111 Poster

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My brother, Liam, has a thing about the number 111. It started with the fact that he was born at 1:11 am, and since then, 111 has always been his special number and a good omen. Not surprisingly, he named his company 111 Productions, Inc.

With a sensitivity to the number 111, I find that I see it all over the place in the world: street numbers, license plates, gas prices (although, I doubt I'll be seeing that again for a while!), and so on. In the tradition of giving my brother hand-made gifts for his birthday, I decided to collect photographs of the 111s I came across in my travels. I ended up with photos from Boston, Providence, New York City, Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Minneapolis.

I then assembled the shots into a large poster for my brother's new studio in Los Angeles. The final poster is about 2 feet square. I made one large digital file and took it to Kinkos for a large-format print. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. You can click on the image above to see a larger version of the poster (although it's still not actual size).

The Things We Do for Art

On a visit to NYC to see my friend, Ellie Lee, we took a cab back to her apartment in Brooklyn Heights after a long night of revelry. When I looked out the cab window back at the Manhattan skyline, what should I see but a large "1:11" shining in the night sky. I wanted that shot! But of course, at the moment, I was camera-less.

A month or so later, Jeff and I were back in Brooklyn visiting Ellie. Once again, we took a cab home over the bridge... it was 12:59! Could we possibly get the camera from the apartment and get back to the bridge by 1:11? We were willing to try, dammit! Once in the apartment, camera in hand, it occurred to us that it was probably not such a good idea to to be running around Brooklyn with digital equipment in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, at 1:04, we were back on the street running toward the bridge.

When it became obvious that Ellie and I would not be able to keep up, Jeff grabbed the camera and sprinted ahead. Within a matter of seconds, he was out of sight... and we had no idea whether he even knew where he was going. Frankly, the whole ordeal was pretty scary. We hurried the best we could, hoping that Jeff made it safely. As we rounded the corner onto the Brooklyn Bridge, there was Jeff, snapping test shots as the clock changed from 1:10 to 1:11. A sigh of relief. Mission accomplished.

The Poster's Arrival in L.A.

This is my favorite part of the poster story. I shipped the poster and some other trinkets in a mailing tube to arrive in time for Liam's birthday. I guess he wasn't home, because the UPS man just lobbed the tube over the entrance gate to Liam's house. When Audrey (Liam's girlfriend) got home, she opened the gate and was pulling into the driveway, when she heard a curious "crrrrunchh."

There, under the wheel of her truck was the tube, which had traveled safely 3000 miles only to be flattened immediately upon its arrival. Audrey felt terrible about it. I just found it amusing, since I was able to send them the file and they were able to print out a fresh copy. Ah, the beauty of digital media!