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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.

I can’t believe I missed my annual Thanksgiving post! Sorry about that—lately Chez Anagram has been a bizarre mix of hotel, restaurant, warehouse and factory. You should see my dining room these days: it gives new meaning to the term cottage industry.

Right now the factory is churning out Christmas—starting with this year’s letterpress ornament collection. This is the second year in what I hope will be an annual tradition, and I have been dying to show you this year’s crop.

Thankfully, I can finally let the…ahem…cat out of the bag.

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Photo by Laurie Cinotto

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.

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Yes, there’s sushi on that press sheet. Three guesses as to what the other ornament set is 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.

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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.

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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.

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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 of my design, and sent it off to a friendly steel rule manufacturer in Kent.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A little masking tape,

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some quick eyeballing,

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and slow-and-steady cranking in the press—

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—and Bob, as they say, is your uncle.

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Individually taping down all eleventy billion 200 press sheets was a little mind-numbing, but still, the “finished” pile added up fast.

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And it was awfully satisfying to see the whole edition completed in days rather than weeks or months.

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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.

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A quick coat of black around the edges,

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and just a wee bit of cursive script on the back,

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—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.

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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!

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“It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, abled, disabled, gay or straight. You can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.”

— President Obama, 6 November 2012

There’s a lot of work ahead, and not every step we took today was in the right direction. But I want to thank everyone who voted for women’s rights, for marriage equality, for four more years. Tonight I’m raising my glass to everyone who voted to move us Forward.

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If you have any sort of link to the outside world (television, radio, internet access, newspaper, mailbox), chances are you’ve been unable to escape this year’s deluge of advertising, chatter and glossy-printed recycling fodder—all centered around this coming Tuesday. It’s enough to have even four-year-olds throwing up their hands in frustration. Jessica and I, however, have spent many hours sifting through election material—1972 election material, I mean. To remind us of what’s really important this year (and every year), we turned to the woman who help paved the way for our current President.

The one thing you’ve got going: your one vote.  —Shirley Chisholm

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Shirley Chisholm was one of fifteen Presidential candidates in 1972. It was a volatile time—the Vietnam War was the center of public discord; movements for civil rights and gender equality were major issues around the western world; and the race came on the heels of one of the bloodiest election years in American history.

Shirley knew she was a long shot; she even referred to herself as “literally and figuratively the dark horse.” Yet she also knew that to run for President, all that was required was to be a natural-born U.S. citizen of at least 35 years of age. There was nothing in there about being male or Caucasian—and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, she was at least as qualified as her fellow candidates. So she ran, because it was her right, and because she knew that if she played it smart and started winning delegates, she’d have some power to leverage.

Shirley sought to create a truly representative government. Rather than a cookie-cutter set of interchangeable politicians running the country, she envisioned an America where each region, economic sector and ethnic group elected one of its own to office. She wanted to see a woman heading the Department of Education & Welfare; a Native American in charge of the Department of the Interior. And as a freshman Congresswoman she was assigned to the House Forestry Committee but refused to serve—how would forest stewardship or agricultural bills represent New York’s 12th Congressional District?

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She also saw her office as an opportunity to encourage women—especially women of color—to get involved in politics. Every member of her staff was a woman, half of them African-American. To say the least, her very presence made her fellow legislators nervous—and on top of everything else, she was probably the only woman of color in the whole country who made the exact same salary as her white male colleagues. (Heck, for people like Yvette Clarke or Barbara Lee, that’s probably still true for the most part. How depressing is that?)

On the national political stage, however, her race and gender were two strikes against her. She gathered support from the National Organization for Women, but when the time came for NOW to officially endorse a candidate, their squeamishness over the possibility of a black nominee overcame their lip service. And the Black Congressional Caucus, of which Shirley was a founding member, threw her under a bus because they couldn’t bring themselves to support a female candidate. To me, that’s the most interesting thing—Shirley Chisholm always said she faced far more discrimination over her gender than the color of her skin.

Still, though she had to battle opposition and prejudice from all sides, she worked to bring people of all stripes together. When her opponent George Wallace (yes, that George Wallace—Mr. “Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever”) was wounded in an assassination attempt, Shirley visited him in the hospital. They were the ultimate Odd Couple: years later Wallace used his clout among Southern congressmen to help Shirley pass a bill giving domestic workers the right to a minimum wage.

In the end, though she gathered 152 delegates, she knew she’d never snag the Democratic nomination. So she conceded to George McGovern—who went on to win just one state (Massachusetts) in the 1972 Presidential election. Take a look at the electoral college map for that year:

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That’s a whole lotta red.

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And since this election season marks the fourth anniversary of our series, that map was the starting point for Keep the Change, our new Dead Feminist broadside. I redrew the map in blue, and from there we crafted a period homage to Shirley’s impeccable style and substance.

