Drink Your Pudding!

a score of editions

2023-01-25T23:17:00.007-08:00

The completion of the 2022 / 2023 holiday edition brings with it a completion of the holiday editions as a project. I started this tradition in my second year of graduate school, with the 2003 / 2004 cards, a project to fill the anxious moments of end of term assessments. During the intervening years, they’ve been a source of joy, an expression of curiosity, a way of trying out new techniques and new materials, and a chance to be frivolous in a way that my normal studio practice didn’t always permit. There have been years when the holiday edition has been the only purely creative project that I’ve undertaken; there have been years when my brain was ricocheting in hundreds of directions and the edition delivered well beyond the “holiday season;” there have been years when I’ve finished the edition and felt a great sense of accomplishment at the outcome.

And now it has been twenty years of holiday editions, and I feel like they have fulfilled their purpose. I have a more dedicated creative process which co-exists with my studio process; the edition itself has grown into a fuller artist-book undertaking than I ever intended for it to. In future years I will probably continue with holiday cards, but with reduced ambition, as my focus turns towards other ways of realizing my projects.

as above, so below

2023-01-25T23:02:00.007-08:00

The holiday edition has soared through the postal system, arriving in mailboxes near and far, in time for the Lunar new year. Its flight corresponds with the green comet that is wending its way past us this month, and caps a year when things mostly returned to normal, although many of us [me] aren’t quite sure what normal is supposed to be any more.

This year’s edition started with curiosity about two of the options offered by my printing company: the ability to print on mylar [polyester sheets], and the ability to print metallic ink. Could they … print metallic ink on mylar sheets, I asked? They’d try, they said, and: it worked! Since I generally achieve metallic outcomes using a kensol hot foil stamper, and since this would melt mylar rather than embossing images, I wanted to experiment to see what would happen.

From previous years [year of fog, sphere ornaments], I knew that mylar can’t be attached using glue, and so, in my first prototypes, I was concerned with finding a construction method that was adhesive free. Accordion books are traditionally great for this type of material, but I wanted something that played with the reflective qualities of the mylar, in addition to the translucence. While folding samples, I realized that a simple overlapped panel with a slit cut half-way through would allow the two panels to lock into position; and then, by sewing through the center folds, I could use a modified pamphlet stitch to anchor the star into shape.

Last year’s edition was the sea, and it felt appropriate for this year’s edition to be the stars. During the summer, photographs from the Hubble telescope made headlines; the year before, I had read a novel re-imagining the life of Kepler’s mother, who was tried as a witch while he was the astronomer royal. I’ve always loved the idea of the music of the stars, and believe that if any composer has the ability to translate that movement into sound, it would be the precision and balance of Bach, and found a manuscript of the Well Tempered Clavier to convey that song in these cards. While playing with the structure of the star, I added a belt, an echo of Saturn’s rings, and saw this as an opportunity to incorporate a line of text from Emerson’s essay, Circles: Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. The elements when brought together as a whole allow you to go deeper, into whichever direction you find inspiring.

While it seems like bad astronomy to have both rings and a comet tail, I liked the idea of folding a paper tassel to have both the message of well wishes for the new year and the colophon information dancing below the star, and was thrilled to discover that the Thai metallic paper from Hiromi Paper can be run through a standard laser printer.

Once I received the printed paper inner star, and the printed mylar outer star, I created two jigs for scoring fold lines, punching sewing holes, and cutting slits for the paper ribbons. The inner star is smaller than the outer star, so that it nests inside the mylar, and so the measurements needed to be recalculated for each. After scoring and then folding the pages, I cut them into individual strips and began the initial stages of assembly.

The tassels were cut and folded; the ribbon rings woven through the mylar outer wrappers, and the wrappers locked into position; and the paper interior folded and also held in place with a slit-lock.

The tassels and the hanging ribbon were attached to the stars at the same time that the outer and inner layers were sewn together, using a modified pamphlet stitch with a backstitch element to anchor the star into the correct position.

Since the post office has a tendency to destroy my cards in transit, they always receive some type of wrapper to protect them on their way. This year the wrapper also included instructions for opening up the star for display — since I know it isn’t always obvious what, exactly, the holiday edition is.

My cats received a mini-edition of their own: originally, I was going to make a special “cats of recipients” edition-within-an-edition, but, even though I anticipated this year’s project being substantially less involved than last year’s, it still took a month to assemble after receiving the printed elements, and so the feline mini-edition was allowed to exist purely in the “conceptual” state.

Wishing you — and your cats — a very happy new year!

System Theory

2022-04-09T22:48:00.003-07:00

Two volume artist’s book in clamshell box. A study of lichen as a system, and of society as a system: a lens for examining how the organism requires thinking and acting beyond the immediate needs of the individual.

Hand painted wood veneer covers [designs vary], 6 hand embroidered pages, 8 woodcut prints, 6 woodcut collages digitally printed on fabric, and two essays: Twelve Readings on the Lichen Thallus by Trevor Goward, and A System of Logic by John Stuart Mill, with historic lichen imagery. The hand-embroidered pages are the text from the Sociology entry of The Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition, which describes society as a organism working towards the health of the whole over the desires of the individual.

9"x 9". Limited edition of 10. Two volumes in clamshell box. Ships 7/15/2022.

In the early autumn of 2021, I became fascinated by the unresolved nature of the definition of lichen: how it is a combination of algae and fungus, and how it forms a third, completely different organism than would be possible without this combination, and how science is still rather flummoxed by many of the characteristics of it: is it an organism? Is it mostly a fungus? Is it a parasite? Is it mutually beneficial? Different scientists have different interpretations, and it was only at the invention of more powerful microscopes in the late 18th century that Erik Acharius teased out the component parts. I was also interested in their functionality: the time scale they operate in, by the climates they grow in, how they display interdependence into a new whole.

One of the books about lichen that I most enjoyed was Kem Luther’s book “Boundary Layer,” which including a reference to the work of a Canadian scientist, Trevor Goward, who wrote a series of essays entitled Twelve Readings on the Lichen Thallus. These personal essays combine science with storytelling to explore the nature of lichens, and come to the conclusion that they can best be experienced as systems rather than as individual parts acting in self interest. Trevor Goward very kindly gave me permission to reprint his essays, which I abridged in the desire to tell the story that interested me: the story of a system formed of interdependent parts.

This led me to start searching for other metaphor that explored the nature of systems: what would make lichen something that other people could conceptualize, who weren’t already knowledgeable? What would make lichen larger than a biological curiosity? I started looking into other examples of networks and systems: neuroscience, brain theory and the nervous system; transportation hubs; samples of manufacturing using unexpected materials; and then, while using google books and the internet archive and searching using the term “system theory,” I came across John Stuart Mill’s book which established social science, A System of Logic.

This is, honestly, a very long book that spends a very long time talking about the nature of logic and the establishment of scientific norms, but, once you are through all the introductory matter, there is a compelling section that applies the nature of logical thinking to the study of human rights and society — in short, the establishment of sociology as a field — the study of humanity and politics as a system.

The rest of the process became a study in how to combine these elements in a form which respected both the biology of lichens and the science of society, telling both narratives concurrently without causing information overload or blurring the essential nature of what I found compelling. The creation and construction of the artist’s book is a combination of form and function to explore the narrative of systems being more than their individual components.

The text of the book is the abridged essays by Goward; the borders of the pages have the abridged text of Stuart Mill. Throughout the book, imagery from the early scientists has been brought into the page designs: the botanical illustrations of Acharius, Nageli, and Westrings.

The same way that volume 1 has three disparate elements [algae, fungus, cyanobacteria; Goward, Stuart Mills, historic botanical plates], so does volume two: embroidered text, woodblock prints, and digital collages.

Volume two of the book uses a more poetic exploration of the visual nature of lichen, combined with the most laborious and slow-growing method of creating text on the page that is possible — hand embroidery.

Combining materials, paper, wood, fabric mirrors the way that lichen is a plant-like growth on rocks and trees — and inspired by the fabric books of Louise Bourgeois for inspiration in how cloth could work as a book structure. [New York Times | MoMA [original] | [edition] ]

I was interested in incorporating a woodgrain print element to the project, based on the photograph from the nature hike [above] with the lichen growing on a felled trunk. The first step was to explore how to create a print from a piece of wood. There was a great online forum of Canadian woodworkers who had a conversation where sanding the wood smooth and then using a wire brush drill attachment to pull out the soft grain so that the rings would form prints. My studio was partitioned into a special sanding area (plastic cloths hanging from the ceiling) and sanding and wire-brushing commenced.

These sanded blocks were then turned into rubbings using graphite on paper, then dropped into Photoshop, and digital collages were made using the rubbings and the hand-dyed covers [see below]. The resulting collages were then digitally printed onto organic cotton, which was then dyed in the studio in a bath of acorn dye [acorns collected by my nephews over Thanksgiving], then cut down into panels for the books.

