Blog
April 18th, 2010
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 the show: steamroller printing! Last year over 500 people came to check it out, despite a torrential downpour—and this year, the weather just might promise to behave, so we’re bracing for a mob. There’s a reason for the crowds: this is a heckuva lot of fun. Here’s the skinny:
6th Annual Wayzgoose!
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Noon to 4 pm
Free!
King’s Books
218 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma
Eight artists and artist-teams will be printing gigantic three-by-four-foot linocuts in the street, including Jessica and me—we’ll be adding another unofficial Dead Feminist to our roster. (Take a gander at our last steamroller print here.) This is just a sneak peek; stop by next Sunday to see this block in action.
See you there!
March 8th, 2010
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 did a stand-up job of curating the show—and artist books aren’t easy to display, believe me. She’s represented a wide variety of work, from prints to traditional bindings to kinetic sculptures, featuring the work of artists nationwide, including Inge Bruggeman, Ken Botnick, Regin Ingloria, Jana Harper, Diana Guerrero-Macía, and many others.
The gallery is open noon to four, Thursday through Sunday, and on Thursday, March 18, at 7 pm, Kelda will be giving a curator’s talk about the work in the show, sponsored by the Book Arts Guild. Free admission, always.
I’ve got a couple of pieces in the show, as well. Above is From Concentrate,
and this is The Faery Gardener.
Here’s the rub, though: the recession has hit all galleries where it hurts, but since the Burien Arts Gallery is run by the city, times have been especially tough there. This will be the last exhibit in the Cape Cod house; and possibly the last ever for Burien Arts, unless they can find public support, funding and a new space. So come check it out before they have to close their doors on March 19 (the website says they’re already closed, but you can still see the show).
Speaking of artist books, if you missed Mnemonic Sampler at PLU, there’s another chance to catch the series in a new venue, closer to home: the Tempest Lounge, here in Tacoma.
My friend Denise is the owner of the place, and when she asked if I was interested in showing there, I jumped at the chance. Although I love the clean beauty of a traditional gallery space, my favorite exhibition venues are the offbeat ones—restaurants, coffee shops, libraries, and now classy retro bars! I love these spaces because they bring art into real life, and invite folks to feast their eyes wherever they are. Most people (including myself, I must admit) are more likely to step into an eatery or a library than a gallery, and a coffee shop doesn’t have the same intimidating associations that some people have with galleries (that feeling of “If you’re not here to buy, you shouldn’t be here at all”). Plus, at the Tempest you can have a beer or cocktail while you look at the art. You can’t beat that.
If beer isn’t your thing, you can also have a cuppa tea or joe, and the food is divine—Denise runs a classy joint here. So curl up on a retro couch for happy hour, come chat by the adorable green picket fence, or just stop in to take in that fabulous red wall. Mnemonic Sampler will be up through April 30.
March 2nd, 2010
Allison of Igloo Letterpress and I have been doing some more cross-country collaboration lately. This time I illustrated a set of hand-bound journals featuring a pattern of Brownstones—one of my favorite types of houses, and a recurring theme in my drawings.
I’m so lucky to work with Allison—despite the distance, and the fact that we haven’t seen each other for two years, I feel like I we’re on the same wavelength. I love the fact that we can trust each other to make independent creative decisions, and have faith that they’ll come together into a harmonious whole. But my part of the project is finished when I send her black-and-white illustrations for printing—since I can’t exactly pop into her shop whenever I want, I really have no idea how the finished product will look until she sends it to me.
So imagine my delight when a package arrived containing four beautifully-bound hardcover books, with my illustration splashed on the cover in gorgeous color—
—and printed right onto the book cloth, no less!
I did a little hopping dance around the living room after that.
Here’s the best part, and a flash of Allison’s brilliance: not only do the books fit together thematically, but when they stand together on a bookshelf, the spines line up to complete the picture.
Since these are so labor-intensive to make, Allison is offering them only as a limited edition. But they’ve already been a big hit so far—which makes everything so, so satisfying.
February 20th, 2010
Jessica and I have had some seriously huge smiles for the past couple of days: we just received our copies of the latest issue of Kiki Magazine, which contains a feature on the Dead Feminists!
