Aardvark Letterpress - Ed Ruscha's favor
looking back
Last weekend the GET HUBBIED team met Ed at Aardvark Letterpress to oversee the production of the favors. Aardvark has been nestled in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles since 1968. The press was founded by Luis Ocon and all of the letterpress printing is performed on-site by Luis, his sons Brooks and Cary, and their lead pressman, Oscar Gomez.
We were rewarded to see the first finished favor come off the press after a two-step process that involved first di-cutting a couple of choice words into a thick piece of recycled paper. Bill Berkuta was our masterful and patient pressman in charge of this project. He's been in the business for 40 years (and counting); he took great care with every single piece of paper, (though its hard to call it that due to its object meatiness) and due to the thickness and variance of each sheet, it took patience. Every couple/individual/family invited to the wedding will get one of these gems, and one of them will be in the exhibition opening the 2nd week of October. Once again, Ruscha pulls through with a witty punch line, while at the same time giving us pause to think about the absurd reality and haunting reverberance of words. People left and right are getting married, but we're certain here at HubbyCo, that the celebration we've concocted around the exchange of words is going to be the most special of the 5918 other ceremonies that are predicted to take place on the same day: September 25th. The whole journey is special, such as working with artists like Ed, but also getting to work with people like those at Aardvark and to be momentarily immersed into worlds otherwise off our radar.
www.gagosian.com/artists/ed-ruscha
on the day
I wracked my brain as to how to best present these auspicious favors. After all this work and collaborating with such a fellow, I wanted it to be the perfect casement. I had a revelation which was to go the opposite direction from packaging them in a high-brow kind of way, and to put them in something non-descript and generic, which Ed loved: a brown paper lunch bag. Each of the favors slipped into a bag as a perfect fit and as guests were leaving they were handed their sack. Every guest and artist, and participant, helper etc. got one of these subtly-cloaked gems.