Holy cannoli, everyone! I’ve only just now come up for air—I’ve been buried under invoices, subscription forms, kraft mailers, and email print-outs, and Thea’s face is repeated all around me as reserved copies are spread all over the studio. Since I posted her here on Tuesday night the orders have just poured in, and over three-quarters of the edition is spoken for already. And Prop Cake (see below) is disappearing fast, too; we’re down to our last handful. Wow—just…wow. Thank you all so, so much.
Since Thea and her fellow Dead Feminists have left T-Town to be shipped all over the country (and to lovely Canada, France, Switzerland and the UK, too!), I thought it appropriate to share some of the things Jessica and I talked about at TAM the other day with a wider audience. Now, normally my somewhat paralyzing fear of public speaking manifests itself by wiping my memory clean after I give a talk. It’s a very annoying thing, not being able to remember what you just said, but it happens all the time. I guess I’m fortunate that my phobias don’t show up as a quavering voice or profuse sweating (so nobody ever believes me when I say I get stage fright), but selective amnesia isn’t much of a fair trade for fake confidence! But this time, weirdly, it didn’t happen—I remember almost everything, and I think it’s because I wasn’t alone. (Jessica, I reckon that means you’re doomed to be my speaking partner from now on!) So to make sure my memory stays put, I’m setting it down here for the record. (By the way, since there’s rather a lot to say on the subject, I’ve decided to break it into two posts.)
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Before I get into the series itself, I should probably share a little background information on letterpress and the art of the broadside. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the process, letterpress printing refers to a type of relief printing, where pressure is applied to a piece of paper placed over a raised form that is covered with a thin layer of ink. This pressure transfers the inked image onto the paper, and can be repeated to create a batch, or edition, of prints. The form can be a carved block of wood or linoleum; a raised plate made of magnesium, photopolymer (plastic) or other materials; or as the term letterpress implies, movable type made from metal or wood.
The innovation of printing words from individual letter blocks that can be rearranged and reused was actually invented by the ancient Chinese (seriously, what wasn’t originally invented in China? We owe those folks a whole heap), but the process that evolved into modern letterpress was most famously perfected over 500 years ago by Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg, of Gutenberg Bible fame. By the first half of the twentieth century, when more modern commercial printing came along, it was still common for printers to perfect their layouts using movable type and relief-cut images on a proof press (such as Jessica’s Vandercook below). They’d then use the resulting print to make more sophisticated plates for their more efficient and advanced commercial presses.
Jessica demonstrates her Vandercook Universal One
Inside the studio at Springtide Press
As commercial printing became more streamlined, the cylinder and platen proof presses (see photo above) fell out of vogue, and eventually were no longer manufactured. Artists quickly saw their potential, however, and have adopted letterpress printing as an art form—using, refurbishing and maintaining this antique equipment to create original works of art.
Hand-in-hand with letterpress printing, the art of the broadside has also survived and evolved into a modern format. The term broadside means any single sheet used to convey information, often of a political kind—the great-grandpappy of the modern poster. While today the words broadside and poster are sometimes used interchangeably, the broadside has remained a favorite of the letterpress community because of its emphasis on typography and content (hey, we need an excuse to use all that gorgeous metal type!).
Jessica and I had this history in mind when we began the Feminist Broadside series. As I said before, we never dreamed of starting down the path we’re on now; we just wanted to make a political and artistic contribution to the election. Jessica sent me a quote by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (”Come, come my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles and see the world is moving”), and asked if I could illustrate the famous eyewear of a certain Vice-Presidential candidate we heard so much about last year; the plan was to use her impressive collection of wood and metal type to set the quote into the design. My earliest sketches took her request rather literally, but then I started looking at broadsides and circus posters from Stanton’s time, the Victorian era.
That’s when I made up my mind that this project could be something more than a jab at a political personality. I wanted it to be a piece that was beautiful in its own right, that would begin to do justice to Stanton’s words, and that would be longer-lasting than a momentary visual pun. Besides, Stanton put up one of the most important fights in American history: women’s suffrage. In this country with with a voter turnout rate of less than two-thirds, I wanted to do my small part to get women everywhere, regardless of political stripe, to the polls. And then my fingers started itching to draw my own letterforms—after all, for as much as I love hand-setting type, I’m continually frustrated by the finite number of typefaces available in that form. Not that I’m happy with choosing among the thousands and thousands of digital font families out there, either. Let’s just say I’m picky. So I made up my mind to draw all of the type by hand, and not to tell Jessica until the sketch was done.