Embroidery was always a foundational part of the conception of this project: it is text literally growing on the substrate, the way that lichen grows on trees and rocks, and it is slow, remarkably slower, slower even than calligraphy or using handset type; it operates at the scale that lichen grows. It took me some time to develop how I wanted the embroidery to work with the woodcut collages: I wasn’t certain what text or imagery was most appropriate, but remembered that I had a copy of the famous Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition, and the article on Sociology fit in cleanly with the message that I sought through volume one:

It is a feature of organisms that as we rise in the scale of life the meaning of the present life of the organism is to an increasing degree subordinate to the larger meaning of its life as a whole. The efficiency of an organism must always be greater than the total of its members acting as individuals.

I extracted a total of six excerpts from the text, which narratively illustrate this concept of the sum being greater than the parts. After each pane was embroidered, it was trimmed with a rough edge, formed into signatures with a second embroidered panel and two collages, and the outer edges were stitched, in pursuit of the softer edge finish this provides.

Bringing the woodcut element into sharper relief, inked woodblock prints were created by printmaker Catherine Ulitsky, who accompanied me on the lichen walk through the Hawley Bog pictured earlier. In addition to being a trained professional printmaker, Catherine also has a long history of interest in the natural environment and our relationship with it, and her selections of woodblocks and thoughtful inking bring a sharp visual focal point into the edition, providing a foundation for the embroidery and collages to grow in relation to.

The covers of the books are maple veneer panels, hand dyed in a range of colors and patterns to resemble the various palettes and forms that lichen takes, on trees and on stones. Each cover is different; while the covers of volume one and volume two are in relationship to each other as far as tone, it was never the intention to have them match or coordinate. Nature is too diverse for me to be interested in that as a solution. A selection of these panels were used as a base and color layer for the digital collages of volume two.

The same way that lichen is a relationship between disparate elements that forms a complex, functional system, this book incorporated the skills and talents of a group of people that I am thrilled were graciously involved in the project. Without Trevor Goward’s essay, Catherine Ulitsky’s woodblock prints, and the talented handcraft of my studio assistant, Kayla Mattes, this project would not have unified into the whole presentation that it offers the reader.

Field Guide

2022-02-24T07:57:00.003-08:00

Field Guide is a two volume artist's book edition that traces mankind's fractured relationship with nature, stemming from our difficulty in recognizing that we are, in fact, a part of nature.

production notes below description

Volume 1, Field Guide, has the abridged text of Man, A Machine, written by Julien Offray de La Mettrie in 1747, and a thorough range of historic skeleton illustrations, presented in the order of the traditional "evolutionary tree of life" that has biology reaching its pinnacle in modern day human beings. It is covered in rabbit fur (various patterns).

Volume 2, Field Guide to the Anthropocene, uses historic Field Guides covering a range of topics, to depict visually how humans have continued to insist on describing the natural world through how it specifically affects humans; it is also organized internally in the same order as Volume 1, starting with plants and ending with human beings (and war). The cover material is a camouflage fabric.

The pages of both volumes were digitally printed, then hand dyed using tea, walnut husks, and hibiscus flowers. Edges painted. Titles engraved on brass tags, mounted into front covers.

Limited edition of 15. Two volumes in clamshell box. 2019/2021 | Codex 2022, booth 50

Work on this project started in the spring of 2019. Do you remember those heady early spring days? I was just about to depart for Seattle, and in the planning stages of a trip to Japan (Seattle was full of delicious pastries, Japan is still in the future).

At the time, I had two fuzzy cats, Ferdinand and Charlie. Now, I have two tuxedo cats, Ezra and Vincent. Obviously, other things have happened in the intervening two and a half years, which accounts for why it has taken said amount of time to finish this edition, but let’s just spend a moment admiring the cats.

The entire project was undertaken because I wondered — how do you cover a book in fur? Whenever I see a book as a prop in a film, I’m filled with [occasionally irrational] envy that I was not the person who made that prop, and I want to have the skill set to be able to do literally anything that a prop master requests, regardless of whether it’s a thing that I’ve done before or not. And that Harry Potter book really made me want to know … how do you do that? There aren’t any bookbinding how to manuals that really go into working with weird materials, but I’ve never let that stop me before — even back in graduate school, I used a rattlesnake skin on an artist’s book just because I wanted to see how it would work (it worked).

In order to figure out how to even work with fur, I ended up using the extensive tailoring collection at the LAPL — books published in the 1930s and 1940s that provided directions on how working with fur is different from working with leather or cloth. While there are significant differences between a goatskin that has been tanned specifically for use in bookbinding and fur for the clothing trade, it was at least a starting point for how the material behaved and what types of technical issues would need to be addressed.

Oddly enough, in one of those moments of synchronicity that make you wonder if the universe is paying a bit too much attention, as these books were nearing final completion, the New Yorker published an article about Margaret Wise Brown, and discussed how she had enough clout with her publishers to insist that the first run of Little Fur Families be covered in rabbit skin, with later editions in fake fur. I had spent two years looking for examples of fur in bookbinding, and suddenly, here was one, unexpectedly. Unfortunately, the first editions were missing from both the LAPL and UCLA special collections, and the other library copies are in traditional laminated covers, but the Beverly Hills public library had a copy of a recent fake fur edition, which was at least something to study to see how the internal structure and turn-ins were handled.

Once I had worked through enough of the technical issues regarding the material, I began to think about this as an artist’s book edition. If I wanted to cover a book in fur, what should the content be?

Obviously, the content should be bones.

After I had amassed a geological quarry’s worth of skeletons, I started thinking about the text. I wanted … a bone identification guide? An excavation guide? A field guide? The more I looked into field guides, the more I realized that a field guide of field guides was a fascinating lens through which to tell the story of how mankind has defined the natural world around the needs of humanity. So while looking for text for volume one (bones), I inadvertently created volume two (field guide of field guides).

This still left me with the question of how to give the skeletons context, so I started reading natural history and philosophy concerning the ability of humanity to see itself as separate from all other aspects of creations. This belief stems from the very first chapters of Genesis, where it is declared that man was created in god’s own image, and has led to millennia of exploitation of natural resources and cruelty to animals (and women, who were seen as closer to animals than to men). (Even today I’ve met [had first but not second dates with] people who believe that humans are somehow more than other animals.) In doing this reading, I came across the essay Man, A Machine, by the French philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie, writing in the 18th century that, nope, we’re just functional organisms like everything else. He was excommunicated for this. I loved this essay, and the writing style, but in abridging it for this project, I removed most of what he had to say about the intellectual powers of women. (He was on the right track, but it was still the 18th century, and women were still property.)

Now that I had the collection of skeletons, the essay, and the collection of Field Guides, I started working on page layouts for the text. The skeletons are arranged in the order of the traditional “tree of evolution,” which sees, as its pinnacle, the development of modern mankind.

The skeletons face the inner margin, with the text swimming around the outer margins, and evolve from fish to birds to mammals to apes to humans.

In the second volume, the Field Guides start with plants, then works through the same order as the skeletons — fish, birds, mammals, humans — ending with that most human of creations, war.

I experimented with different page color backgrounds, and settled on tea-dying the pages as a way to bring texture into the digital printing.

... time passed ...

To begin the process of dying the pages, strong tea was made, and the pages were dipped for about a minute and then line dried.

After they had dried, there still just wasn’t quite enough texture to the paper surface, so I experimented with other types of dyes.

Using a speckled effect in walnut husk and hibiscus provided the level of visual softening that I was looking for.

After the pages were dyed, speckled, dried, pressed, and trimmed, the edges were painted a dull gold that adds more visual texture rather than shine.

Which brought me back to the process that started it all — covering the books with fur. It really isn’t like working with leather. For a lot of the process, you’re working just by feel — because the fur obscures everything that the skin is doing. While my techniques were informed by my research and previous experiments, they were, honestly, also informed by growing up in Dallas in the 1980s. Let’s just say that I hadn’t bought hair spray since I was in high school, and some of the turn-in trimming techniques owe more to the concept of the Flowbee than to any bookbinding techniques.

The engraved brass name tags were the result of wondering how to attach a title to fur, my previously experiments therein being lackluster, but it was resolved through a lifetime of having fuzzy feline companions. The hand-stamped unevenness that the dog supplier produced I found charming and in keeping with the feel of the book.