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The 12th Congressional District was one of the areas hardest hit last week by Hurricane Sandy. While the immediate recovery efforts in the city are crucial, we also recognize the importance of serving a community long after the disaster relief efforts have ended. So to help continue Shirley’s long-term service to her home city, we’ll be donating a portion of our proceeds  to Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration, the nation’s first non-profit community development corporation. Restoration partners with residents and businesses to improve the quality of life of Central Brooklyn by fostering economic self sufficiency, enhancing family stability, promoting the arts and culture and transforming the neighborhood into a safe, vibrant place to live and work.

In the meantime, let’s do what Shirley did best—cast our vote, and keep fighting the good fight.

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Keep the Change: No. 16 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 152
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (1924–2005) was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York — though she spent her early years growing up in Barbados with her grandmother and younger sisters. She earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and moved on to teach, becoming an authority on early education. After working as a consultant to the Bureau of Child Welfare, Chisholm won a seat in the New York State Assembly in 1964. She ran for the House of Representatives in 1968 under the slogan “Unbought and Unbossed,” and was the first African-American woman elected to Congress. As a junior member, she was assigned to the House Forestry Committee but demanded reassignment on the grounds that she couldn’t effectively represent her inner-city constituency. A founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, she served seven terms in Congress.

In 1972 Chisholm ran for U.S. President, the first woman and African American on a major party ticket. She fiercely supported the rights of women and people of color, and opposed the Vietnam War. She was “literally and figuratively the dark horse”— women voters limited their support based on race, and the Congressional Black Caucus backed off because of her gender. Though she didn’t win a single primary, she proved “a catalyst for change,” gathering 152 delegates and demonstrating that women could compete nationally. Chisholm ended her campaign at the Convention, releasing her delegates to George McGovern — who lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon.

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring. Please vote to keep women moving forward.

Available now in the Dead Feminists shop!

The next Dead Feminist broadside will be released at the CODEX Bookfair in Richmond, CA, in February 2013.

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.)

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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!

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Today is my fourth anniversary of living in lovely T-town. And all I can think of is: A) I can’t believe it’s been four years already—

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and B) I still can’t believe I live in a place where artichokes will grow happily in the front yard.

I love this place.

Since they tell me a picture’s worth a bucket of words:

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Thank you, everyone!

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My brain is chock full of useless information—I could sing you about 35,000 ad jingles on key, or recite Jurassic Park or Trading Places or a hundred other movies line-for-line. But don’t challenge me to a game of Poker, because I have a terrible head for card games. I love playing them, and am always up for learning when friends come over a suggest a rubber of something or other. The trouble is, I forget the rules right away—so whenever I sit down to a rematch, it’s like starting at square one.

As an example, I used to do summer stock theatre, and we techies had a tradition of playing Hearts backstage during the sound check. So I played Hearts every night for two months straight, three summers in a row, and I still can’t remember the rules now. (Something about being saddled with the Queen of Spades, and lots of half-joking shouted epithets surrounding that card, but that’s about it.)

Over the years I have learned and forgotten dozens of card games—including Snap, President, Pitch, Five Card Draw, Seven Card Stud, Crazy Eights, Kings Corners, Egyptian Ratscrew, Spades, Slapjack, Pig, Cheat, Five Hundred, Hand & Foot, Whist—and probably plenty of others that I’ve even forgotten the name for.

About the only games I can ever keep in my head are the embarrassingly simple ones like War, Go Fish, Old Maid and Blackjack. Oh, and I can play Cribbage like a fiend, because my dad and his Scottish friend Alex taught me when I was nine or ten. We used to have hilariously cutthroat wee-lass-vs.-grown-man Cribbage tournaments on a regular basis, so how could I ever forget that?

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Being lousy at remembering any card games, however, hasn’t stopped me from wanting to design a card game. Or collecting interesting or unusual decks (the Tailor and I have a good dozen in regular rotation). So when my friends Maija and Amy asked me to be the designer on the poker deck they were dreaming up, I think must have freaked them out by shouting, “YES!” before they’d even finished their sentence.

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These gals weren’t looking for any old run-of-the-mill card deck, either. They wanted to show off Tacoma in all her architectural splendor. And since we’re blessed with a veritable boatload of fabulously talented artists in this town, they decided to divvy up the deck by ranks—with fourteen artists, each tackling a list of locations in four-of-a-kind fashion. And as an added bonus, I got first dibs on my favorite Tacoma haunts.

Beyond just creating something beautiful and fun, Amy and Maija have their eyes on a bigger prize. They want to create a real, no-kidding Tacoma souvenir. We get a lot of visitors and tourists around here, what with the Sound and the Mountain and the Universities and what-have-you—but you’d be hard-pressed to find Tacoma-specific tchotchkes (or even postcards!) that aren’t sarcastic. And I know I’m not the only one around here who’s a little tired of folks knockin’ T-town, based solely on a stereotype and a thirty-year-old reputation. So we’re upping the ante a little, and offering a bit of hard evidence that Tacoma is pretty dern great.

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You know my schtick by now, so you can guess that all the lettering and pattern doo-dads are hand-drawn. I had the pleasure of designing the suits, rank typography, card face template, card backs and box.

