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Okay, folks, the countdown is ticking away. The Big Secret Project that I’ve been working on for months is almost ready to share, and it’s going live on Monday morning! (Can you guess what it is?) So check back here for all the details—thanks for sticking with me while I’ve been so secretive.
See you soon…
More than a thousand towns and cities in the U.S. are lucky enough to have had a Carnegie Library under their belt, and Tacoma is no exception. Today, our Carnegie Library is a wing of the expanded main campus of the Tacoma Public Library—and the rotunda now houses the fabulous Northwest Room, the ultimate resource for Tacoma and Northwest history. It’s a gorgeous space, and beloved in these here parts. So I figured it would be a perfect addition to the Red Deck of the Tacoma Playing Cards.
I didn’t think they’d take kindly to me breaking out the watercolors in a room full of rare books, but I was at least able to do the line drawing on-site. (‘Scuse the wobbly iPhone photo.) And that’s always a tricky prospect for me—I always do as much drawing from life possible, but I’d much rather disappear into the woodwork while doing so. My drawings are always better when I can concentrate uninterrupted. The trouble is, the only place I can consistently sketch in public without anyone noticing me is New York. Here in Tacoma—where I run into someone I know at least once a day—it’s a different story.
In the Northwest Room there was a table right in front of me, which would have made me far less conspicuous while sketching. But in order to get the point of view I wanted, I had to stand dead-center in an aisle, right in the middle of the room. Yet not once in the hour-plus I stood there, sticking out like a sore thumb and obviously not doing what people normally do in there, did anyone bother me—or ask me what the heck I was doing, or make eye contact, or even register my existence.
I think I just found my new favorite sketching spot.
It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since the last one, but a few weeks ago I was back for my second showing at the Codex International Bookfair. The four-day fair was at a new venue this year—a space so gorgeous just I had to break out the ol’ sketchbook.
This year (and hopefully every year from here on out) we were hosted by the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, CA. Now a part of Rosie the Riveter National Historic Park (bonus points for being part of something else I love), the former Ford plant was used as a major military plant during World War II.
We had completely outgrown the old Codex stomping grounds in Berkeley—so while none of us knew what to expect of the new space, we were just hoping it would be big enough to fit a couple hundred artists under one roof.
We got way more than we bargained for—the space is absolutely cavernous. The bookfair was every bit as overwhelming as last time (just try looking at a few thousand pieces of art in four days!), but the Craneway gave the perfect breathing room to do the artwork justice. With its huge banks of windows and three-story ceiling, it almost felt like I was spending each day outdoors. I hated leaving at the end of each day.
And besides—this was the view from my table. Is there anything better than showing your work on one of the best chunks of real estate in the Bay Area? (Though I have to admit, every morning that one—admittedly awesome—Journey song would pop into my head, just like it always does when I’m in the area.*)
Occasionally I had to remind myself that I wasn’t just there to stare out the window, or bask in the sunshine on the dock outside, or scribble in my sketchbook. But I’m grateful to report that I had a nearly constant stream of visitors to my table to bring me back to reality when I needed it.
Huge props to all the folks who made the commute up to Richmond from San Francisco and Oakland (including Sarah and M-A for their help manning the table!)—judging by the comments I heard all week, you liked the new space as much as I did. And many thanks to all the return visitors from two years ago who came back to say hello (special shout-out to Adam D.!) or leave me with their own goodies. It felt great to be welcomed back.
One last thing: major thanks to Kate Farnady, who created this off-the-cuff stop-motion video of my Local Conditions book, right in the middle of our conversation about it. You made my day.
Codex, I’ll see you in two years—with any luck, right there on the waterfront again.
* Okay, you are not going to believe this, but as I wrote that sentence, that song came up on shuffle in my iTunes! Cross my heart. I’m officially freaked out now…
Today contains some of the few precious hours in the entire year that are just for us—when we can just be. We love the whirlwind of lights, colors, food, friends, music and surprises that comes with the holidays, but it’s the day we set aside for nothing but time that we look forward to all year.
May today be a gift to you as well—whether you spend it with family, friends, wide open spaces, or in your own lovely company.
Merry Christmas.
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!
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!
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!
Since Jessica and I got back from teaching at the Penland School of Crafts, I’ve been struggling to put the experience into words. But no matter how I go on about how beautiful the Blue Ridge Mountains are; or how unique Penland’s creative culture is; or how amazingly talented each and every one of our students were; or how seriously delicious a hot bowl of cheese grits is after a walk in the chilly morning fog; or how many wonderful people we met; or how much we loved the challenge of basically teaching two classes in one intense week—well, I get a little incoherent. So I’ll let my sketchbook do the talking. (I kept a little notebook in my apron pocket all week, and every time I had a second to spare, I was scribbling away.)
In short: we can’t wait to go back. Huge thanks to the lovely folks at Penland for hosting us and creating such a wonderful place to learn and make things; to our seven fabulous students for their enthusiasm and willingness to dive right in; and to our angelic friend Mary-Alice for being the absolute hands-down best teaching assistant the world has ever seen. Hope to see y’all again soon!
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!
I’m working on a little something in Jessica’s studio right now.
Something that’s making me downright hungry.
I’ll show you the finished product as soon as it’s done—provided I don’t go bury my head in the veggie crisper first!