And so the edition is completed [the clamshell boxes are still in process]. I feel it is important to note that I did strongly consider using imitation fur for this edition: while this book’s nickname has definitely been the hunter and the wabbit, I’m very aware of the ethical and environmental issues associated with the use of fur. I live in a state where SB-5 strictly regulates the sale and use of fur. While I’m not a vegetarian — while I use goat and calf frequently in my bookbinding practice — there is a definite ick factor that happens simultaneously with the ooo fuzzy reaction. I think this is important. I want readers to be equally fascinated and appalled: that is the crux of the anthropocene, a world that we’ve created in our own image, that is slowly destroying our ability to continue to survive.

across the seas

2022-01-04T11:19:00.012-08:00

The holiday edition was completed and set sail at the end of the New Year weekend — bringing, hopefully, tranquil seas as we enter 2022. This past year was … intense. There really aren’t that many other ways to describe it. On a global scale, we had: tiktok sea shanties, the Ever Given canal blockage, the backups at the Port of Long Beach, and, apparently, the Gulf of Mexico caught on fire.

I didn’t even realize that last one until getting ready to write this essay. On a personal scale, I watched the Pirates of the Caribbean, and had a brief moment of wondering if my brother had been kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean (outcome: it was a pocket dial, not a ransom call).

We were allowed to travel, then we were advised to reconsider those travel plans. We ended up more or less where we began, except time passed, turbulent and storm-tossed.

So, obviously, this year’s card was always going to be about the sea.

From a technical standpoint, my printing company acquired a digital die cutter a couple of years ago, and I’d been curious about its capabilities. When my brain hears “die cutting”, it immediately throws out “pop-up books.” So I knew early on that there was going to be a pop-up element to the card.

I hadn’t previously used the cut-and-fold accordion book technique for the holiday edition, although I’ll frequently use it for other occasions; I like that it allows a book to be made from a single sheet of paper, and that the numerous mountain and valley folds would accommodate the pop-up elements that I wanted to incorporate.

The structure of the cards references back to a similar approach that I took for the 2006/2007 edition — which was before I posted photos of the process of making the cards; I had only started making them in graduate school, 2003/2004. (There's also a passing resemblance to 2011/2012 "year of fog" in the use of a gradient photo collage with a poem overlay, on an accordion book.) It’s fascinating to look back and see both how I was thinking about structures, and how they’ve developed and matured. (They’ve also gotten a lot more time-intensive and expensive to produce, mail, and create.)

The Poetry Foundation has a marvelous database of contemporary and historic poems; I did some searching along the lines of “journey,” “ocean,” “ship,” and was utterly charmed by a recent translation and compilation of Socrates' “The Sea.” I’ve been in Los Angeles long enough that, even though I only make it to the beach once or maybe twice a year, I have plenty of photos of the changing colors of the water, and I decided to lean into being that person who sends pictures of the beach to friends shoveling snow in colder climates. In 2020, I restored a book of maps (Munstero’s Cosmographiae) from the 1550s, and, at the time, took note of the number of ships and sea monsters that were depicted scattered across the oceans. (In a news article that isn’t about catastrophe, the Smithsonian published a piece this year about the excavation of a ship from this era.)

So, at this point, I had: the text; a collection of photos of the sea; a collection of images of ships and sea monsters; historic maps. I dropped everything into InDesign, and arranged the photos to run chronologically from morning light to late afternoon, and aligned all the horizons. The text, which runs across the skies, had page breaks put in which effectively mirror the shapes of waves — a spread has more lines, then progressively fewer, then increases again. This is subtle, but I wanted a sense of motion in the reading of the text itself. The orientation of the ships, fish, and monsters was shifted around, putting each element in play with the other elements and with the text. As the triangles that separate each section are both hidden and visible, and since this is a book about the sea, I treated them as wave forms, and filled the space with ocean.

Then I had to learn how to incorporate die cutting marks into the file; while I didn’t end up using the digital die cutting machine (it tore the paper when there were sharp turns), I’m glad that I went through the process of learning how to set up the files.

Once the printed pages were in the studio, I could start the process of assembly. The first step was to manually create what the digital die cutting wasn’t able to accomplish; I set up a jig to punch holes at the beginning and end of each outline, since part of a successful pop-up function is that the cuts are as parallel to each other as possible (otherwise the element opens at an angle). Then the outlines were freehand cut around each illustration.

After all of the outlines were cut, the page, still whole, was folded along the mountain folds. When the pages were then folded for the valley folds, the pop-ups were encouraged to fold into the opposite direction from the parent sheet.

After the sheets were folded vertically, the horizontal cuts, separating the pages from each other, followed along the dividing line of the images. At the end of each row, a 45 degree fold and turn were incorporated, to allow the book to both twist and then remain in a single plane. A larger hole was punched at this juncture point, to accommodate the movement.

The books were then folded up into compact 2” squares, and placed in the press to set all the creases.

I was originally going to typeset “best wishes for 2022” in the same font as the text, but “2022” is difficult to typeset: it’s inelegant on the page. I tried several different fonts, then realized that my own handwriting would allow me to adjust the spacing of the numbers more precisely. Even here, I shifted the alignment a bit in Photoshop before having the stamping dies made. The pastedown is foil stamped onto Twinrocker paper, then tabbed onto the last page of the book.

The covers are a gray Twinrocker paper, the ship woodblock illustration on the front stamped with a pewter foil — the exterior of the book is a ship at moonlight, enclosing the progress of the day within.

By this time I was ready to be done with the cards and just wrap them with a paper belt as in previous years, but, well, there’s a point where you’ve done so much work, that there’s no reason not to just keep doing more. Vintage ribbons were used for the foredge ties; however, being vintage, there wasn’t enough of any one color for the full edition, so some are gray and some are blue.

In the spirit of “nature abhors a vacuum,” I was never going to leave the reverse of the card blank. The concept of a map element on the reverse featured in the 2019/2020 cards, although here they are more formally designed. The Cosmographiae had a number of charming maps to choose from; while I was tempted by the new world, I decided the whole world (Typus Orbis Universalis) was a better depiction of current events. The original map was then populated with all of the various ships, islands, and land creatures from throughout the original book’s text and other maps; my darlings were added to Nova Scotia, and I dropped myself in as a sea monster in the Caribbean.

When the text of the book is opened out and flattened from the cover, the map can be read.

Since at this point I was leaning hard into “why stop now,” the card then received custom envelopes. Going through my various reference books on how-to-fold, the square that opens into a flower matched the emotional feel of the book; it’s larger than the books, to accommodate the thickness, and has a more modern aesthetic — a crisp encapsulation of the more flamboyant interior.

Wishing you the very best in the year ahead: a tranquil harbor, a warm sun, a cool drink.

bookbinding: beginnings

2021-06-29T08:01:00.004-07:00

One of the most common emails that I receive is an inquiry about where and how to learn bookbinding, or book conservation. I have a set response that I will post here: however, please be aware that this field is an interconnected web of skills and training, and that certain training programs will focus on certain aspects that others will not. This is not intended to be an exhaustive guide, but provides a starting point for further research and exploration.

In my own studio, I do not use unpaid interns, and only hire assistants with studio experience. Private lessons are available; however, private lessons require a certain commitment of both time and funds. These are most suitable for practicing artists, advanced undergraduates / graduate students, and those interested in applying to art or conservation programs.

Bookbinding and book conservation, as practiced in the United States and England, are generally regarded as separate professional fields. I wrote a paper about this in graduate school; I’m not going to delve into the details here.

If you are interested in a professional career working in a library or museum collection as a conservator, you will need an accredited MA degree specializing in conservation of books and/or paper. Please be aware that MA degrees do not teach basic bookbinding: this is a skill set that they expect students to bring with them into the program. MA programs lean heavily into chemistry, decision making and evaluation, bibliographic history, ethics, and conservation treatment and materials decisions. Which schools are offering MA training in conservation varies from year to year as funding, staffing, and grants are unstable. These programs are very competitive. For professional training, you’ll have to do a preprogram internship (Getty, Library of Congress, etc) before applying; the internships are also competitive and students are expected to have some working knowledge of the field through workshops and other coursework. Internships are posted in the autumn and winter for summer availability. Internships are available at various museums and research libraries, but many have been postponed due to the Covid-19 health situation.

If you are interested in a career as an edition binder, you will need the same basic bookbinding skills as for entrance into an MA program; however, you will cobble together the skills and context for edition binding through a combination of short courses, MFA or BFA courses, conferences, apprenticeships, and other informal routes. Please note that while many edition binders know the fundamentals of letterpress printing, this is generally considered a separate professional field, and there is rarely in-studio overlap of the practices; likewise with printmaking and screenprinting. As with conservation programs, the universities and colleges offering MFA and BFA programs have a tendency to change as staff retire or funding is reallocated.

For training opportunities, research:

The American Institute for Conservation
The College Book Art Association
The Book Arts Web
The California Rare Book School
The Rare Book School (Virginia)
The North Bennet Street School (Boston)
The Center for the Book (NYC)
The Guild of Bookworkers
The San Francisco Center for the Book
The Academy of Bookbinding, Telluride

Be aware that it will take several years before you qualify for a masters program, and it is important to find diverse training centers for short courses beforehand. Academic training in book history, in addition to workshops in handskills, will also be helpful in applying to graduate programs.

