For the past eight months a stack of these little cards has lived in the front pocket of my bag—sharing cramped quarters with my sketchbook and watercolors, ready whenever anyone asks for my business card. I’ll admit this sucker was originally designed as a promo postcard, but the matching business card (see the blog header up top for the idea) just didn’t have as much chutzpah. So while a gargantuan, six-inch calling card isn’t convenient for most people’s wallets, it gets the job done.
These days, the question I most often hear (besides”Are you completely incapable of making anything a standard size?”—I think the custom framing industry loves me) is “How can this be letterpress?” I’ve launched into so many long-winded explanations of the convoluted process behind this thing that sometimes I bring visual aids with me to art functions. Yes, I’m a nerd. I carry visual aids around.
Ahem. Anyway, I’m working on a series of posts that will detail the making of this piece, step-by-step; look for the first one in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I’ll be putting those visual aids to use in the classroom. If you happen to be a fellow Northwesterner, I’ll be teaching a letterpress class in Seattle next month that combines good old-fashioned line drawing with digital typography, and old-school hand printing with snazzy graphic design software.
Hmm … well, before I get my cosmic comeuppance from the ghosts of my professional ancestors (I also know how to hand-set type, I promise!), here are the details:
Digital Design Meets Letterpress Printing
Six Mondays, May 4 – June 15, 2009*, 12 – 5 p.m. School of Visual Concepts, Seattle, WA
For more information, look here or here.
*(no class on Memorial Day, May 25)
There are still a few slots left in the class, so don’t be shy! Let’s give old Herr Gutenberg something to spin about.
* * *
(Republished after the internet gods decided to smite the original into oblivion.)
Everywhere I turn I hear complaints about how pokey Spring has been ’round these parts, but I have to say—if this is late, hallelujia anyway. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve lived anywhere that had blossoming trees by early April. We had a late spring in Minneapolis last year, too, which meant that it was Memorial Day before the blooms had anything to say about it (I know, because I was fretting about the bare trees right up until my wedding that weekend).
My work tends to deal heavily in flowery typography and ornamental Victorian doodads, so this book has become a constant companion. It’s a reprint of an 1897 design primer, and displays a series of increasingly abstracted renderings of various flora, from realistic illustration to graphic pattern.
Most of the patterns in the book aren’t really my cup of tea, but they get the wheels turning and make me think in terms of filtering my sketches and observations into graphic elements. And since I’m in need of some new reference material, both for upcoming letterpress projects and for the new artist book I’m working on (more on that another time), I thought I’d see what Spring had to show me. So on Thursday Nicole and I took a little field trip to the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle to grok the blossoms, cameras in hand.
And boy howdy, those cherry trees weren’t kidding.
The sun decided to join us, illuminating every perfect bloom in turn.
A few magnolia varieties were ready for their close-up;
most of the saucer magnolias, however, thought they’d sit this one out. But those branches! Each tree looked exactly like a candelabra.
Not to be outdone by the tourist-attracting trees, the shrubs and perennials had their say as well (although this was one of only a few rhododendrons that showed up on time; I guess the rest of them will have their party with the saucer magnolias).
Even the greenery was super-saturated (no need for Photoshop today!).
I came away with a head full of ideas, and my work cut out for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if my lettering starts sprouting petals. Nicole and I weren’t the only artists out that day, either; Azalea Way was just crawling with oil painters, watercolorists and photographers—and other like-minded folk who seemed to have quit their day jobs to do what they love (there was something very heartening in that thought, and it reinforced my own career choices).
The ducks, however, were working overtime that day.
On Saturday I tagged along with Jessica Spring to help some unsuspecting Bainbridge Island residents get their hands dirty. As part of its current INK exhibition, Bainbridge Arts & Crafts hosted Jessica and her hundred-year-old Sigwalt clamshell press for a letterpress demo.
Before long, folk of all ages were printing up spring keepsakes,
playing with antique wood type,
and creating their own DIY t-shirts. Stella!
As for me? Well, I couldn’t resist that day-glo red ink, so I made my own little contribution:
Can you guess which season is Jessica’s favorite? Happy springtime, Bainbridge!
