Category: Book Arts
-
Cancelled trips
Since I posted this drawing and some others this summer, people have been asking me what’s with the stamps in my sketchbook. I guess the short answer is that each one is a little piece of personal tradition. But you know I don’t really do short answers. The long one, then. I grew up in…
-
Flock
I’ve been sitting on this post for months now—it’s just that after spending so much time hunched over this project, I needed some time off from even thinking about it. But now I’m ready to talk birds again. From left: Cedar Waxwing; Steller’s Jay; American Avocet; Purple Martin; Tufted Puffin Eighteen months, twenty-five birds, six…
-
Memento mori
One of the things I used to do with Bampa is visit the colonial graveyards tucked away in every corner of New England. On this trip I only had time to visit a couple, so I picked my two favorites: the Old York Burial Ground in York, Maine; and the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.…
-
Ashes to ashes
I’ve had volcanoes on the brain for nearly two years. Littering my studio are volumes of sketches, nearly 6,000 photographs, reference books, stacks of maps, and a brand new, functional prototype of the artist book about Mt. Rainier I’m working on—all evidence of my attempts at capturing a series of fleeting moments and freezing them…
-
A flat-out smashing time
Inked up, hand-pulled, and voilà! Our second collaborative steamroller print, an unofficial Dead Feminist, inspired by Cora Smith Eaton King, who in 1909 climbed Mt. Rainier with a party of Seattle Mountaineers and placed a “Votes for Women” banner at the summit. This year’s Wayzgoose was the biggest bash yet! We had all the regulars—…
-
Start your steamroller engines
Jessica and I are carving like mad this week, getting ready for some quality steamroller time. Next Sunday, April 25, is the sixth-annual Wayzgoose at King’s Books, right here in Tacoma. This year promises to be the biggest hullabaloo yet, with letterpress magnetic poetry, B.Y.O. t-shirt printing, papermaking demos, artist tables, and the star of…
-
Finding winter
The sun came out yesterday afternoon, and Mt. Rainier peeked out from behind the clouds. On a whim I tossed my camera into the car and bolted to Paradise, where I had been hoping for one more research shot for my book: Rainier in the snow. Well, I certainly got my wish. An hour and…
-
Book arts binge
If you ever wanted to find out once and for all what the heck an artist book is, take a little field trip to Burien, WA. The group show Page Turner: Contemporary Artist Books is up this month at the Burien Arts Gallery, a tiny half-Cape house converted into a charming exhibition space. Kelda Martensen…
-
Visual compulsion
The other night I went to a talk by comics artist Art Spiegelman, and as usual, brought one of my trusty sketchbooks with me. Since comics and I go way back, and I’m a big Spiegelman fan, I think I got a little carried away with the doodles accompanying my lecture notes. I was a…
-
Year in review
End-of-the-year summaries have never been my strong suit, not least because I tend to measure time on completely different terms than the standard calendar (like counting up from the anniversary of an important event, for instance). And since nobody seems to be able to agree on whether the decade ends this year or next (anyway,…