I wasn’t there, but I imagine she rolled her eyes at me when she opened her email attachment that day.
Bless her heart, she went along with the idea. We scrapped the idea of setting type and went to an all-photopolymer format instead (more on that in part two), turning the piece into a truly modern, non-traditional letterpress project. And after the overwhelming and completely unexpected public response to Come, Come, we decided to keep going.
Our next subject was one that we both had been thinking about for some time: personal sustainability. As the Tailor and I are both hard-core seasonal foodies (more on this topic will probably come out eventually), and as Jessica is a member of a local crop share, we’d like to see a change in the American food system. So we turned to one of our favorite feminists: Eleanor Roosevelt. While serving as First Lady, Roosevelt planted a White House victory garden during World War II; thanks to her inspiration and example, during the War home gardens accounted for 40% of the U.S. supply of vegetable produce. We thought, hey, if it could be done once, why not again? So the colophon at the bottom included a plea for the new First Lady, Michelle Obama, to carry on in Roosevelt’s footsteps.
My inspiration for the design of Victory Garden came from a variety of sources. For one thing, the typography is inspired by the Art Deco designs of Roosevelt’s era. For another, I thought back to my time in France a year ago. I spent a day at Versailles while I was there, and at the time was struck by the meticulous aesthetic that unified every element of the place; everything from the wallpaper to the upholstery to the grounds themselves worked together to form a cohesive overall design. An overly ornate and despicably ostentatious design, sure (Marie Antoinette should have known the consequences of going overboard with luxury in the face of her starving people), but it was beautiful in its own right. I especially loved the sculpted hedges and lawns of the Versailles gardens; the patterns form a stunning, living brocade at one’s feet.
I abstracted that idea into a two-dimensional White House lawn, made up with an original brocade pattern of spiraling leaves.
When we finally arrived at the finished product, we were happily surprised to learn that many others had had similar thoughts. We discovered Michael Pollan’s editorials; learned about the Eat the View movement; and found many other like-minded folk along the way—including one who purchased a copy of Victory Garden for her friend, a direct descendant of Eleanor Roosevelt herself. As the icing on the cake, one of our customers had a personal connection to the Obamas, and promised to deliver a copy of the broadside to the First Lady, with our compliments. As we have no written proof, we can only hope it reached her; nevertheless, we’re taking a bit of personal pride in being part of a larger movement, as well as the fact that the new White House garden is already happening. Victory garden, indeed.
At the same time we celebrated the positive changes happening around the country, we were shocked and dismayed to learn that Proposition 8 had passed in California. Now, I know that people are extremely divided on this issue, so in the interest of respecting others I’ll try not to open any worm-cans here (this is an art blog, not a soap box). But we wanted to express our thoughts on the matter, so Prop Cake was born. The initial idea for this piece came almost immediately; Jessica looked over at me on the drive back from Seattle one day and said, “How about a big, pink wedding cake?” I grinned from ear to ear, and started sketching as soon as I got home. The design didn’t come together so easily, however. Everything I came up with looked more like an ad for Modern Bride than a political poster. Frustrated, I pushed my sketches aside and took a few days off to think.
And then I went to San Francisco.
It was my first trip there, and my first thought as I passed through the residential neighborhoods, with rows and rows of candy-colored stucco houses, was “Wow, these things look like big frosted cakes!” And the lightbulb turned on, at last. I spent three days walking, driving, and riding around the neighborhoods, camera and sketchbook in hand. I made pages and pages of notes on architectural detailing.
When I arrived home, I got right to work. This time, finally, it all came together.
We usually space our broadsides about three months apart, but the King’s Books Wayzgoose gave us a head start (click the link to read about the first Tugboat Thea) on the latest piece.
This time, though, we weren’t limited by what we could hand-carve out of a slab of linoleum. I could let the little Victorian details spiral out of control (I never know when to quit), Jessica could expand on Thea’s contributions in the colophon, and we had the capability for multi-color printing at our disposal (it’d be a lot less fun to try color registration on a steamroller, in the rain). So we let the first Thea serve as a rough draft, and worked out any design kinks in the layout of the sequel.
The fun of art-making and the joy of the public response aside, the best part of creating this series has been exploring the lives and work of so many inspirational people. Feminism has become somewhat of a dirty word these days—mostly because of misconceptions. To us it’s a positive thing, and creating this series is our way of celebrating those who championed far more than just gender equality. Besides, we’d like to make our own contribution to our social history, and using art as our mode of expression is the best way we know how.
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Next time: the nitty gritty process behind “digital letterpress.”
