years at university. I took traditional art classes, even made handmade paper one summer with my friend Judy Ivry who was an art major so had the equipment available to her, but the use of technology was where I knew I was headed. I used to spend hours late into the night working on Fortran programs for a class, using teletype and keypunch cards. The computer geeks – the ones working night shift running the mainframe so large it was housed in a separate building - would invite me into the inner sanctum to show me early computer graphics capabilities, enthusiastically discussing little known developments and inventions in the works such as the Cray. They told me of the day when everyone would have their own computer and we would be able to create art on computer systems. I believed them!

I wanted to know if anyone had ever created art from keypunch cards but they didn’t know of any. (I later figured out a way. See my future blog to be written on artibooks).

It was the second half of the 70s when the first color copier became available to customers at a local copy shop. I quickly became hooked. Starting with using the machines like huge cameras, I started making still lifes with objects placed directly on the platen glass. Later I was making collages to print. I got so involved with the print quality and color output adjustments I was offered a job running and maintaining the Xerox 6500. This made it possible for me to both do my own experiments at cost and to see the work of other artists starting to use copiers in creative ways. I printed for a lot of comic book artists, illustrators and graphic designers. I took note of who was working as artists using copiers.

At one point I taught workshops on techniques learned from experimenting with copier features, moving originals on the platen during the copy process, and making adjustments on both the Xerox and the black and white machines (also known as copy machine art). (Some of this is discussed in The Creative Camera by Nancy Howell-Koehler, 1989.) The Evening News on a local TV station had me demonstrate how to make copy art.

Noticing the wonderful artworks people were having me copy and doing themselves inspired the idea that a show would be important. The world should see this. At the time I was in the process of preparing for an exhibition of my own work at San Francisco’s Hot Flash of America. I discussed my ideas with them and later obtained support from the copy store owner. The Copy Art Exhibition held in 1980 was born.

As I was pulling together the work to be shown I realized that a more comprehensive exhibit would be possible by including artists as jurors who would give a more balanced view. I invited Stephanie Weber who worked in a fine arts aesthetic and Buster Cleveland who worked in a mail art genre.

As the invitations were sent out and word got around the art work poured in from all over the world. Before I knew it, the time to review the work for the final showing arrived.

But one big hitch occurred...Hot Flash the space for the exhibit was closing!

It was sudden and without warning. I had no space. With Buster’s help, we found that LaMamelle just happened to be available and a new agreement was formed.

I approached Xerox and Canon copier companies for sponsorship. Xerox wasn’t interested – they were launching their own show. Canon however loaned me a new large format copier with reduction capabilities, including paper and technical support if and when it was needed. People attending the show were allowed to make free art on the Canon. With this I made a billboard and the first issue of The Monthly.

Works not already framed were matted and framed by a shrink wrap process and hung by Stephanie with Nancy Frank’s help. I rushed to make a catalog for each artist using both black and white, and the 6500 machines. I did not want to use anything else other than a copier to produce this because I wanted the show to be completely copy art. It has since become a collectible.

Artweek and several other publications wrote positive reviews about the show, much to the surprise of some critics of the art medium. It was through this show I later met Jesse of JES Archive and was invited to the InterDADA 80 event.


All of this helped to make copy art spread quickly in San Francisco as venues to show and sell the artwork opened. A gallery on Columbus Ave in North Beach area named Electroarts moved into part of the Postcard Palace space where several copy artists sold postcard editions.  It also housed a Xerox 6500. At around the same time calendars produced in multiple editions were made by Barbara Cushman of the store and gallery, A Fine Hand. Several artists submitted page designs and they were bound in unusual ways. I still have my copies.

Today I make a few copy art pieces but with the death of the 6500, the lush image quality is just not the same. Many of us who used copiers extensively now use personal computers and printers instead.

Copy art though is still used for chapbooks and small edition runs of art prints and books. The excitement of having an alternative to more expensive printing set in motion the making of a new movement toward ‘zines and postcards. More controversial work could easily get published. Little known but happening in the Bay Area printing industry was a censorship against what you could print. Presses either refused outright or quoted exorbitant rates to discourage anything being published that was seen as controversial. I had a difficult time trying to find a printer to run off a large offset edition of my The Monthly magazine, an all female mail art magazine. Not feminist but to some it was, threatening the pressmen. With issue three I received returned layout boards stepped on and torn apart. The quality of the printing was okay but work was sabotaged. You can see this preserved in some of the magazine's pages.

Nowadays artists can publish a lot on the new print on demand sites. But before this, there was copy art.

What's in the name? Copy art refers to art made on copy machines. Some other terms used are xerography, Xerox art, copy machine art, and electrostatic art. Many artists prefer the term copy art because it is more generic as to the process not specific to a machine.