Before we were contacted for an interview, neither of us had heard of the magazine, but I can tell you that we became instant fans when we read its mission. Unlike so many other magazines written for teenage girls, which usually (even if inadvertently) tend to focus on questioning one’s body, popularity, attractiveness and overall self-worth, Kiki aims to empower girls with self-esteem, confidence, and a wide variety of knowledge and skills. As someone who is generally dismayed by the lack of respect with which our society tends to treat girls and women, and the self-loathing and doubts still being ingrained from their earliest experiences onward, Kiki seems like a breath of fresh air—and a huge relief.
And hey—who are we really creating these broadsides for, anyway? What is it that we’re trying to change in our world? It’s not just about the social issues we cover with each piece—it’s about teaching the women and girls around us that they can be heard, that what they say and do matters.
So Kiki gets an A-plus in my book, not just for the thoughtful content (no ads! No boy-crazy quizzes! All substance!), but for the fantastic design! This thing is seriously fun to read and gorgeous to look at. And look! My favorite part:
Rock on, Kiki. We’re honored to be a part of what you do.
February 13th, 2010
This year marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Washington—a feat only made possible by the collaborative efforts of many dedicated people of every walk of life and political stripe. In this spirit, we present our seventh broadside in the Dead Feminists series, Just Desserts.
Through our research at the Washington State Library, we discovered that our state’s suffrage movement had many leaders, rather than one prominent figurehead. We also learned that there was so much head-butting, personality-clashing and partisan in-fighting going on within the organizations involved (Mesdames Hutton and DeVoe, I’m looking at you!) that it would be impossible to tell the whole story in one letterpress poster. So instead of quoting a single historical feminist, we cited a collaborative publication—the Washington Women’s Cook Book, published in 1908-1909 for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition—and featured four women symbolic of the movement: May Arkwright Hutton, Bernice Sapp, Cora Smith Eaton, and Emma Smith DeVoe. The quote:
“Are not our desserts and salads things of beauty and the joy of the moment?”
The book was a clever piece of propaganda that operated on the principle that the way to a man’s heart—or vote—is through his stomach. All those jellied centerpieces and whimsical soufflés must have done the trick—the following year, women got the vote.
And for my part, the quote turned me into an almost-literal kid in a candy store; the design was just begging for elaborate confections and candy-coated typography. At first, though, I was turned off by the idea of having to draw salads (I wanted more ice cream!), until Jessica read off a litany of aspic salad and gelatin dessert recipes from the book. That’s when the light bulb turned on: Jell-o salad! The decade-plus I spent in the Midwest was about to serve me well.
Turns out that Jell-o fit right into the turn-of-the-century theme: molded gelatin desserts were a Victorian favorite, and the name “Jell-o” was first coined in 1897 (and if you look carefully, the “J” from the original Jell-o box makes a cameo in the print). There seemed to be no end of antique recipes, advertisements and illustrations at my disposal.
I might be horrified by the idea of eating gelatin salads, but drawing them was the most fun I’ve had in a long, long time. Zooey and I each spent hours researching vintage Jell-o molds—probably more for the pure fascination than for the value of the reference material.
For the sweets portion of our little menu, I turned to an old favorite for inspiration: Andy Warhol.
Forget what you know about Campbell’s soup cans or Elvis portraits; Andy got his start as an illustrator specializing in fashion and food. In 1959 he illustrated a spoof cookbook called Wild Raspberries (it’s been on my shelf since high school, and I finally found a direct use for it!), filled with ridiculous “gourmet” recipes for things like “A&P Surprise” (those of you in New England will get that one) and “Seared Roebuck.”
The illustrations are fantastic (and the polar opposite of my style), but the thing that really drew me in was the lettering. Andy had his mother, Julia Warhola, write all of the text of his early illustrations in her shaky, school-girl script. Mrs. Warhola spoke little to no English, and simply copied her son’s notes letter-for-letter, so the text in Wild Raspberries has charming errors and misspellings throughout.
I loved the down-to-earth quality of Mrs. Warhola’s cursive, so I wrote a recipe from the Washington Women’s Cook Book along the border of the broadside in a similar hand (though to warn you, it’s a recipe I wouldn’t recommend trying!).
And of course, I couldn’t do without a little ice cream homage.
Like The Curie Cure, this piece is printed in three colors—although the three we chose let us create many more. Our color scheme allowed us to print in a similar fashion to commercial printing, where a minimum of colors (CMYK—cyan, magenta, yellow, black) are layered to create a full-color image. Our layering of translucent pink, blue and yellow ink allowed us to create a full rainbow and a convincing depiction of foreign objects floating in jelly.
