Buy Michael Gira's Artwork

From Michael Gira:

Hello There,

I have just recently, with much hacking and spitting and love, completed a set of 20 drawings over the last 6 months. The collection is called "I Am Not Insane" which is of course, a lie. They are displayed below. I’ve had them printed up at the esteemed Stumptown Printers in Portland, Oregon. Stumptown is a fine, Small Press, and they use 100% recycled paper and vegetable based inks. These prints are NOT laser copied or photocopied – they’re “old school” offset prints. The paper we’ve used has “weight” – ie not cheap, flimsy copy paper. The cover/folio is 18 pt. chipboard, and the drawings themselves are printed on white 8 ½ x 11 inch paper (same size as the paper I did the original drawings on), 80 LB cover weight stock.. I am hand-assembling, packing up and shipping out these folios myself here at home. I sign and number each one on the back. This is a first edition of 500...Help and technical expertise in bringing the drawings to a state ready for printing was provided by the fine gentleman David Perry of Kingston, NY. Thanks to him here for his patience and diligence.

As with my songs, I have no idea where these drawings came from. Usually, I stare at a page and wait for something to appear – either a short phrase or an image. I then begin fleshing it out, and it transforms itself along the way. In any event, familiar subjects appear – abjection, cosmic fury and dismay, addiction, love, bliss, hope, and naturally a good bit of a perpetually adolescent fascination with gross, icky things – and in this case the work was modeled with an unsteady and crude hand wielding a Sharpie on a blank white 8 ½ X 11 imaginary Ouija Board. The original drawings were done on cheap copy paper, blotched liberally and repeatedly with Whiteout, drawn over, cut up and pieced back together with clear packing tape etc. So, the final printed, more graphically clear version on nice paper is higher in quality than the drawings themselves, in the end. Anyway, maybe there’s something in them you’ll find useful for your own purposes.

Michael Gira / June 2009

Sweet, ..can you offer us some new Swans material now??