When I was growing up I used to raid my dad’s personal collection of books whenever I was looking for new reading material. We had bookcases all over the house, but I could always depend on that one in the hallway for the discovery of a new favorite. Those shelves introduced me to some of my favorite authors, and some of my most vivid memories are recalled passages from Steinbeck, or Salinger, or what have you. That bookcase also exposed me to some seriously weird stuff (which probably went a long way in teaching me to march to the beat of my own drummer—and therefore survive things like high school), writing that I didn’t begin to understand until years later. One book that I went back to several times, attracted to its sheer strangeness, was Revenge of the Lawn, by Richard Brautigan; the title story was my favorite. I’m pretty sure most of the similes and imagery flew over my teenage head at the time, but I loved the fact that something could be so entertaining and emotional, and yet so bizarre. (And I fully blame Brautigan for my own rambling, tangential, parenthetical writing tendencies.)
Last month I got an email from City Arts Magazine, asking if I’d illustrate the cover and feature story of the next issue; they were doing an article on Richard Brautigan’s Tacoma roots. I did a double-take—wait a minute, Brautigan lived in Tacoma?
So I re-read “Revenge of the Lawn,” and was amazed at how much my new perspective of being a Washington/Tacoma resident changed the story for me. Even the more straightforward lines like “He was selling a vision of eternal oranges and sunshine door to door in a land where people ate apples and it rained a lot” took on an almost tangible layer of meaning. (I love that “I’ve Been There!” feeling when I read. It makes me want to run and tell everyone I know: See that passage there? I know exactly what he’s talking about!)
Illustrating Brautigan, or text about Brautigan, was a whole different matter, however. What could I possibly say with a picture what such a vividly visual writer hasn’t already said with words? This is the guy who wrote, “The creek was like 12,845 telephone booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings and all the doors taken off and all the backs of the booths knocked out,” after all.
I mulled it over for awhile, and decided to take him literally. This was a pretty odd experience for me, because I was always trained to make illustrations that add to or change the meaning of a text—and to avoid didactic images like the plague. Somehow, though, for this project, I felt that actually cramming as many Victorian-style phone booths as possible onto the spread would highlight the humor and absurdity of Brautigan’s words.
Or maybe I just really wanted to draw pictures of trout.
Anyway, the text is all hand-painted with watercolor in a “trouty” palette, and references Victorian-era typography and psychedelic graphic design (which itself references Victorian-era typography … the trout swallows its tail). If you’re local, you can pick up your copy for free at a whole slew of locations in and around Tacoma this month. The original watercolors are on display in the To the Letter exhibit through April 30.
I love gallery talks—they’re a rare opportunity not only to meet the artist, but also to hear his or her thoughts and anecdotes on the making of the artwork itself. And since my own gallery talk on Sunday was limited to a local audience, this month I thought I’d give an online guided tour of the pieces in To the Letter. Besides, in a blog post I don’t have to worry about my enormous fear of public speaking, or hear myself say “Uh” or “um” twenty-nine times a minute.
Anyway, the only wall piece in the exhibit (and also the only unlabeled piece, since the tag refuses to stick to the wall) is Tugboat Thea, a collaboration with Jessica Spring. The print is an unofficial member of our Feminist Broadside series because of its size, and let me tell you, that sucker is huge.*
And why is it so enormous? Why, it was printed with a steamroller, of course!
Yes, you read that right. The folks at King’s Books asked us to be a part of their fifth annual Wayzgoose** celebration on the first of March, and steamroller printing was the main event. Thanks to a grant from the Tacoma Arts Commission (no really, thank you!), each artist or artist-team was given a four-foot slab of linoleum to carve as they saw fit. Jessica and I decided to pay tribute to Tacoma’s own Thea Foss—business pioneer, Waterway namesake, feminist extraordinaire (though she probably didn’t know it), and inspiration for the Tugboat Annie stories and films.
The trouble was, our Feminist Broadside format relies on a quote by the subject, and we were having an awful time finding anything attributed to Thea herself. Luckily we discovered Finding Thea, the excellent documentary film by Nancy Bourne Haley and Lucy Ostrander—which, by the way, also provided great reference material for sketches.
Printing tools, including linoleum carving knives.
Tugboat Thea took about a week for the two of us to carve.
This isn’t a great view of my sketch, but it should give a rough idea of the scale we were working with. Because neither of us fancied copying a tiny pencil sketch in reverse, by hand, onto the much larger linoleum slab, we took a shortcut. I had the drawing photocopied at 600% size, and then we placed it face-down onto the linoleum, sprinkled it with mineral spirits, and ran a hot iron over the wet paper. The heated solvent transferred the copy toner onto the linoleum exactly the way we wanted it: backwards.
