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When You Get the Message, Hang Up the Phone": Inside Joshua Marc Levy's New Large Format Blotter Art Print

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"When You Get the Message, Hang Up the Phone": Inside Joshua Marc Levy's New Large Format Blotter Art Print

There's a particular kind of nostalgia that hits when you see a kid holding a rotary phone surrounded by op-art zigzags and cherries. It's part Mad Magazine, part Fillmore poster, part fever dream — and it's exactly the territory artist Joshua Marc Levy works in with his newest release for Magic Art Club: "When You Get the Message, Hang Up the Phone."

The Piece

This is a large format vanity fine art blotter print, measuring a full 18" x 18" — considerably bigger than a standard blotter sheet. The image is perforated into 3,600 individual quarter-inch squares, framed by a clean 1.5" non-perforated border that lets the artwork breathe before the grid takes over.

At the center: a freckled, gap-toothed kid in red-rimmed glasses, phone handset in hand, grinning out from a black-and-white zigzag floor. Around him, Levy stacks in the details — hearts, dice, cherries, an "OM" bicycle-wheel pattern, a checkerboard sphere, and a red rotary phone base labeled "THE BOSS." The whole thing reads like a lost piece of psychedelic ephemera crossed with a vintage candy wrapper, right down to the "OUR PRICE 333 CHEAP" tag tucked in the corner.

Why Large Format Matters

Most blotter art comes in the traditional 7.5" x 7.5" sheet of 900 squares — a size rooted in the format's original functional history. A large format piece like this one, at 18" x 18" and 3,600 squares, is a different undertaking entirely. It demands more precise registration, a bigger press run, and a level of production capability that only a small number of studios worldwide can execute with a full printed border intact.

Limited Edition Details

  • Edition size: 300, hand-signed and numbered
  • Dimensions: 18" x 18" overall
  • Perforation: 3,600 quarter-inch squares with a 1.5" clean border
  • Materials: Acid-free archival paper, archival ink only
  • Includes: Artist-signed Certificate of Authenticity
  • Printed by: Shapeshifters in NH, © 2026 Levy at A.A.F.

This is strictly vanity fine art — intended for display, never in contact with any illegal substance, and produced for purely legal, decorative use.

Once the edition of 300 is gone, it's gone for good. No reprints.

Interested in adding "When You Get the Message, Hang Up the Phone" to your collection? [Shop the print here] — or browse more large format and limited edition blotter art at BlotterArt.io.