Some commercial binderies offer training to staff, but they tend to pay minimum wage and are not considered professional training.

See the book arts web ( https://www.philobiblon.com/ ) and the American Institute for Conservation ( https://www.culturalheritage.org/ ) for further leads.

photo finish

2020-12-09T11:27:00.001-08:00

This rather summarizes the year: an upside-down pane, noticed two days after the cards were mailed. How many were affected? Who are the recipients of this bibliographic irregularity (and hopefully rarity)? When I say my concentration has been shattered to pieces, this neatly encapsulates the result...

living in liminal spaces

2020-12-07T21:15:00.005-08:00

It’s December, 2020. The election happened. That it was as close as it was is heartbreaking. That baby steps are being taken to resume civil society is heartening, but it shouldn’t have to be. This past year has been one of feeling caught in the in-betweens; stagnant, anxious, and unable to focus. I’m slowly regaining my concentration, and with it my equanimity, but for many months there have been both too many moments while somehow never quite enough time. In the uncertain days of October, I channeled my anxiety into the holiday edition, which makes this year’s the earliest completion ever.

the holiday edition 2020-2021: The Time-Being

2020 marked my five-years-in-Los-Angeles anniversary, and the traditional gift for this milestone is wood. Hiromi Paper carries a stock of paper-wood (wood veneer) products, and I’d been curious about using them for printing and foil stamping, so this year’s edition started with the desire to incorporate wood in some format.

As I cycled through the maelstrom of the year, I struggled to anchor in the present tense. It’s a difficult task for me at the best of times; I tend to live three steps in the future, and suddenly the future was too foreign, and the present too fraught. One of the books I read this year introduced me to the Buddhist philosophy of time as linked moments, rather than a progression, as explored by the Zen Buddhist teacher Dogen in his essay on Being-Time. This was a useful reminder, to value the present moment as a moment, rather than looking at either the moments that didn’t happen, or the moments that have not yet happened. I really liked the translation by Thomas Cleary, but the one by Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi is a bit easier to parse.

Do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only function of time. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time.

In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. Because all moments are the time-being, they are your time-being.

And:

Practice-enlightenment is time. Being splattered with mud and getting wet with water is also time.

At this point, I had the material (wood veneer) and the text (Being-Time), and I started to think about format. Knowing that this year’s text was from Buddhist philosophy and has a rigid material as the substrate, the format of the palm leaf book was immediately apparent as being most appropriate. Palm leaf books are traditional to southern Asian religious texts, and often incorporate calligraphy with small ornamental flourishes; there are some great tutorials online: I especially liked this one from the University of Iowa. Additionally, an early western essay was available from JSTOR, which provided a interesting look at the bibliographic interpretation of the format in the west. That my adopted city of Los Angeles is awash in palm trees adds to the appropriate nature of this format.

After printing a test run on my laser printer at home, I was happy with the proof of concept, but struggled with legibility of the text. Many of the original manuscripts have etched lines guiding the calligraphy, so I added a thin line on the staves to assist with reading. Likewise, I liked the decorative elements around the sewing holes, and incorporated medieval heraldry imagery as a foil stamped element for the sewing stations.

The text had a tendency to rub off of the paperwood, so I did three tests with different fixatives: PVA size, matte medium, and klucel-g (a conservation consolidant). They helped fill in the grain of the wood, but then needed to be buffed with sandpaper and steel wool. And then they actually printed even less well on my home printer: thankfully they printed beautifully on commercial printers.

After printing, the sewing stations were stamped in red foil; then the paperwood was backed with a decorative Japanese paper. They were then punched for sewing, then cut into individual staves.

I wasn’t sure what type of sewing method would be the most stable; after a few tests, knotting the thread between each stave helped keep everything in alignment. While I liked the frivolous nature of the gold thread, it was significantly more brittle than the red thread, and tended to break during the sewing process. Looping the ends as an extension at the top allows the books to be hung, like a broadside.

And so, folded against themselves, wrapped, and posted, they fly into the final days of what has been a year of turmoil, and a year for trying to hold onto the smallest of moments, of catching my breath and breathing deeply, in and through the uncertainty of what has been and what will be.

this year, it's virtual

2020-10-27T18:50:00.002-07:00

While I am the first person to admit that I don't remotely enjoy the performative aspects of art fairs, they are a useful benchmark for keeping track of the passage of time -- in my studio life, days run into days run into days, and I'm never quite sure if a week has passed, or six months, or three years. The Los Angeles Printer's Fair is always a particularly sentimental occasion for me (rather than a particularly professional one), since it is the benchmark for my anniversary of relocating to Los Angeles, and I'm extremely grateful for the landing pad that the International Printing Museum provided upon my arrival. Since fairs aren't happening this year, the LAPF2020 is being held virtually, and I agreed to make a series of short videos as part of their multimedia presentation.

My preferences for technologies are for the outdated and the obsolete; while I'm not a Luddite, I'm also not a technophile. They offered to lend me a professional videographer for the project, but since I closed my studio to the public seven (?!?!?!?) months ago, it didn't seem appropriate to have someone in the space for an extended period of time, while I narrated sans mask. As a result, I cobbled together a narrated series of instructions using my phone and the software on my laptop.

You'll notice that: my hands look exceptionally awful, even by my standards. They're covered in burns from foil stamping, and they're covered in scratches from PandemicKitten™ Vincent. Also, these particular structures are (a) the ones that I generally teach in introductory workshops, and (b) ones I've used in recent Holiday Editions, so I had samples readily available. You'll also notice that I didn't use a pre-written script, and as I was recording the narrations, I was drinking wine. So there's a bit of narrative ... irregularity, repetitiveness, and inaccuracy. At no point do I actually go off the rails, which, to be honest, would have been more interesting.

The resulting four videos will appear wherever the LAPF multimedia extravaganza is being posted; presumably on all the usual sites. I don't know if they'll ask me to provide additional content to help fill space. Nature abhors a vacuum, but I would also argue that people abhor amateur multimedia content. These were created with an audience of absolute beginners in mind, and feature such bookbinding materials as Glue Sticks and button thread.

Rather than drip them out one at a time, I'm posting all of them here, together, since that will make archiving them easier. They can also be found directly on youtube, here.

Introduction

Cut and Fold Booklets

Accordion Books

Sewn Signature Pamphlets

If you make something as a result of these instructions, please do send me a photo. I love seeing other people's projects!

Waterways

2020-06-07T12:39:00.002-07:00

The Seattle Art Museum recently included my artist's book "Between, Among, Within" in an installation on climate change entitled John Akomfrah: Future History.

Notes from the Curator:

The installation, which we have been referring to as "The Vertigo Lounge," takes its name from Akomfrah's three-channel film, Vertigo Sea (2015), that explores the ocean's beauty in our current moment on the verge of climate crisis. In this installation, which is situated in the final gallery of the exhibition, we have included several artist's books that address or reference climate change, a book shelf of climate- and Akomfrah-related titles, a short film about the herring spawn in Sitka, AK, and an interactive element that encourages visitors to record their ideas about ways to save the planet.

The exhibition and installation opened in February, but was closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. In lieu of this, the curators of the Akomfrah exhibition are going to do a recorded presentation for SAM at the end of July. That link will be provided as it becomes available.

The museum requested that I provide additional information about the process of creating this book. The specific questions were:

Why did you decide to focus your work on water/water scarcity?
Tell us about the process of making Between, Among, Within. How did you decide on the images?
What do you want a reader to take away from the work?
Since the COVID 19 pandemic, have you thought about this work in a different way?

The following reflections are on the creation, intention, philosophy, and evolution of thinking as pertains to my artist’s book, Between, Among, Within, which was created in 2016 using new research and re-incorporating prior work.

Why did you decide to focus your work on water/water scarcity?

In all of the places that I have lived, I’ve been keenly interested in the interplay between systems for sustaining the delicate balance between human life and environmental balance. Water is a particularly noteworthy barometer for how humans view resources. Water, itself, cannot be created or destroyed. It evaporates; it forms clouds; it rains. It falls into the seas; it falls on land; it absorbs into aquifers. Humans dig wells, then dig deeper wells, then drill into aquifers, then use the water from aquifers without any consideration for the recharging period necessary for water to leech back into the underground system. In Texas, where I grew up, water is a privately owned commodity, like oil or stone. Entire towns in Massachusetts were in protracted legal fights with the Coca-Cola company about losing their water to bottling plants; inevitably, as corporations have deeper financial resources than small towns, the towns run out of money to continue to the fight. Internationally, the problem is even worse.