Heaps of thanks to everyone who came to our talk at the State Library the other night, despite lousy weather and rush-hour traffic—we had a tremendous turnout, and a huge show of support for our state’s oldest cultural institution.
One more thing: three cheers for the incredible staff at the Washington State Library (many of whom are among those whose jobs have been cut and will end very soon) who made our talk and this very piece possible. Because we couldn’t have done it without them, we have donated a portion of our proceeds to support the State Library’s collections.
After all, it’s about preserving (in jelly?) that joy of the moment for everyone to share, right?
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Just Desserts: No. 7 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 100
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches
Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, each piece is printed on archival, 100% rag, recycled paper, and signed by both artists.
Colophon reads:
In 1909 suffragists saw an opportunity to forward their cause in Seattle at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (AYP) Exposition. The Washington Equal Suffrage Association (WESA), led by president Emma Smith DeVoe, provided an AYP exhibition on the importance of women’s right to vote and hosted Women’s Days, distributing pamphlets alongside displays of domesticity. WESA treasurer Dr. Cora Smith Eaton, joined The Mountaineers’ AYP expedition to climb Mt. Rainier and placed a “Votes for Women” banner at the summit. Suffragists from eastern Washington, led by May Arkwright Hutton, came by the trainload to attend the AYP and WESA’s National Convention. Many of the details—from ideological clashes to victories—were archived at the Washington State Library, thanks to Bernice Sapp.
Women from around the country also contributed to the Washington Women’s Cook Book, published to sell at the AYP. Filled with recipes, domestic advice and inspirational suffragist quotes, it reassured male voters that the women in their lives would continue homemaking once they had the right to vote: “Give us the vote and we will cook, the better for a wide outlook.” Compiled by Linda Deziah Jennings, the preface extolled the virtues of making beautiful things, and the simple joy of desserts and salads. Suffragists in Washington worked through differences in personalities, social backgrounds and political parties to create a winning recipe, gaining their right to vote in 1910.
Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring with gratitude to allthe cooks. 100 copies were printed by hand at Springtide Press in Tacoma. February 2010
UPDATE: poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the Dead Feminists shop!
January 30th, 2010
It’s just about that time again: Jessica and I are working hard on the next Dead Feminist broadside. She’s poring through texts and historical facts, and I’m pencilling as fast as my tendonitis will let me. This time we’ll be unveiling the new piece at the Washington State Library near Olympia; the staff invited us to give a lecture about the series next month.
The library boasts the entire collection of letters and personal papers of Emma Smith DeVoe (pictured above, right), women’s rights activist and leader of the Washington suffragist movement. And since this year marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Washington, we figured Emma would be a perfect fit for the new piece.
So a couple of weeks ago, Jessica, Zooey (R.I.P., J.D. Salinger) and I took a field trip to visit the archives and conduct a little research. When we arrived, we realized what they meant by “collection:” twelve enormous boxes packed full of letters, clippings and souvenirs. A “little” research obviously wasn’t going to happen.
Luckily, the incredibly knowledgeable and helpful library staff (thank you, Sean!) let us take as much time and as many photos as we needed. So we cozied up to a work station and dived in, one box at a time. Together we went through literally thousands of pieces of paper.
What we found was a fascinating collection of souvenirs, business cards, newspaper clippings,
leaflets and other propaganda,
fan letters (Emma had an impressive array of admirers),
telegrams, notes from sitting U.S. senators and presidential aides, and reams and reams of correspondance between the members of the Washington suffragist movement.
The trouble was, most of these documents were utterly mundane—letter after letter simply acknowledged receipt of previous correspondance, or gave detailed instructions for planning events and delegating tasks. Worst of all, Emma rarely made carbon copies of her half of the correspondance, so there was very little in her own voice.
We spent nearly four hours poring over every folder and box, and the only potential Emma quotes we found were mined from this instructional card. Still, it didn’t feel like we had found our inspiration—just a few weeks from our talk, we had no quote and no social topic for the piece.
What we did have, however, was a much clearer picture of the women behind the fight for suffrage in our state (that’s May Arkwright Hutton above; she and Emma didn’t exactly get along), right down to addresses of homes and buildings still standing in Tacoma (the headquarters of the movement).
From the documents themselves to the individual script hands of each letter writer, we had an incredible window into political life from a hundred years ago.