Here’s the finished block, inked up and ready to print.
Wait, wait—backwards? Yep, backwards. Here’s why:
Thanks to sweet pea of King’s Books for the video.
(Sorry for the grainy quality, but it was filmed on a mobile phone.)
That’s Jessica on the left—and Nancy jumped right in to help.
Despite weather that absolutely refused to cooperate and ink turned soupy by the rain, the Wayzgoose was a huge success. We had over 500 people in attendance, and every steamroller artist knocked out at least a few prints.
The inimitable sweet pea
We seemed to have stumbled upon a theme for the day: Tacoma in all its hand-lettered glory. Ric Matthies demonstrates his considerable prowess here;
and while the be-fezzed lads of C.L.A.W. (right) didn’t get the memo about carving things backwards, their first-ever linocut print looks fabulous all the same.
Chris Sharp, meanwhile, prefers to work his magic with plywood and a router;
and the accidental glare of the Woolworth Windows is probably a fitting tribute to Beautiful Angle’s piece.
I didn’t get photos of every print (Shannon Eakins and Marc Dombrosky’s amazing blind emboss of a real manhole cover was beyond my skills to photograph), but they’re all currently on view in the Woolworth Windows, at 11th and Broadway in downtown Tacoma.
Since the prints are so unwieldy, and since we only printed a handful of them, we’ve decided to retool the design of Tugboat Thea and print a (smaller!) letterpress edition as the next in the (official) Feminist Broadside series. We’ll unveil the Thea sequel at our lecture at the Tacoma Art Museum on May 12.
I have to say, though, I’m grateful we were able to find a genuine Thea quote—it was either that or this nugget from the old Tugboat Annie stories:
“O.K., ye ol’ gafoozler,” she replied quietly and stood up. “When’s the financial blizzard takin’ over?”
* So huge I don’t know what to do with my copy; its sheer size makes a mockery of my flat file, and I sure as heck don’t have that kind of wall space.
** Wayzgoose (origin obscure): a celebration given by a master printer to his workmen each year to mark the traditional end of summer and usher in the season of working by candlelight. Generally held as an annual celebration of letterpress and the book arts today.
Spring made her grand entrance this weekend, sweeping in with the first warm, flawless day of the year—complete with guest appearances by Mount Rainier and the sun. ‘Round these parts, it’s almost criminal to miss a day like that—as evidenced by the sidewalks, parks and shorelines packed with grateful Tacomans.
So believe me, the significance of a big group of steadfast book and art lovers eschewing the perfect weather in favor of hearing me blather on about sketchbooks and photopolymer isn’t lost on me. Many, many thanks to everyone who came to either the gallery talk yesterday or the exhibit opening on Thursday (or both!). You made both events a huge success, and your enthusiastic presence made me feel so welcome to the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been the new kid on the block many times in my life, but I’ve never felt so at home so quickly as I do here in T-town. Thank you.
Well, the threads are tied, the cases full, the tags in place, and I’ve scanned for typos at least six dozen times. I think we’re ready.
Tomorrow evening is the opening reception for To the Letter, my debut solo show. On view are letterpress prints, textile typography, the Feminist Broadside series, artist books, sketchbooks, and a few surprises. Stop by and say howdy!
To the Letter: Works by Chandler O’Leary
April 1-30, 2009 Collins Memorial Library, University of Puget Sound
Opening reception:
Thursday, April 2, 4:30-7:00 p.m. Campus map!
Since handwork is the theme of the show (hand-lettering, hand-binding, hand-stitching, etc.), some of my process materials are also on display. Weirdly, this detail is the part I’m most excited about—I’m forever encouraging my students to include sketches, supplies and other behind-the-scenes objects in their gallery shows, but this is the first chance I’ve had to do it myself. My process tends to be particularly convoluted (probably a symptom of O.C.D. or something), so I’m hoping the sight of things like tabletop platen presses and double-pointed knitting needles will spark some interesting conversation.
Speaking of which, Jessica Spring and I are doing a double-header on Sunday. I’ll be giving a guided tour of the exhibit, and Jessica will give a lecture on her newest artist book, Parts Unknown. There’ll be plenty to talk about, so come and pick our brains!
Sunday, April 5, 2009 Collins Memorial Library (click for gallery talk info) 1:00-1:45 p.m. To the Letter gallery talk with Chandler O’Leary
2:00-3:00 p.m. Parts Unknown presentation with Jessica Spring
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d better go check for typos one more time.
