When LOST fans and art come together, it can only result in great things. Little Friends of Printmaking is the creator of “Not Penny’s Boat,” the first print revealed in Damon, Carlton and a Polar Bear‘s second series of prints. I had the recent privilege of visiting the studio of Little Friends in their hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You can read about Melissa and JW Buchanan’s ten years of collaborative respect in the recently published articles of The Strange Attractor and Grain Edit which include beautiful photographs of home, studio, examples of recent works, and design process. Both are a must read. But for our purposes here, I will stick to questions about LOST, DCaaPB and “Not Penny’s Boat.” Enjoy.
Tell us a little about how you were contacted regarding the second series of Damon, Carlton and a Polar Bear prints. Did you get to pick your subject?
Our first contact with Jensen was a cryptic email, sans details. He just asked if we wanted to be part of a really cool secret project, and we said “yes.” We knew who he was, of course, and kinda figured he was talking about the next LOST set. We were pretty geeked out over that. And had it turned out to be something else and not LOST, well then that would have been o.k., too. We’re just up for really cool secret projects, in general. Later, over the phone, Jensen told us what scene he wanted us to depict in our print. We had hinted to him that we’d love to do something with Ben Linus, our favorite character (Dharmaville FTW!), but as it turned out, that wasn’t an option. (As fans of the show and outside observers of the previous print set, we had our own ideas of what we’d have done if we were a part of that first set and had been given free rein over any moment in the series. Those are ideas we’ll just have to file away for later, now.) The new print series was limited to scenes from season 6, and Jensen had a scene in mind for us already.
Because the scene was still in production, how was the moment described?
I was a big spoiler guy, so I knew which scene Jensen was referring to as soon as he started to describe it. I also knew that they’d been filming it just that week, so there wasn’t going to be any footage to look at for reference at all; or anyway, at least until after the artwork needed to be delivered to Jensen. That was sort of panic-inducing. On the other hand, we knew that anything with Des and Charlie figured to be a pivotal moment in the series; Des has a way of being there when LOST takes its big leaps forward. So we had that going for us. Here’s how Jensen described the scene: Desmond has driven his car off a bridge; it’s now very deep in murky water and still sinking. He escapes the car and swims to the passenger’s side to rescue an unconscious Charlie. Charlie wakes up; He’s eerily calm and slightly angry. He doesn’t react to the danger, he just puts his palm on the glass of the window. Desmond is shocked, he flashes in his mind to the scene in The Looking Glass and remembers “Not Penny’s Boat” and Charlie’s death. (And, of course, we gasped when he got to the part about Charlie putting his hand on the glass, because we’re nerds.) Jensen also described the car at length, but we didn’t really feel like focusing on the car. So, the description wasn’t totally comprehensive (and it had a little bit of wrong information it, too) and we had to fill in a lot of blanks. We knew that our scene happened on the same “day” as “LA X,” so Des and Charlie’s clothes would be roughly the same. We added tons of air bubbles escaping the car (thanks, Mythbusters!). Jensen asked us not to show “Not Penny’s Boat” on Charlie’s hand (since that’s not exactly how the scene plays out), but we couldn’t get around it. He also asked us for some fish. We’d left them off because we’d figured they’d probably swim off if a car crashed into the water, but Jensen thought it would make the print look fun, and he was right. Given what we knew at the time, I’m actually shocked about how much we got right. I know it’s not everyone’s favorite print, but we wanted it to have a dreamy and elusive quality, and I think it does.
“Not Penny’s Boat” is certainly recognizable as a creation of Little Friends of Printmaking. Can you tell us a bit about your creative process, tools of the trade, and how you get from idea to finished product.
There’s an interview at Grain Edit that covers a lot of the technical part of our process, that’s a good place to start. As far as our creative process; there’s two of us, so we can bounce ideas off each other and talk about how we want to approach an assignment rather than just sketching and sketching and hoping something interesting comes out of that. It was really helpful in the case of this LOST print because we had to reduce a complex scene down to something that could be expressed in a single image. It’s something that almost had to be designed rather than drawn. We did a few small and basic pencil sketches just to block out the composition and then did everything else in the computer. When we’re designing a print, we’re considering the layers and how the layers of ink will interact with each other right from the beginning. We don’t create a drawing and then reverse-engineer it into a print after the fact. We feel like printmaking is its own thing, and it doesn’t just have to be a method for reproducing a drawing or a photograph. There are so many opportunities in the silkscreen process for nuance; and artists can miss out on them if they treat a print just as an image and not a 3-D object as well.
During my visit you shared a few tips about handling, storing and displaying prints. What advice can you give new or first time buyers?
I’d advise not to spend too much money on framing. Part of the fun of collecting prints is being able to switch out the prints on your walls when you’re tired of looking at the same old stuff. The best thing to do is to find a display solution that can accommodate prints of slightly different sizes, paper stocks, and styles. Posterhangers (essentially, self-leveling aluminum rods) are a really simple and elegant solution. Swiss clips, shadowbox frames (sometimes called floater frames), or just a simple cable and clips will do the trick as well. Another reason to switch prints out periodically is that UV light can damage paper over time. Prints should be stored flat and out of direct sunlight, if possible. And when you get a print shipped to you, don’t just toss out the shipping materials; they can be really handy. When we ship Little Friends prints, we send them in archival Mylar bags. While they aren’t 100% necessary, they will cut down on wear and tear and they keep prints nice and dry. If you don’t have a flat file or a portfolio at home to store your prints, then by all means, keep them in the Mylar bags and the shipping tubes. That’s the safest place for them. If they can survive the USPS in the original shipping materials, then they can certainly survive your dog or whatever household calamity you can come up with.
What is your favorite LOST moment or character?
Ben Linus, Miles, and Daniel. I guess we like the little squirrely guys. Favorite moments are Jack beating the living shit out of Ben at the radio tower, Jin’s disappointed face when Hurley fails Dr. Chang’s impromptu history test, Jack rocking out to The Pixies in his sweet Ford Bronco and his super-sweet beard/jean jacket combo, Juliet ambushing Ellie, and the Swan and Orchid orientation films.
Are you letting go or LOST for life?
I’m going to have to take a break from LOST. The bummer part of LOST ending and all the loose ends being tied up (or cut off, as the case may be) is that it ends all of the uncertainty; And speculation and uncertainty and were a key part of my enjoyment of LOST. That the show invited a level of viewer interpretation is what made it really different and special. And now that’s all over; we know how it ended, mystery solved. All I can say is, ask me again in February 2011. I’ll probably be back.
You can follow Little Friends of Printmaking on Twitter at @LittleFriendsof . “Not Penny’s Boat” is available for purchase at Little Friends “Ye Olde Shoppe” or at Damon, Carlton and a Polar Bear