And we found a good lead. Just as interesting as Emma (and more forthcoming with their own voices) were Cora Smith Eaton King, M.D. (pictured above, right)—correspondent, fellow leader of the movement, and one of the first women to scale Mt. Rainier!—and Bernice Sapp—friend, activist, and the one who compiled this collection of documents and donated it to the library.
Bernice’s letters were full of quirky character and wit. We loved how she called Emma “the General,” and referred to herself and other suffragists by male titles: “Brother King,” “Mr. Hutton,” or simply “him.”
Cora, on the other hand, was a real firecracker. Her letters (often scribbled on scraps of paper, even her own prescription pad!) revealed an eloquent intelligence and a sizzling sense of humor. We fell head-over-heels for Cora, and began to doubt that Emma was the right voice for the broadside—still, though, we had no quote from any of these women.
A few days later, Jessica hit up the astounding Northwest Room at the Tacoma Public Library, and hit the jackpot. She discovered a document that linked all of these women together, which decided us on a slightly different approach to quoting historical feminists. That’s all I’ll say for now, except that the new broadside may or may not depict a certain quivering, questionable “food” substance:
If you want to be one of the first to see what the heck I’m talking about, I invite you to come check out our talk at the Washington State Library. Here are the details:
Pressing Matters: an evening with Chandler O’Leary and Jessica Spring
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
6:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:00), free!
Washington State Library
6880 Capitol Boulevard, Tumwater, WA
Libraries and archives face a tough reality in the current economy—especially here in Washington, where a regressive tax system has left the State Library with a 30% staff reduction and major cuts to its operating and acquisitions budgets. The 2003 earthquake damaged their building on the historic capital campus in Olympia, and forced them to relocate “temporarily” to a suburban office park a few miles south in Tumwater. Even when the economy recovers, it is unlikely the library’s funding will return to the levels it enjoyed in more prosperous eras, so the move to Tumwater is looking increasingly permanent. Despite these setbacks, the State Library continues to acquire new items (including our artwork!) for the collection and provide an essential service in preserving our state’s history. So please come and show your support for the library—a good turnout will help them provide more public events in the future, and might just go a long way toward saving them from another visit to the chopping block.
December 25th, 2009
Every year I whip up a little holiday postcard and send it winging to far-flung friends and family. It’s a long-standing tradition of mine, and an important constant when many other holiday plans change from year to year. This year’s card reflects my own personal plans for Christmas this year—I fully intend to spend some serious quality time with needles and wool.
We’re staying home and having our own Christmas this year, and along with rare treats like time for knitting and the luxury of jigsaw puzzles, the celebrations come complete with seasonal goodies (like these saucy sugar cookies made by my friend Maggie)…
…cozy surroundings…
…and all the comforts of home. So this is my Christmas card to you. Wishing you the merriest of holidays, and a new year filled with peace, love, and joy.
December 10th, 2009
After nearly a year, image-gathering for my Mt. Rainier artist book is finally coming to an end, and I’m starting to make the final illustrations. I have a huge stack of sketches, scribbles and recorded data, and thousands upon thousands of photos to sift through. This month and next are scheduled for the all-important (and terrifying) process of Figuring Out How the Heck to Make It Work—physical mock-ups, final compositions, text-writing, etc. But before I could move on with a clear conscience, I had one last far-away location to cross off my research list: Portland. And for some reason, the stars just weren’t aligning for me.
My first attempt this summer was also my first-ever trip to the city, so I had to location-scout with a blank mental map—and when I finally found what I was looking for, it was too hazy to see anything anyway (hence the dotted line where Rainier should be). Since Portland is 140 miles away, I couldn’t just try again any old time I pleased. As the months went by, I became increasingly frustrated—the location I visited over the summer (Larch Mountain) is inaccessible in the winter, and although I had another spot in mind, my schedule and the weather (which was way harder to pin down than an open travel day!) just couldn’t find anything in common; the last few months have been typically Northwestern, with plenty of rain, fog and drear for a volcano to hide behind. Finally, last week, it seemed I had my chance. T-town was socked in with pea-soup fog, but since the previous day had started the same way and ended in sunshine, I decided to go for it. As I cleared the Puget lowlands and the fog lifted, I caught crystal-clear glimpses of Rainier to the east as I went, and my confidence rose. I wouldn’t know for sure until I got there, but the sunny weather seemed like it would hold. I made good time to Portland, wound my way up to Council Crest Park, jogged up to the viewpoint and faced north—
—and saw that Mt. Saint Helens didn’t get the memo. It had its own private weather system blocking Rainier from view.