When I was living in Boston, the city was reconstructing Washington Blvd (which ran through my neighborhood), and part of the public works project was replacing the original water pipes of the city: hollowed out logs. After I moved to western Massachusetts, I learned that all of the water consumed in Boston came from flooding several towns in the central part of the state in order to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Entire communities were destroyed, families forcefully relocated, and a public works flooding project engineered in order to provide for “the greater good.” They didn’t even de-construct the towns: when the water level in the reservoir drops, rooftops of the buildings can still be seen, and the original roads have been left as restricted access hiking paths. The politics of the use policies of the Quabbin were equally perplexing. No swimming, no kayaking, but motorboats were fine. Which is going to pollute public drinking water more? A gas powered motorboat or a hand powered canoe? Which has more political power, sportsmen or kayakers?

In 2015 I relocated my home and studio from rural western Massachusetts to central Los Angeles. The first thing that I noticed was how parched the air was: the pervasive dryness was a genuine shock. The state was coming off of a prolonged drought; the reservoirs were emptied, or being covered in floating black balls to prevent evaporation; the city was aggressively paying residents to tear out water-hungry lawns and emphasize native, drought-tolerant plants. I felt guilty if it took longer than three minutes to shower. I washed dishes in as little water as possible. When working, I had to completely re-calculate the moisture content of my glue and working time. Projects dried faster, glue dried faster, paper was more brittle, leather reacted differently.

None of this should have been a surprise. I moved to California partly to be in a drier climate. I grew up in Texas, where summer temperatures regularly reach above a hundred, and I have many childhood memories of summer droughts in Texas in the 1980s, with watering restrictions and fireworks regulations in place. I knew that Los Angeles was experiencing an historic drought; I knew that water levels in the Colorado River were so low that the river no longer flowed to the Pacific Ocean; I knew about arid climates and dry seasons. But knowing and experiencing are two entirely different things; I suddenly felt the lack of water, in a way I never had before. The situation in Los Angeles, an arid city reliant on water from the mountains, a city whose boundaries have been shaped as the city annexed land in order to secure water rights, have best been illustrated in the movie “Chinatown,” which, while not a documentary, shows the extreme powers at play in the situation. I watched as the Silver Lake reservoir was emptied; as wealthy homeowners fought to have it re-filled instead of an empty concrete basin; as a water-bottling company donated thousands of gallons of “expired” bottled water to refill the reservoir. This perverts the water cycle to: rainfall in the mountains; bottling by a private company; donation of water as an aesthetic accessory to wealthy neighborhoods.

And I live in an active earthquake zone. Through all this, I have approximately ten gallons of water squirreled away around my apartment. I check it annually and replace it every two years. I hope I never need to rely upon it. I’m terrified that I will.

Tell us about the process of making Between, Among, Within. How did you decide on the images?

The pastepapers were created in the summer of 2009 for an unrelated and uncompleted artist’s book edition about language and omission. Two editions of the pastepapers were made: indigo pigment in paste on white (machine, western) paper, and indigo pigment in paste on black Japanese paper. Both of these variations are represented in the final Between, Among, Within project. After finishing the prototype, the pastepapers were put into storage and the project languished.

When I began work on the project that became Between, Among, Within, I started by going through my archive of unused project pieces, and separating out those that I thought could be meaningfully re-imagined as new pieces. Looking over the pastepapers, I drew up a list of visual metaphors: flying buttresses, cathedrals, rivers, bridges. Then I began to look for imagery that magnified the interpretations of the patterns. I was thinking quite a lot about waterways, water rights, and rivers; discovering that the entire construction of the system to bring water to the city of New York from upstate had been photo-documented was exciting. I would have preferred to use images that more specifically related to a place that I lived; but I could not find comparable imagery for California, Texas, or Massachusetts.

The photographs were sourced from the New York Public Library historic photography collection, illustrating the construction of the water supply system to transport water from upstate (the Catskill Mountains) to the City in the early years of the twentieth century (1917/1928). What I liked about these photographs was not only the architectural shape of the scaffolding, tunnels, and bridges, but how much they emphasized the human element of the construction. There are men with shovels, men with rail cars, men working. The individual stories of these men have been lost to time: I doubt any statistics were kept as to how many men died working on the project. Presumably state records would indicate whether they were paid laborers or if prison work gangs were also used; what they were paid; how many hours per day and days per week they had to work. This was before the era of the union: and while the resulting structures may be both beautiful and useful, there is rarely an accounting of the human cost of the creation. As a bookbinder, I am deeply attuned to the presence of hand-work towards a completed product; as I consider the history of the industrial revolution and the changing attitudes towards “labor” and “work”, I am eager for the visible residue of human hands on construction projects of a massive scale.

The inclusion of a map showing the natural path of the waterway was equally integral to the project. Water flows from high elevations to lower elevations; water flows from the mountains to the sea. However, it does so in a pattern that, quite literally, meanders, creating oxbows, eddies, and rapids. The end result of the path may be the same, but the entire ecosystem and shape created by the will of the water is distinctly different. Nature has a path, and it is not the road of man.

The sine curve chosen for the cover stamping, in lieu of lettering the title, provides a geometrical metaphor for rising, falling, and cycling; not the movement of wave theory, but the back and forth as an equilibrium is sought.

What do you want a reader to take away from the work?

I do not have any particular expectations for the reader of the work. Some will find meaning in the shape of the pastepaper patterns; others will be fascinated by the photographs. Many readers miss the map component altogether. I would like the pastepapers to function as the connecting waterway through the construction of the systems, flowing the reader downstream, and providing pauses between the images for the mind to reset before it take on new information. I’d like the readers to think about pathways and to think about intentions, and to think about the layers of costs, human and environmental, of shaping nature and of supporting human life.

Since the COVID 19 pandemic, have you thought about this work in a different way?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the racial justice protects that have accompanied it, I’ve been thinking about the distinctly American philosophies that underpin the way we treat our environment, the way we treat our fellow humans, and the role that we allow the government to play in enacting these beliefs. The complete re-routing of a watershed system across a state, an “inconvenience” to a few and a rebuilding of nature, was deemed essential by urban planners in the early twentieth century. There was no small amount of loss associated with destroying entire communities and changing the flow of rivers, but the need to support human life on a larger scale was deemed of higher importance. The system pictured in these photographs predates the 1918 flu, and the expansion of the system predates the 1930s depression; this serves as an indicator for what governments can accomplish when the will power exists. This was all done on a state level, with federal funds and support.

What I see is a system where there is no political will to take care of the lifeblood of a population. There are National Guardsmen with machine guns posted underneath the windows of my studio. Last week the entire intersection under my windows was full of tactical police in riot gear rerouting peaceful protestors through aggressive means. I moved all of my clients’ work out of my studio and to my apartment because I’m terrified of arson. I’m also terrified of tear gas.
Now imagine a different outcome. Look at the political will that created lakes, that rerouted rivers, to provide water to cities across America. Imagine if instead of insufficient $1200 one-time allowances from the government, people were given an amount of money that actually covered the cost of rent. Imagine if instead of publicly traded companies scooping government loans, that money actually went to the many small businesses and independent contractors who have had difficulties getting their applications approved. Imagine if instead of billionaires and congressmen selling off stocks at the start of the pandemic that grocery store, warehouse, and slaughterhouse workers were paid not a minimum wage but a living wage. Imagine if in the middle of a major medical pandemic people’s health insurance wasn’t tied to their employer, as businesses are laying off employees and closing. Imagine if instead of police officers being funded to purchase military gear that medical workers had all the PPE they required to not die while saving lives.

We live in a country with great resources and great willpower. We have the ability to envision a different outcome, to plan the pathway to achieve that goal, and to put forth the effort for the vision to become a reality. Imagine if physical health, economic security, and racial justice was given the same importance as water.

A Christmas in Scarlet

2019-12-25T19:38:00.001-08:00

2019 was a year of whiplash: fantastic opportunities, and the corresponding riptides of life. Earlier this autumn, while listening to Decoder Ring, the following passage from a Sherlock Holmes novel struck home:

“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

The book is Arthur Conan Doyle's A Case of Identity; while listening to You're Dead to Me, I discovered that Sherlock Holmes was a part of the Victorian publishing Christmas rush. In fact, further research revealed that “Beeton’s Christmas Annual” published the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet.

I had a collection of USGS Survey Maps of Southern California that had been CalArts library discards, and, after several years, they were finally flattened from their rolled storage state. I wanted to print the text as an accordion book on one side, and have the reader flying over the skyline on the other side, like Peter Pan and the children fly over the skies of London.

The skyline that I found is from St Nicholas Magazine in 1907, although the city itself isn't specified, so it can be whichever city the recipient wants it to be.

