'No Early Birds': New Yorker cartoonist's public art project

Tag sale lovers, keep your eyes open. The best find ever will be tacked to a telephone pole. Roz Chast's sign for a fictional tag sale on "Old Moccasin Lane" will appear in undisclosed locations throughout Fairfield County. This public art project, conceived by the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, is a humorous take on tag sales.

Sixty signs, silkscreened on cardboard, were printed by master printer Gary Lichtenstein. They preview the fine art version of "No Early Birds" -- numbered, limited edition silkscreens printed on rag paper and signed by Chast. They will be offered for sale at a party The Aldrich is hosting at Mitchells of Wesport Saturday, June 12, from 2 to 4 p.m. Chast, best known for her cartoons in The New Yorker, will be there.

Chast's "No Early Birds" will also be exhibited in The Aldrich's survey of Lichtenstein's 35-year career as a printer and publisher. He has produced prints in collaboration with many artists, including Alex Katz, Robert Indiana and Gary Panter. The show opens June 27.

On a recent afternoon, Chast and Richard Klein, the Aldrich's exhibitions director, gathered at Lichtenstein's studio in the big, red barn behind his farmhouse in Ridgefield. Looking at the colorful sign advertising a multi-family sale "Friday, Saturday and Sunday," Chast said, "It's like what's wrong with this? There's no city." There's also no Old Moccasin Lane in Fairfield County.

Chast has rendered an abundance of stuff you see at tag sales and wonders why anyone would buy them -- an old microwave (leaking radiation!), worn socks (eeww!), a blow-dryer (electric shocks!) and a bowling ball (whatever).

Too intricate, artistic and funny to be a real tag sale sign, at first glance "No Early Birds" seems like a poster for theatrical show. And, indeed, for Chast, tag sales are a bit of theater. She and her husband Bill Frazen have gone through tag sale phases. (Her husband, known as being "Mr. Halloween," used to prowl tag sales looking for odd objects for his over-the-top Halloween displays in front of their house in Ridgefield.)

Tags sales are "fun," she said, "It's very voyeuristic."

"People's personal life is laid out on the ground," said Lichtenstein.

"There's some things you always see," said Chast, "A crock pot, an exercise bike, books for diets that have gone out of fashion. And there used to always be a copy of `Future Shock.'"

Lichtenstein said that people "match their belongings. Records really show it. The Grateful Dead. Or Herb Alpert."

"Herb Alpert is like the `Future Shock' of records," said Klein.

In "No Early Birds," Chast's anxious characters look at their stuff. "They're upset," Chast said, "They're saying goodbye to their stuff."

While selling your old possessions can induce separation anxiety, for buyers, there's the thrill of the hunt. For among all those 8-track tapes, chipped bowls and broken appliances, you could stumble across something that could get you a spot on Antiques Roadshow. "You always imagine you'll find something great at a tag sale," Chast said. And she once did. She found an original 1940s drawing from New Yorker cartoonist Robert Day. The price was $1.

"I wanted to say, `Would you take 75 cents?'" Chast said.

Lichtenstein, wearing jeans covered with multi-colored drips of paint, poured green paint on the screen of his semi-automatic silk screen press. He pushed a button and a squeegee pressed the paint through a stencil and onto a proof print of the sign. He asked Chast what she thought of the hue. Chast demurred. But Lichtenstein, steeped in the process of collaboration, said he wanted to get the color right, to match the color Chast used in the original. The prints, he said, are made under the supervision of the artist. "This is why you need to hang out more," he said, laughing, to Chast.

He and his assistant wiped the not-quite-right green from the screen. Lichtenstein remixed the color. Each "No Early Birds" print would require 17 screens. And to get 60 perfect silk-screened prints, Lichtenstein would need to make 120, Klein noted.

"No Early Birds" will be posted in Fairfield County the week of June 7 and will stay up for 5 days, if they aren't snagged by bargain-hunting collectors. And who knows, someday those free posters could end up on the market -- at a tag sale.

For more information on buying the limited edition fine art version of "No Early Birds," contact The Aldrich Contemporary Museum store manager Lise Sharfin at lsharfin@aldrichart.org, or call 203-438-4519, ext. 26.