Blog
February 12th, 2013
Right now I’m in California, manning my table at the Codex Book Fair. But I have to say, it’s a little hard to concentrate.
I mean, not only am I surrounded by incredible work by a couple hundred artists—but just look at this space! We’re in a new venue this year, and it is absolutely spectacular.
Plus, we’re literally right on the water (really—the pavilion sits right on a pier), so as if all the artwork here weren’t distraction enough, all anyone has to do is just gaze out the window.
Now, it’s a good thing my studio isn’t in a place like this—I don’t think I’d ever get any work done!
January 12th, 2013
This weekend has given us that rarest of Northwest treats: winter sunshine. When that happens it’s also usually too cold to stand outside and draw, but this time it was worth the frozen fingertips to mark the occasion in my new daily book. That’s because the restoration of one of my favorite Tacoma landmarks is finally complete.
The Point Defiance Pagoda is one of the jewels in Tacoma’s crown. Built ninety-nine years ago, it began as a streetcar station and now stands as the centerpiece of our largest city park. It’s also a recurring character in my work—besides being iconic, it’s awfully fun to draw.
Detail of Continuum
It’s easy to forget how delicate our historic structures are, however. While I was working on this very portion of my Link Light Rail station design, I got word that the building was suddenly on the verge of ruin. Some kid had intentionally set fire to the pagoda—a few minutes of destructive boredom, and a hundred years went up in flames.
It was heartbreaking to hear the tales of Metro Parks officials, who had to watch firefighters toss the century-old ceramic roof tiles to the concrete ground to reach the burning beams inside.
In a way, though, maybe it’s a good thing it was the pagoda that burned, versus a lesser-known historic building. The public rallied, and restoration began almost immediately. Seven thousand roof tiles were hand-cleaned and reattached, and all fourteen of the original windows were salvaged. The restoration also allowed for the reintroduction or improvement of elements that had been remodeled away over the years—like the planting circle out front, or lighting that highlights the ornate roof beams inside (replacing the 1960s-era sconces that had been glommed on).
One of my illustrations for the Tacoma Playing Cards—you can find the original painting here
And now it’s as if the fire never happened. More than that—at today’s grand reopening celebration I got a good glimpse of its original glory. Somehow I couldn’t quite repress the feeling that a streetcar might come around the corner at any moment.
My favorite part is that I no longer have to rely solely on a deck of cards for good memories of the pagoda. Now I can resume my visits to the real thing—sketchbook in hand, as always.
December 4th, 2012
Photo by Laurie Cinotto
Right now my little cottage-industry factory is churning out Christmas—starting with this year’s letterpress ornament collection. This is the second year I’ve made letterpress ornaments, and I have been dying to show you this year’s crop.
Thankfully, I can finally let the…ahem…cat out of the bag.
Look at Laurie’s amazing tree! She is the queen of holiday decorating.
There are two sets of ornaments this year, and for one of them I collaborated with my friend Laurie Cinotto, the fabulous fine-craft genius and kitty wrangler behind the insanely wonderful Itty Bitty Kitty Committee. A year ago I asked her if she’d be interested in doing a set of kitty ornaments, and for months now we’ve been positively chortling over these things. (Curious fact: we make nearly identical chortle sounds.)
The really hard part was picking which kittens from Laurie’s nearly endless alumni and gorgeous photographs to illustrate. In the end, I settled on a few of my all-time favorites: Clovis Ashby, who is a bit of a Tacoma celebrity. Extra-pretty Victoria Anne McGillicuddy in all her calico glory. Aloysius Petrie for his “Who, me?” look. My particular friend Baxter Lamm, who now makes mischief full-time at Jessica’s house. And Pearla Dearborn, to whom my secret heart belongs forever (even though she doesn’t live with me). And watching over the flock is Laurie’s own Empress Mama cat, Charlene Butterbean.
These kitties (and Laurie’s photographs) are T-town legends, as I found out this weekend. We did a little ornament test-drive at a local craft fair, and people kept saying things like, “Hey, that’s Clovis on that tree!” and “Wait a minute—what is Charlene Butterbean doing at your table?” But whether these guys are old hat for you, or you’re a dog person who’s never heard of such a thing as kitten blogs on the Internet—well, I just dare you to tear your eyes away from Laurie’s world.