However, after putting together layouts in InDesign for an accordion book printed in two sections, 2-up on a 12"x18" layout, I discovered that I didn't have sufficient stock of USGS maps to use for the edition. So I called the LAPL map room, and they very kindly let me take freely from the discard pile. I took a very generous amount -- which ended up being the right decision, because the printer printed the first batch with the front page right side up, and the reverse upside down. There were plenty more maps to cut down; this is good, since there were also a fair number of registration issues: the machines didn't like the stock that the maps were produced on.

I knew that I wanted the covers to pick up on the colors of the USGS maps, and Hiromi Paper has a metallic range that is exactly the color of the landscape markings. And I wanted to bring a sense of the fantastic to the text, through a pastepaper pattern.

The acrylics were supposed to be burnt orange, to go with the warm copper tones of the covers and maps, but, due to the actual pigment color of the paint and the vast quantity of iridescent medium that I added, the color could more accurately be called "the blood of fairies."

The pastepaper pattern was pulled as a relief print: the maps were doused in a water bath, the pigment spread over a mirror, the maps placed over the pigment, then rubbed with a paint roller.

There was absolutely no consistency of pigment from print to print; some were gentle washes, and some were much more strongly colored. If this had been any other type of edition, I would have overpainted the gentle washes so that all the books were the same, but these are holiday cards, and the differences are part of their charm.

The edition of papers took up my studio floor and the hallway -- but this is, of course, what hallways are for. After drying and flattening the maps (and USGS maps are on great paper -- they took the water, painting, and drying process without a hitch, which was a relief after they were so difficult to print on), I decided to go ahead and fold them as an edition, even though the registration issues meant that each floated a bit on the page. As a result, the margins aren't perfect, but they are in close enough tolerances to work as an accordion book. The parent sheets were then cut down after folding.

Then the two parts of the accordion were glued together, with the overlap on the face of the page, rather than as an interruption of the skyline.

"The differences are part of the charm" is the same refrain that I repeated when I realized that my cover structure, where the turn-in forms the pastedown, would require more paper than I had actually purchased, so I ended up incorporating some silver paper from the same line that I had in the studio as the covers for some of the books.

The cover art is symbolism from a topography chart, that mirrors the design of a map compass: pointing you in a direction, despite the winds swirling in all directions.

Each recipient receives a slightly different landscape, and slightly differently colored paper -- as we each have our own path that we're following:

As a result of the number of pages in each book, they can be displayed as stars, not merely as a traditional accordion, a happy accident.

Wishing you a happy new year, and a safe and interesting journey!

Enumerations: craft, math, and cats

2019-02-09T16:33:00.001-08:00

In 2015, a road trip resulted in an artist's book ... and a relocation across the country.

The artist's book, The Meter Was Out Of Order, formed the structural underpinning for a 2019 artist's book, Enumerations.

I have an established interest in creating standard book structures out of nonstandard pages, and I'm fascinated with different language systems and different number systems. As an undergraduate student, given the opportunity to choose between math and computer science coursework, I chose computer science -- after all, programming is just another language, and syntax and vocabulary are skills that I, as an English major, understood quite well.

Over the past few years, the history of women in computer science and mathematics has been explored across a range of resources in popular culture, from the "computers" in "Hidden Figures" to the explorations of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage in a graphic novel by Sydney Padua, to the inventions of Hedy Lamarr, an actress who decamped to technology.

One of my favorite podcasts is "In Our Time," a BBC program wherein academics discuss the history of ideas. Their math presentations are particularly engaging, and, when this project was germinating, three programs in particular were of special interest:
Maths in the Early Islamic World | Pauli's Exclusion Principle | Carl Friedrich Gauss

What we have from all of the above is a fascination with math, language, and numbers, as developed through history and explored in the fields of philosophy and culture. This project developed over the course of a year, as I examined different aspects of combining ideas of memory, craft, and technology into one book project.

I knew that I wanted to print the book on computer punch cards; my father found a batch of unpunched cards from Los Alamos via ebay, and then I purchased an additional batch of punched cards from a programmer's personal archive via Craigslist -- he had punched all the cards for graduate school projects, and held onto them for all these years.

Early on, I knew that I wanted a slide rule to be a component of the book project; and it was at a dinner party where framed card slide rules were displayed on a wall that I realized this format existed. The hostess very kindly gave me an extra card from her collection, which formed the pattern for this project. The online resources at the Oughtred Society were also invaluable, as was the collection at the Smithsonian Institution. Conversations with my clients (who often collection scientific and mathematical paraphernalia) were also incredibly helpful.

For the text, the obvious choice was the writings of Ada Lovelace. Anyone who is taught mathematics as a child in order to prevent the dangers of becoming a poet is someone worth paying attention to; that her poetic lineage was the very well-known Lord Byron was especially fun. Originally, I wanted to print all of her equations -- she is credited with writing the first computer algorithm -- but then ran against a basic problem: my own math skills, and my own programming skills, couldn't follow her writings. So I focused on what I could understand, the Note that was specifically about the functioning of the Analytical Engine being based on Jacquard looms.

In this note she specifically references a contemporary article about how Jacquard looms operate, and I was able to locate the text of this article, which had phenomenal drawn images illustrating the parts of the loom. The text of the book was coming together: the interwoven story of the loom and the computer.

From my reading about math history, I knew that the use of the slide rule was a means of making trigonometry tables portable during any calculation, rather than having to reference printed guides; and that the early computers were designed to calculate trigonometry in order to successfully land the Apollo space craft on the moon. Therefore, additional components of Enumerations: the trigonometry drawings, the slide rule, and the cope rope memory, were also included as ways of providing mathematical memory and making it accessible.

From another In Our Time episode, a passing reference was made to Raytheon and cope rope memory: subsequent research provided the story that this form of memory, which enacts binary code into a hand-woven magentic wire structure, was constructed by textile workers in Massachusetts, as they had the necessary hand skills to create accurate handwoven hard drives.

That's my dad!

And then, at the end of the project, I learned that my father had been using core rope memory during his time working in encryption in the Navy. He wanted me to make actual core memory wiring structures: but this is a book about craft and technology in conversation, and so I created embroidery samplers instead.

As a slide rule is a primitive calculator (external memory) and the punch cards are early forms of rendering computer programs, the deluxe edition of the book also includes still-written computer diskettes from the family archive. When I was researching different types of number representations, my brother (a programmer) reminded me that hexadecimal is how colors are represented in web page displays -- and therefore a booklet comparing base 10, binary, hexadecimal, colors, and Roman numerals was included as a small numerical dictionary.

The Oracle: holiday ephemera 2018 / 2019!

2019-02-09T14:57:00.002-08:00

The 2018 / 2019 holiday edition was actually mailed out close to a month ago, but things in the studio have been very busy what with Codex 2019 and those affiliated projects (to be updated separately), and so the holiday edition report is slightly delayed.

Happy new year!

January is a month I feel deeply ambivalent about. I absolutely love the metaphor of fresh starts and reconsideration; the opportunity to think deeply and recalibrate. I also deeply hate being cold, or being wet, and definitely am a pathetic beast when I am both cold and wet. I'm a fire sign, and it shows. Even in Los Angeles, the weather in January is cold and wet (or "cold" and "wet" if you haven't any sympathy for highs in the sixties and an inch of rain), and so I look outside, and take more cough medicine, and sigh, and think about the meaninglessness of existence.

Which leads to this year's holiday edition, which is an alphabet booklet of forms of divination. When the future seems full of unpredictable randomness, when whether the outcome is a win, lose, or draw doesn't seem related to the efforts put forth, when past performance is absolutely no indicator of future outcomes, where do you turn? The truth is that I consider myself a happy person, that I'm thrilled with the life I've created, that I'm thriving in this surreal landscape of southern California, but also that my life is weirder and less predictable than any horoscope could predict. I love this randomness, but I hate not being in absolute control of my own fate.

Into which vacuum steps divination. While I, personally, don't really believe in anything, that also means that I am tempted to believe in absolutely everything. Why not, if all of life is a metaphor? And the beauty of wikipedia provides all the methods of divination a person could ever require.

The covers for the booklets were the leftovers from the Parenthesis pastepaper project of summer 2018; the text various methods of divining the future as researched on wikipedia; the images from collected imagery from various art projects that I've either thought about doing or actually done.

The format of the booklets is one that has been used in previous ephemera projects, such as the 2013 holiday almanack, a sewn two-signature pamphlet binding with wraparound covers. The internal design is so that each signature is a letter-sized sheet of paper, printed double sided, that is folded, cut, folded, sewn all together, and then cut.

As always, your results from your divination pursuits should be handled with care, but go forth and find your future.

pastepapers: new! shiny! gold! pink!

