One of the things I wanted to include in my book is Finders Keepers, a community art event and public treasure hunt in Lincoln City, Oregon. Every year for the last two decades, local artists have created hundreds of hand-blown glass floats and hidden them for beachcombers to find and take home—the name says it all: you find it, you keep it. The glass orbs are reminiscent of the old Japanese fishing floats that once drifted the Pacific regularly and washed ashore in the thousands (and are now an extremely rare catch)—beach “trash” of incredible beauty.
Finders Keepers was once limited to the offseason, to try to draw winter tourists to the region. It’s grown so popular (and even inspired knock-off projects like Tacoma’s own Monkeyshines tradition) that they’ve recently extended it to a year-round event. But that doesn’t mean that the floats are easy to find. I got absurdly lucky once—above is my treasure from a solo trip a few years ago—but with seven miles of shoreline within the town limits, searching for glass really is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Last year some San Francisco friends invited the Tailor and me to meet them for a long winter weekend in Lincoln City, so we could all comb the beach together. No dice, as it turned out, but the best part is that the treasure is always secondary to the hunt itself.
Our friends, though, had a brilliant idea: if we couldn’t find glass floats on the beach, why not make a few of our own?
I had never blown glass before, but since I live in a glassblowing capital, I’d always wanted to try it.
And I have to say, it’s every bit as mesmerizing to do as it is to watch. There’s something so satisfying about playing with molten glass, and trying to guess how the finished product will turn out.
We each topped off our floats with a medallion stamped with the place and year, and left them in the studio’s kiln overnight to complete the annealing (slow-cooling) process. (That part is crucial—years of searching for Monkeyshines in Tacoma has taught me that if glass isn’t annealed properly, the piece can explode into a zillion shards, even weeks later!)
The next morning we picked up our finished products, and left Lincoln City with the perfect travel souvenirs and friendship mementos.
As a bonus, I left with plenty of first-hand knowledge to use as book fodder, as well as a head (and sketchbook, and camera) full of imagery to inspire the illustration.
Tuesday is the day! Our book will be released worldwide on October 11, and we’re celebrating with a costume party! This is where you can be the first to get your hands on the book—and extra worth the effort if you want to see Jessica and me wearing ridiculous wigs. We don’t want to be the only ones celebrating Halloween early, so come on down and join the party. We’ll have prizes for the best outfits, Dead Feminists cake and punch, and a printing press ready to make your own keepsake. We’d love to sign a book for you, too. If you’re looking for costume ideas, you might dress up as one of the ladies in our book…
…or you might choose another favorite historical heroine, or a beloved fictional character, or even an historic feminist dude! Anything goes, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with. Here’s the skinny on the event:
Official Book Release Costume Party Tuesday, October 11, 7 pm
Hosted by King’s Books
218 St. Helens Avenue, Tacoma, WA
Event is free, all ages welcome; more info here
Come in costume, dressed as your favorite historical feminist!
In addition to finally sharing the book with you next week, we also wanted the chance to share some of our original artwork. So for the past two years we’ve been planning a big retrospective exhibit with the 23Sandy Gallery in Portland, OR. Laura Russell, the owner and curator of the gallery, has been a major supporter of our series since the beginning—and this week it was no different, as she jumped right in and helped us install our artwork in her space!
The show features 10 original letterpress broadsides from our series, two mini-broadsides, original process materials, plus vintage ephemera from our book. This is the first time we’ve done a show like this, and 23Sandy is the only place you’ll still find some of our older, out-of-print broadsides available for sale.
The exhibit also includes our 24th and newest broadside, but since she comes out on October 11, alongside the book, we have her hidden under a black veil for now. But you can see her—and all the other artwork—unveiled at our reception and book signing later this month. Here are the details:
Make-Ready: Dead Feminists from Print to Page
A Dead Feminists retrospective exhibit
on display through October 29
Reception & book signing Saturday, October 22
4 to 6 pm, free!
23Sandy Gallery
623 NE 23rd Ave, Portland, OR
If you can’t make it to Portland, you can also learn more about the exhibit and view an online catalog on the 23Sandy website.
Make-Ready is just one of many different exhibits in the works this fall—we’ve got the Dead Feminists coming to galleries around the country for both solo and group shows. We’ll be sharing more info here on the blog soon, but as always, you can find all our events, shows, book signings and talks listed on the events page.
I just got back from over a month of traveling—first by way of a road trip to the bottom of California and back, and immediately afterward, a one-way Florida-to-Washington drive with a friend. In 33 days I logged well over 8,000 miles, and crossed several vastly different regions of the country. So even with the help of my trusty sketchbooks, my memories of the trip aren’t terribly linear. They’re more of a jumble of images flashing through my mind—so in that spirit, here is a similar jumble of images.
Now that I’m back in the studio, I’m trying hard to get my momentum back on my ongoing projects—and to suppress (for a little while, at least) the ideas that are coming as thick and fast as the images in my memory. We’ll see how long I last before some new project (or twelve) comes out of this trip…
Saturday was a scorcher—I wouldn’t normally pick a day with the temperature in the mid-nineties to hang out in a concrete jungle, but it was a special occasion.
You see, it’s a rare treat to get to have a tasty meal and a good conversation with a roomful of talented illustrators.
Photo by Sophie Dufresne—thanks, Sophie!
We all got together in downtown Portland with the lovely Lilla Rogers to talk shop, ask advice and compare notes. I think all of us came away with our heads full of ideas and our hearts full of confidence. (Not bad for a lunch date, I’d say.)
After that, though, I had a lot to think about, and 95 degrees wasn’t doing my brain any favors. So I bolted for the coast—where it was 30 degrees cooler and a thousand times more peaceful than the city. So I soaked in the sun and stared out to sea, while my ideas took shape.
We’ve had a string of unseasonably sunny days lately—so rather than stay cooped up inside the studio, I headed down to Portland to do a little drawing. Just east of town is the stunning Historic Columbia River Highway, which serves up vista after vista of the Columbia River Gorge. All I had to do was sit back, open up the sketchbook, and enjoy the view.
Every so often the Tailor and I rack up a list of errands to run down in Portland. So we pick a Saturday and hit the road early. But before we tackle our list of stops to make, we always start our visit with a quiet cuppa somewhere. Since Portland is chock-a-block with fantastic bakeries and coffee shops, we try to hit a different place every time. This weekend it was the French bakery, St. Jack—and some quality time with the ol’ sketchbook.
Seeing our stuff for sale at my all-time favorite bookstore makes me happier than I could ever see. If you’re in Portland, or you’re going to be, you can now find Dead Feminists postcards, Lemonade Journals and mini-prints at Powell’s City of Books! Last time I was there I found them in the Red Room.
Rumor has it they’re also in the Orange Room, but Powell’s is crazy-huge and charmingly labyrinthine, so I never did come across them there. Never fear, though: the myriad Info Desk staff are smart and lovely. They’ll point you in the right direction.
P.S. How cool is the description on that sign? I love these people.
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