There are just 200 sets of these ornaments to go around, and each one is ridiculously handmade. To give you an idea of just how ridiculous, I thought I’d walk you through part of the process.
Yes, there’s sushi on that press sheet. That’s the other ornament set this year…
Y’all know my printing process pretty well by now, so I’m going to skip ahead a bit. Just FYI, these are linocuts; check out my bird prints if you’re curious about that process. But as you can see, I printed both ornament sets all at once, on one press sheet.
Then I went ahead with my usual hand-coloring assembly line.
No, wait a minute. I said 200 prints, right? Well, that’s a small edition for retail goods, but when you’re hand-painting each one, 200 feels more like eleventy billion.
There, that’s more of an accurate picture.
Still, if the work stretching endlessly ahead of you to the horizon is a bunch of drawings of kittens, it’s impossible not to be happy about it, despite yourself. I know—I tested the hypothesis, and I’m still grinning like a fool.
This year I added a new step to the process: rather than hand-cutting all 1200 kitties in the set by hand (ahem, Local Conditions, I’m looking at you!), I made the design simple enough that I could semi-automate part of the assembly line. I bought a hand-crank die-cutting machine, created a digital dieline (basically an industrial pattern) of my design, and sent it off to a friendly steel rule manufacturer in Kent.
I know that plank with all those pink foam bits doesn’t look anything like an ornament set, so let me zoom in. A die consists of steel blades embedded in a piece of wood. The blades are bent and arranged in precisely the configuration specified by the dieline. Those pink foam bits cushion the blades, hold the paper in place and help with cutting accuracy. When the die is run through the cutting machine (which works much like a Vandercook press), those pink bits squish down under pressure, exposing the blades and gripping the paper to be cut. Those metal pins sticking up are for lining up the press sheet—they’re spring-mounted, so they retract when the blade goes through the cutting machine.
Here’s the underside of the die—now you can see how the blades fit the press sheet.
Still, while the die is a total lifesaver in terms of cutting time, the lightweight paper I was cutting made for some wiggle room—even with the extra line tolerance I built into the design. After all that hand-coloring I didn’t want to lose a third of my prints by cutting them in the wrong place. So I still had to do some puzzling and figure out how to outsmart the limitations here.
Since the lightweight prints are mounted to a heavier board to complete the ornaments (the ribbon loops are sandwiched in between), I was basically using the die twice. I realized that the leftover blanks of board would make a good template, and wouldn’t wiggle under pressure.
A little masking tape,
some quick eyeballing,
and slow-and-steady cranking in the press—
—and Bob, as they say, is your uncle.
Individually taping down all eleventy billion 200 press sheets was a little mind-numbing, but still, the “finished” pile added up fast.
And it was awfully satisfying to see the whole edition completed in days rather than weeks or months.
Laurie stepped in and saved my sanity by doing a lot of the grunt work—rough-cutting boards, snipping lengths of ribbon, and cutting insets into the board-kitties so that the ribbon loops lie flush and disappear.
A quick coat of black around the edges,
and just a wee bit of cursive script on the back,
—and we have a litter of Christmas kittens. Laurie contributed one of my favorite photos for the packaging, and I basically have been unable to stop squealing ever since. Now the Tailor and I just need to hurry up and chop down our Christmas tree, so I can display these guys in the living room!
If you’d like a set, they’re up in the shop. To answer the foreseeable question, we’re just offering these in full sets—they were printed in sets, so we don’t really have any oddball solo pieces this time. And last year almost everyone wanted the full set of bird ornaments, rather than just one, so I let those votes carry the motion. Actually, there are still some bird sets left, so feel free to snag ’em if you missed out last year. As usual, these are limited-edition—I won’t be reprinting them, so once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.
One last thing: to make sure that Tacoma pets also have a happy holiday season this year, Laurie and I will be donating a portion of our proceeds to help stock the Tacoma Humane Society’s emergency pet food bank. We want to make sure that while we’re all having a kitty-themed Christmas, the kittens who inspire us get to enjoy Christmas dinner, too.
Happy tree-trimming!
November 14th, 2012
I’m pleased to present my latest artist book, Hold Your Horses.
The book consists of a hand-bound portfolio (in various one-of-a-kind colors) that…well..holds some horses.
I figured it was only a matter of time before I did another print set like I did with the birds.
