The Printing Class

I really enjoyed the printing class and made a lot of plates.  There is a run of the ones I finished last week going on now over on the photo blog   What I can do next is for sure a thing of interest.  They don't offer a part 2, which is really too bad, as I wouldn't take part 1 again but I would take a part 2 if it was set up as a sort of independent study thing.

I am fortunate in having a black and white cat, who has served as a muse through this process.  here is a sample, more, one a day over at the other blog.

Also Near TImes Square

How long do you suppose the lingeres can linger? 25 cent Peeps certainly are time limited so you can't linger there long. On a more literary note, isn't this a miss-spelling? Shouldn't it be LingereEs? And are all the lingeres XXX? So many questions. How about those XXX toys?  How do you prove you are a VIP? I guess the final one is if/when did they realize how this was supposed to be spelled and did they just shrug and keep on dishing out those 25cent peeps?

NY Street Art

spray stenciled on the sidewalk neat Times Square .... Beam me up, Scotty?

last print for this week's class

I loved this green once the print was done. It adds to the ambiguity...

and this is also a rant so there are no pictures.

back in April I documented the Post Office on 180th street and how they did not seem to actually deliver packages.

http://abovethegwb.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-us-post-office-should-just-give-it.html

Well, they struck again this week.  This is now the 3rd occurrence of the exact same scenario so I will summarize what I believe happens so I can get to the really annoying stuff.

• The post office at 180th street receives a package from a sender.
• They enter it into the electronic system and say they tried to deliver it and left a pink slip
• The package never leaves the post office but the electronic system tells the possible recipient that it did and no one could receive the package.  
• This is where they make a mistake because the message also says a pink slip was left.
• The next day they send the pink slip out with the carrier, dated the day before and he/she leaves the pink slip. 
• The customer finally gets the pink slip and tries to get the package by going to the post office
• If they are lucky, it is there and it gets resolved.  If they are me, it doesn't work that way.

I got the electronic notice on Monday and the pink slip, dated the 9th, on the 10th.  Since this has happened to me twice before, I call the post office and after repeating "Customer Service" about 5 times I get a real person.  I explain to them that this has happened before and that I want to report it again and also that I do NOT want the package sent out for redelivery tomorrow, as I will trudge over and pick it up.  I get a complaint number. The person I am speaking to is NOT at the 180th street post office, they seem to have an unlisted number and are not even on the USPS website when you search for my zip code. 

Today I go to the post office.  There are 10 people in line for package pickup.  There is NO ONE in line to mail a letter or get any other service  There are 3 people servicing the line that is empty and 1 person serving the package pickup line.  It takes her an average of 6 minutes (I timed it) to find or not find a package.  She does not find 4 out of the 10 people ahead of me.  When I get to the window she does not find my package and says I will have to come back.  I asked for a supervisor.  There was some back and forth about why I wanted one and I said you couldn't find my package and I had requested that it not go out for redelivery.

The remarkably surly supervisor arrived and hollered at me several times, refused to come out and speak to me and to the woman behind me who was there for the second day looking for a package also.  At one point she told me she would "take care of me!"  and not in a nice way.  Then she disappeared came back and said is this a foreign package, I said no, Massachusetts.  She said "You have the wrong number."  (there was no number on the pink slip and I had written the complaint number on it for reference)  I said that is my complaint number, I don't have a number for the package.  At that point she disappeared again and I called the customer service number.  Fortunately I was on line with a real person when she returned to scream at me again and he heard it all.  I told her who was online, but I guess she didn't believe me.  

I still don't have the package.  It is, according to them, out for re-delivery.  Sigh.  If you believe that, the GWB is for sale and you can buy it. 

I am going to forward both of these blog entries to the Post Office Complaint line if there is such a thing.  There may be a phone call in my future from someone's boss, but I doubt it.   There!  I feel a whole lot better now and the person I reached on the phone was actually quite polite.  

Printing class results

This is obviously from a photo. I took it from the balcony of the Metropolitan Museum of Art one evening. I loved then and still love the ambiguity of the figures and their movement. This is the first print from this plate. One of the things I learned last night was to print black first to just check out the plate.

Don't clean out the black ink after printing, just move on to color. Tomorrow is the "moved on to color" print. Stay tuned...

Printing Class Results

Romeo has turned out to be a big muse for my printing class activities. Partly because he is so elegant in black and white. Here we go again This was done - printed - really quickly. I wanted to see how it looked and I haven't had time to play with better inking etc. but I think the plate needs some cropping.. we shall see where this one goes over the next - and alas last - week.