It was a long drive home that night.
The last few days were torture. The weekend taunted me with sunny mornings and cloudy afternoons (good thing I didn’t take the bait), and the perfect weather went untested Monday and Tuesday while I taught class and kept appointments instead. By Tuesday night, I was sure I’d missed my last chance, and resigned myself to leaving Portland out of the book. But yesterday dawned cold and flawlessly clear, and I was astonished to find my calendar empty. I left the Tailor an incoherent voicemail at work (“I’m going right now! I’ll be back tonight!”) and jumped in the car. Exactly two hours and twenty-three minutes later, this is what I saw:
That’s St. Helens in front, with Rainier just peeking around her left shoulder.
And here’s the illustration that resulted from all this work:
And in case I had any doubts about one image being worth all this trouble, Portland offered me a little bonus—a compositional jewel that I could never have dreamed up on my own:
The City of Roses was still, impossibly, in bloom.
November 27th, 2009
Every year I make a resolution to create a whole slew of greeting cards for the holidays, and every year I’m lucky if I can scrape together one postcard design to send to my own friends and family. Maybe it’s because I’m not really capable of getting in the mood for Christmas or Hanukkah in July, but by the time November rolls around and I finally think of it, there never seems to be enough time. Good thing I have my friend Allison to think of these things.
Allison Chapman runs Igloo Letterpress, a lovely little shop in Worthington, Ohio. She called me up this summer and asked me if I’d like to start a line of letterpress cards with her—since neither of us had time to do both the design and the printing, it was a match made in heaven.
Collaborating when you have a couple thousand miles between you can be quite a challenge—especially when you’re trying to reinvent the wheel a bit. But Allison and I were on the same wavelength from the first moment, and it was so easy to leave the printing in her capable hands. Besides, her ideas for 3D pop-up cards turned out to be perfect for letterpress. Each of these cards is a kinetic greeting, with a unique folding structure that delivers the message in an unexpected way. And as always, the illustrations are created from hand-lettered type and hand-drawn patterns and imagery (as if you hadn’t guessed).
And for after the holiday gifts are opened, we threw a thank-you card into the mix as well. Instead of a pop-up piece, this card slides out of a die-cut sleeve to reveal the whole story.
All of these cards come with a standard A2 envelope, and are available either individually or in packs of six.
For more images and ordering information, visit the shop.
One last thing: many thanks to the wonderful Sarah Christianson for sweeping in with her professional lighting and photographing the cards for me! Happy holidays!
November 20th, 2009
People who stop by the house for the first time must really think I’m strange. Never mind our own personal farmers market residing in the attic and root cellar—these days the place looks like the the visual-art equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, with snips of paper, rows of identical bird portraits, bright watercolor cakes, brushes and pencils, boxes of envelopes, shipments waiting to go out, and stacks of prints covering every horizontal surface. It certainly gives new meaning to the term “cottage industry.” I guess that’s what happens when you decide to double your inventory right before the holidays.
This week, though, there was a new element to the chaos: the drone of the sewing machine. And now that all the threads are tied off, Jessica and I are finally ready to unveil a little secret we’ve been sitting on for a few months. Seattle Center for Book Arts (SCBA) asked us to create their second-annual Special Edition Print, and I’m happy to report that they’re now available for sale.
Each year the Special Edition Print has the theme of “Unbound,” and the folks at SCBA challenged us to interpret it how we liked. So instead of our customary work with famous quotes, Jessica whipped up a little gem of her own. We started thinking about all the ways something (not just a book!) might be bound or unbound, which led us to visions of lacing, pinching, tying, zipping, braiding, taping, clamping, buttoning, stitching, buckling, hammering, gluing, clipping, lashing and pinning. Which then, of course, gave me free reign to make an absolute, giddy mess of things, and scatter fasteners and notions all over the page. My favorite additions to the drawing, though, are the bread tags. My grandmother had a whole drawer full of them in her kitchen (did she ever use them, or did I just discover the source of my pack-rat tendencies?), and I loved the way they rattled around in there. So Nana, this one is for you.
Everything is hand-drawn and lettered (as per usual), then letterpress printed in copper ink and an ochre color that is precisely the shade of those little Bit o’Honey candies (remember those?). This time, though, we’ve added a little extra goodie: a line of zig-zag stitching in cotton thread, in exactly the green of copper patina. SCBA is the only place to get these prints, so if you’d like to play a little game of Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button, you can get your copy here.
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