This time, though, I picked my favorite equine breeds,
took the opportunity to push the envelope of what hand-coloring could do,
and even experimented with some wacky painting techniques.
I’m really happy with how these turned out, and I can’t wait to show them off at Codex in February!
Colophon reads:
I am not a member of the horsey set. I grew up far too poor for riding lessons, and I can’t claim ever to have used the phrase “saddle up” in the literal sense. Yet horses are as much a part of me as of any American who ever looked westward in wonder. They are living symbols of the wildness that still infuses our deepest desires—even if they no longer permeate our everyday culture.
I never had a pony as a child, but now I can boast a round dozen. Enclosed here is my very own horsey set, displayed in an equine rainbow of dapple grays, strawberry roans, pale palominos, skewbald bays and rich chestnuts. This assembly gathers an assortment of traits and histories to tell the story of our fascination with horses. Each mount stands surrounded by the trappings of its trade or the symbols of its origins.
These trusty steeds were letterpress printed and individually hand-painted in Tacoma, Washington—at the very end of a frontier founded on horsepower. Twelve breeds were printed in an edition of 57 impressions apiece; the entire herd is corraled in thirteen saddle-bag sets.
UPDATE (May 2014): a Hold Your Horses set is now part of the permanent collections at both the Phoenix Public Library and the University of Virginia Library! So if you’re local to either of those places, you can go check them out in person!
You’ll find individual horse prints in the shop.
Giddy up!
October 12th, 2012
I’ve been asked to take part in another collaborative letterpress portfolio—this time, with the theme of an animal abecedary. Each of the participants gets just a couple of letters in the collection, and I’m happy to report I nabbed two of my favorites. For these prints I experimented with something a little different. They’re hand-painted linocuts, like I often make—but these are hand-cut to reveal a fabric background. I’m pretty happy with how these turned out—now to file away the idea for future use!
August 29th, 2012
All I can manage is a quick note today—because this is where I am right now … and this place has got me pretty speechless.
I’m here teaching with Jessica this week, with a studio full of smart, sassy, and seriously talented women.
The class has got us inspired to stay up late printing every night, but it’s hard to feel tired—
—when you’ve got this view waiting for you when you return to work every morning.
August 22nd, 2012
A couple of months ago I was asked to create a letterpress broadside for a collaborative print portfolio for a show in Asheville, put together by the Ladies of Letterpress. The theme was Expanding Communities—beyond that, we could do anything we wanted. So I focused on a unique element of Seattle’s community: the P-Patch.
A P-Patch is a community garden like any other—and completely unlike any other. The name comes from the Picardo family, who converted their farm into the city’s first truly communal garden in the 1970s. So to this day, if you life in Seattle, you tend your p-patch, not your garden plot. That just charmed the heck out of me, and I wanted to create a tribute to it.
P-Patch is completely hand-lettered, as well as hand-painted with watercolor, in homage to the hard work required to maintain a thriving garden. Many thanks to the Ladies of Letterpress gals for inviting me to be a part of the portfolio—I can’t wait to see what everyone else came up with!
June 1st, 2012
In case you haven’t seen it yet, my Hillside Sketchbook installation is coming along nicely! The scene will keep growing and shifting all this month, before the exhibit ends on June 30. Swing by the Woolworth Windows at 11th and Broadway in Tacoma, and catch it while you can. (Hint: it’s especially fun during the Farmers Market on Thursdays!)
May 25th, 2012
Speaking of keeping busy, looks like I’m not the only one who’s been working on my Local Conditions book. The kind folks at Stanford University put together a little video demonstrating how book works. So now, instead of having to explain it step-by-step, and hope for the best, I can actually show you in real time. Take a gander:
And if you happen to be in the Bay Area, you can see the book for yourself at the San Francisco Center for the Book. From now through August 31, Local Conditions is on display as part of the exhibition Exploding the Codex. The show highlights unusual and unexpected structures by over forty artists—pieces that blow the lid off of the standard definition of what a book can be. I’m sad not to be able to get there myself before the show closes, but if you’re in the area, stop by on June 15 for the opening reception—and tell ’em hello from me.
May 20th, 2012
Now that I’m back in town, I’ve got deadlines. Lots of them.
Like, hundreds and hundreds. Each one shaped like a little P-I Globe, a little Space Needle, or any number of things.
You get the idea.
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