2018-06-19T00:41:00.005-07:00

A commission for Gibbs Bookbinding to make an edition of pastepapers leads to inspiration in old gilt papers from the 18th century, here created as an edition using modern materials and techniques.

See the production video!

inspiration: 18th C gold leaf papers

Paper: Crane's Lettra. Dye: Rit fuchsia, Gold: Modern Masters Olympic gold. Medium: Wheat starch paste.

21"x27", edition of 100

Client: Parenthesis, a journal of fine printing.

a flicker, a flame

2018-01-06T08:01:00.001-08:00

2017 was ... 2017.
It was universally referred to as "a dumpster fire."
Then my state caught on fire. Everything, everywhere, there was soot and ash. (Benefit: some nice sunsets.)

However, it felt like a metaphor made real; it's hard to be an optimist when everything is, quite literally, burning. (In a twist of Robert Frost's Fire and Ice poem, while the west coast is on fire, the east coast is encased in ice.)

Into all this, enter the phoenix, a bird who rises, renewed, from the ashes.

This year's holiday edition pulls from the full history and mythology of the phoenix, from the medieval Aberdeen Bestiary

to the eighteenth century London Encyclopedia

to the twentieth century poet May Sarton

As the complications of last year's holiday card were still fresh in my mind, and in the hope of timeliness, I drastically simplified the construction of this year's edition, and used a very basic cut-and-fold technique.

It's a great pattern for introductory book arts classes and turning monotypes and prints into little books; there are many online patterns and tutorials: here's one.

Here's another (click on one-sheet-books).

And, in the spirit of getting things done, I embraced the relative simplicity of the project, and have sent the phoenix flying through the postal system.

The stamps for the eclipse -- a cosmic death and rebirth cycle played out this year -- seemed most fitting for the bird who is born in flames.

For 2018, a wish for flourishing: creatively, personally, spiritually.

of books and meanings

2017-09-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

There's nothing that captures both the limitless potential of the human mind and the existential meaningless of it all quite like a blank book. Books are repositories of knowledge, books are representations of everything that we haven't yet managed to achieve.

Neither of those lofty reasons are why I rarely make blank books. I rarely make blank books for the reason that most people never actually get around to using their blank books.

Resist Much, Obey Little
Walt Whitman

However, I will be celebrating my two-year-landing-anniversary in Los Angeles by participating the Los Angeles Printer's Fair, October 14, 2017, booth B-17.

Come say hi!

I'll have a series of blank books for sale, in addition to the more customary artist's books. There will be a line of items whose sales proceeds are donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center, so may the blank pages encourage you to pen a list of actions to take, congressmen to call, and manifestos to compose.

Notes on the Eclipse

2017-08-23T07:52:00.003-07:00

Well, I spent the eclipse dealing with the residual fall out of a completely self-inflicted concussion. A lamppost was involved.

In much more exciting news, the music video for a prop job that came through the studio just dropped!

Foo Fighters: The Sky Is A Neighborhood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRqiFPpw2fY

Calvino / Six Memos

2017-06-13T20:39:00.001-07:00

Six Memos For The Next Millennium
Italo Calvino

. . . When the human realm seems doomed to heaviness, I feel the need to fly like Perseus into some other space. I am not talking about escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I feel the need to change my approach, to look at the world from a different angle, with different logic, different methods of knowing and proving. The images of lightness I’m looking for shouldn’t let themselves dissolve as dreams do in the reality of the present and future . . .

In the infinite universe of literature there are always other avenues to explore, some brand-new and some exceedingly ancient, styles and forms that can change our image of the world. And when literature fails to assure me that I’m not merely chasing dreams, I look to science to sustain my visions in which all heaviness dissolves . . .

Two, two, two holidays in one! The New Year's / Memorial Day Extravaganza

2017-05-26T22:02:00.002-07:00

Happy New Year!

This is quite the latest that my holiday edition has ever been completed. There are events a-plenty, on the world stage, and in the studio, that caused the delay. The files were designed and printed back in December — I picked up the completed stack on the same day that the pages for Family Style were ready.

Then the Family Style edition construction began, and it had some slowdowns related to margins and covering material, then I needed to finish the Amissa Anima ouiji boards, because I had postponed figuring out how to make the plinth-and-planchette window, then there were the deluxe versions.

And there was politics, which resulted in a certain amount of hiding under the bed.

Also there was (is) making a living. Conserving books, binding some editions. That’s pretty much ongoing, which makes my landlord happy.

Many people advised me to simply postpone or cancel the 2016 / 2017 holiday edition.

I knew I wouldn’t make my traditional January 1 mailing date; and the Chinese New Year came and went; then Valentine’s Day, then President’s Day, and I swore, oh, I swore, that I’d get them finished for the first day of Spring, or, at the latest, Easter. Then May Day came and went.

Oh, and I moved my studio down the hall. Pallet jacks being transported in the trunks of Honda Civics happened.

You know what, though? I BEAT my last deadline, which was the summer solstice. Perhaps this is the first time that Memorial Day can be considered “close” to New Year’s Day. Whatever. I’ll take it.

Announcing the 2016-2017 Holiday Edition!

Kites!

Last autumn, I was working on a vintage copy of Mary Poppins, which always makes various show tunes lodge themselves inside my head. “Let’s go fly a kite / Up to the highest height / Up where the air is clear / And send it soaring ...”

Also last autumn, Hiromi Paper held an afternoon kite making workshop, which I didn’t attend, but I wanted to attend, and I should have attended, and I still kind of hate myself for not attending. But I was already taking the Tim Ely workshop at the Getty, and so the learning-calendar was full.

My first website results provided kite templates that were definitely simple, but also, well, uninspired:
http://rhythmofthehome.com/homemade-kite/
http://www.redtedart.com/how-to-make-a-beautiful-kite/
http://www.handmadecharlotte.com/lets-go-fly-a-kite-2/

So then I went to the library, and found some lovely books, but they didn’t really have instructions, and a lot of the text was in Japanese. The best of these was Kites: paper wings over Japan by Scott Skinner and Ali Fujino, but, once again, there wasn’t much on How To.

What this book did provide was (a) the Italo Calvino quote that made it onto the wrapper; (b) proof that miniature kites were completely legitimate; (c) good outlines for the different shapes of kites. So many shapes! It also provided insight into the content that appears on the face of kites, and information about kites being particularly associated with the New Year celebrations (concept confirmation!).

Thinking about visual metaphors in Japan associated with the New Year, the Rabbit and the Wave most closely aligned with my own aesthetic interests, and combined two of my experiences from the previous summer: bunny tiles (bunny tiles!!!) at the Hearst Castle, and the beach. The wave itself I shamelessly stole and tweaked from a maybe famous woodcut series.

Yet more internet research provided a wealth of information about the shapes and patterns of different kites, but quite a few of the articles were in German. This didn’t matter, too much. I knew the name of the kite (rokkaku) would be the same regardless of language, and I didn’t need the text: just some decent diagrams!

http://www.drachen.org/teach/lessons?level=All
http://www.kiteplans.org/planos/rokkaku12/rokkaku12.html
http://www.kiteplans.org/cat_1/sub_17/
http://www.my-best-kite.com/make-a-rokkaku-kite.html

These answered my basic layout, proportions, and materials questions — originally, I was going to use bamboo skewers, but, after realizing how large a 1/8” diameter skewer was in relation to a very small kite, I decided to find something thinner and less bulky, and bought polyester boning, as used in textiles and costuming. I knew that it was specifically designed to be sewn through, and wouldn’t need to be notched or drilled like the dowels.

However, I was still having problems with the bridle — these are the strings that connect the spool of thread one holds on the ground, to the piece of paper flying up there in the sky. Where does one tie the cords? What knots does one use? How much slack or tension?

There are lots of online resources for rokkaku kites, but by far the best is Larry Green’s PDF from 2004. I wish I could find the page where I originally downloaded the file, but here’s the closest I can get:
http://www.johndobson.info/John's%20Kite%20Site/pdf%20files/Rok%20Bridle%20Guide.pdf
also at: http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/discuss/index.php?p=/discussion/2651/rokkaku-tipping-and-diving

However, even this compendium of information left me somewhat baffled. I took a field trip to visit Dave at the Kite Connection on Huntington Beach Pier, and he gave me confirmation about how to balance a kite so that it would actually take flight, and not just spin on the ground.

It was back to Larry Green’s knot diagrams (neither a Boy Scout nor a sailor am I), but they finally worked.

Lift off! We have lift off!

Amissa Anima, the official announcement

2017-04-30T09:55:00.003-07:00

Publication Announcement
Amissa Anima: the book of the dead

A fully assembled kit for contacting those who have passed beyond the veil. The user selects a spirit from the photograph album; chooses the emotional distillation that will pull that spirit into this realm; and uses the bell, book, and candle in the summoning. The enclosed Ouiji board then allows conversations between the realms.

The deluxe edition contains a bell (Hearts (fractured)), book, and candle (Life (spark of)), three essential tools used in summonings of the spirit world; and a set of bottled emotions, as strong emotional memories link the spirit world to the corporeal. The bottled emotions contain metaphorical representations of human experience:

Animal magnetism: Felis catus vibrissae; Anticipation (concentrate): coastal sand; Disbelief (suspension): rosehips from Rosa multiflora Thunb.; Hope (kindling of): phosphorus sesquisulfide and potassium chlorate on a balsa wood base; Memories (suppressed): Buddhist incense; Misdirection: antique key; Promises: seeds from Symphyotrichum lanceolatum; Rage (bottled): seeds from Asclepias syriaca L.; Resentment (shards): shattered family china.

Eye engraving, Dioptrique oculaire, Chérubin d’Orléans, 1671. The Spirit Photographs of William Hope, the National Media Museum. The Ouija, Kennard Novelty Co., Museum of Talking Boards.

Printed on Asuka on an Indigo printer with Joss paper endpapers. Bound in laminated Asuka paper over marbled paper. Standard edition, two volumes in paper slipcase, $250. Deluxe edition of 15, two volumes in clamshell box. $700. 2016.

Between, Among, Within: the official announcement

2017-04-30T09:48:00.003-07:00

Publication Announcement
Between, Among, Within

update: this book has been included in an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum; my artist's statement may be read here

Water is a resource that is simultaneously universally available and universally constrained: even in the midst of historic droughts, we expect it to appear, cool and clear, at the turn of a tap. We are advised not to drink out of the clearest mountain springs, for fear of bacterial contamination; to keep stores of it available for emergencies such as earthquakes or the zombie apocalypse; and yet, we wash our cars and shower and sometime have green, lush lawns are gardens. The scarcity of water is especially prevalent in the west, as rain conditions continue to fluctuate significantly from year to year as a result of climate change. This book combines archival photographs of the system that brought water to New York City, with pastepapers reminiscent of tunnels, rivers, and waterways.

Indigo pigment pastepapers. Photographs of the Catskill water supply system in process of construction, 1918, with A topographical map of Hudsons River, Claude Sauthier, 1898, both from The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Printed on Asuka paper on an Indigo printer. Full cloth binding, stamped paper label. Edition of 22. 2016. $ 175

Family Style, the official announcement

2017-04-30T09:43:00.003-07:00

Publication Announcement
Family Style: the recipes of Helen Marchese

In the summer of 2016, my sister sent me a text message. “Would you like our grandmother’s recipes?” “Of course!” I replied. “OK, but you should know that the recipe for bread sticks begins “1 package hot dog buns.” I was both fascinated and terrified.

My grandmother was born into a Greek family in 1921, and, as with many Greek families, mealtimes took place at the family diner. Family meals were an occasion more social than culinary; my memories of childhood Thanksgivings were of burnt pie and soggy vegetables. Yet, when the recipes arrived, unsorted, in a manilla envelope, I was charmed. These recipes were shared at bridge groups, in libraries, while volunteering, written onto whatever piece of paper was available. The tidy handwriting unifies the eclectic mix of papers, letterhead, receipts, and to-do lists. These 86 recipe cards were collected, compiled, edited, and expanded upon throughout the life of Helen Marchese, primarily from the late 1940s through the 1980s.

As domestic cooking becomes more and more professional, and personal recipe collections are held online rather than in boxes or in notebooks, it is reassuring to look back through the physical remnants of cookery and the exchange of favorite recipes, when the moment of sharing a recipe with a friend was perhaps more important than the finesse of preparation. These recipes tell both the story of an immigrant family learning to cook “American style,” and the shared social tradition of food.

Endpapers from Paul Bercy, Simples Notions de Francais, New York, 1894. Printed on Mohawk Superfine on an Indigo printer. Bound in a three part binding with stamped linen spine and gingham fabric over boards. Edition of 50. 2017. $200.

Natural Philosophies, the official announcement

2017-04-30T09:39:00.001-07:00

Publication Announcement
Natural Philosophies

How is information disseminated and stored? Who has access to knowledge? Where does oral tradition and myth become standard practice? The role of women, as witches, midwives, healers, and heretics, was especially important and contentious where the kitchen garden met the apothecary and physician’s office, yet women have always challenged the erratic assumptions of a male medical field (i.e., the wandering womb) with treatments that provided relief and assistance. Yet modern medicine is still based in the herbal remedies of the deep past: aspirin is based on an extract derived from the leaves of the willow tree, and the strongest of modern painkillers are still based on the herbal properties of the poppy.

Elizabeth Blackwell, working in the early 18th century, documented many of the plants used for medical purposes. The variety of approaches to herbs as treatments as published in contemporary literature is provided here alongside reproductions of her engravings.

The engravings and descriptions are alternated with the greatest assemblage of uncontested fact, the Encyclopedia Britannica, an edition that both contains the collected wisdom of the ages, and yet still cannot escape the inherent and implicit prejudices of the times. As such, it is both a master document of information, and a constantly evolving resource that tells as much about a historic perspective as it does about dry historical facts. Here, the pages have been altered using a monoprint treatment, to bring aging and depth as a patina over the text.

Botanical engravings from A Curious Herbal, Elizabeth Blackwell, 1739, from the New York Public Library Digital Collections. Herbal remedies from historic sources contemporary to the engravings. Monoprints on pages from the Encyclopedia Britannica, volume C, 1969. Printed on Asuka paper on an Indigo printer. Bound in quarter cloth. Edition of 20. 2016. $ 175

Lost Souls, some closure

2017-04-29T09:10:00.001-07:00

After a year of the creepy eye project marinating -- as an artist's book for the California Guild of Bookworker's "Look A Book!" exhibition, then as an edition of fifty created for the Codex book fair, the fifteen deluxe editions are finally completed. Two of them have been acquired by institutional libraries; two are not for sale; eleven are available for purchase.

Amissa Anima: the book of the dead

Two volumes in clamshell box.

Eye engraving, Dioptrique oculaire, Chérubin d’Orléans, 1671. The Spirit Photographs of William Hope, the National Media Museum. The Ouija, Kennard Novelty Co., Museum of Talking Boards. Printed on Asuka on an Indigo printer with Joss paper endpapers. Bound in laminated Asuka paper over marbled paper.

The deluxe edition contains a bell (Hearts (fractured)), book, and candle (Life (spark of)), three essential tools used in summoning of the spirit world; and a set of bottled emotions, as strong emotional memories link the spirit world to the corporeal. The bottled emotions contain metaphorical representations of human experience:

Animal magnetism: Felis catus vibrissae; Anticipation (concentrate): coastal sand; Disbelief (suspension): rosehips from Rosa multiflora Thunb.; Hope (kindling of): phosphorus sesquisulfide and potassium chlorate on a balsa wood base; Memories (suppressed): Buddhist incense; Misdirection: antique key; Promises: seeds from Symphyotrichum lanceolatum; Rage (bottled): seeds from Asclepias syriaca L.; Resentment (shards): shattered family china.

Deluxe edition of 15. 2016.

This concludes the creepy eye infestation of the studio.

Codex 2017

2017-02-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

Don't know about Codex? Read this New York Times article for a pretty thorough description. Then visit me at my table at the Craneway Pavilion, in Richmond, CA, to see recent creative work from the studio!

That's me. You probably know that already.

Family Style
Recipes collected by Helen Marchese, primarily from the late 1940s through the 1980s. Endpapers from Paul Bercy, Simples Notions de Francais, New York, 1894. Printed on Mohawk Superfine on an Indigo printer. Bound in a three part binding with stamped linen spine and gingham fabric over boards. Edition of 50. 2017.

Between, Among, Within
Indigo pigment pastepapers. Photographs of the Catskill water supply system in process of construction, 1918, with A topographical map of Hudsons River, Claude Sauthier, 1898, both from The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Printed on Asuka paper on an Indigo printer. Full cloth binding. Edition of 22. 2016.

Natural Philosophies
Botanical engravings from A Curious Herbal, Elizabeth Blackwell, 1739, from the New York Public Library Digital Collections. Herbal remedies from historic sources. Monoprints on pages from the
Encyclopedia Britannica, volume C, 1969. Printed on Asuka paper on an Indigo printer. Bound in quarter cloth. Edition of 20. 2016.

Amissa Anima: a book of the dead
Two volumes. Eye engraving, Dioptrique oculaire, Chérubin d’Orléans, 1671. The Spirit Photographs of William Hope, the National Media Museum. The Ouija, Kennard Novelty Co., Museum of Talking Boards. Printed on Asuka on an Indigo printer with Joss paper endpapers. Bound in laminated Asuka paper over marbled paper. Edition of 50; 2016.