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I even got to design the logo for Maija and Amy’s company, Tacoma Makes. Basically, it was the kind of project I’m always on the lookout for, but which rarely lands in my lap. So I spent about half of the time grinning my fool head off, and the other half pinching myself in disbelief.

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I also got to flex my file-production muscles. I love to geek out over the technical side of design, but since I started my business, most of my production work has centered around letterpress printing. So playing with dielines and spot color swatches again was a nice little challenge.

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We’re taking all these extra steps because this is a real, bona fide, professional-grade poker deck. The kind folks at the U.S. Playing Card Company are manufacturing the cards for us—they’re the people behind the Bicycle, Bee, Hoyle and other card brands. So you won’t have to hedge your bets that this deck will be extra tasty.

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To raise funds for the card printing, and even pay for modest artist contracts, we set up a Kickstarter project (much like the Apocalypse Calendar that you all so graciously funded last year). Now normally this would be where I explain that Kickstarter projects are only funded if they reach their entire monetary goal by the deadline—but I don’t have to! I left town for a few days, just after the project launch, with the intention of spreading the word when I got home. So imagine how floored I was to come back and discover that we’d met our goal in just six days!

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The response to this has been staggering. And it’s not only the lovely legions of fellow Tacomans who have supported us—we’re seeing pledges come in from all over the country. And as a nerdy fan-girl aside, I just have to squeal and tell you that Neko Freaking Case (a hometown Tacoma gal) has been retweeting my designs in the Twitterverse. Dorky internet hero fantasy: fulfilled, folks.

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Artwork by Britton Sukys

The very best part of all of this, though, is getting to be the first to see the collection of incredible artwork come down the pike. Everybody involved in the project has gone above and beyond our wildest imagination. And I love being able to collaborate with so many talented people—

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Artwork by Jessica Spring

both well-known friends,

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Artwork by Shaun Peterson

and folks I’d only dreamed of working with.

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The Kickstarter project will run through July 19, so you can still contribute if you want to get in on rewards and goodies that are only available to backers. Otherwise, the cards will be in hand and dealt out this November—along with an exhibition of all the original artwork.

There’s even a rumor of an artist game night in the works, so cut the cards! I’m up for any game you’re willing to teach me—as long as you don’t mind that I’ll probably forget the rules before the night is through.

In the meantime, thank you so much for all your support for our crazy card deck! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—Tacomans (and honorary Tacomans!) are my favorite folks on earth.

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If you happen to live in Washington state, you can’t help but notice that love is in the air. It’s not quite what you think, though—rather than turtledoves and cupids flying around, the breeze is carrying ballot petitions and angry voices.

Though Washington became the seventh U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage earlier this year, opponents forced a voter referendum to decide the issue this November. So while we’d rather just toast our friends and their families, we’ve got to put up our dukes first.

Already tempers are running high, and everyone seems to be up in arms—it’s total anarchy out there. So we thought, who better to talk to than an anarchist?

The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.  —Emma Goldman

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Huh. Pretty down-to-earth for an anarchist, actually. Especially if you consider some of the other things Emma’s said in the past.

I think that if we could somehow put all the ladies we’ve featured previously into a room together, they might end up killing each other (good thing they’re already dead, eh?). They all had such different ideologies and passions that I can’t imagine all fourteen of them agreeing on any one thing. But I’m fairly sure they’d be united over Emma—in thinking she was a complete weirdo, that is. (Sorry, Emma.)

Yet for all her outlandish creeds and fierce opinions, her thoughts on families, love and motherhood cut straight to the heart of the matter. And that’s what drew us to her.

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To pay homage to Emma’s folksy words, we turned to folk art for inspiration. (Get out your grandma’s Pyrex and raise a glass!) Love Nest is dominated by a lively brood of nesting matryoshka dolls. Each individual is different, but together they complete the picture of a nurtured, multicolor family. Roosters, hens and chicks complete the flock waiting for the next generation to hatch as Emma’s words stitch the family together.

To support the diversity nested within every family, we’ll be donating a portion of the proceeds to both the Rainbow Center and Oasis Youth Center, right here in T-town. The Rainbow Center is dedicated to eliminating discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. Oasis is a drop-in support center dedicated to the needs of GLBTQ youth ages 14-24.

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Speaking of chickens, if you look closely, you’ll spot another tribute—to the very first matryoshka doll ever made.

This might well be the most difficult piece we’ve tackled yet. Beyond the challenges of marrying (no pun intended) the views of a 19th-century fringe activist to modern-day social issues, we also had some seriously precarious business on the technical side. Those of you who are into the nitty gritty details of letterpress may know that each print color requires a separate plate, a separate pass on press. We’ve got four colors in the final result, but because of the tricky magic of translucent inks, there’s actually only three plates/three passes here. The red and teal mix to make brown—which means that the registration (alignment) of each plate had to match up just right.

I was expecting Jessica to throttle me when I showed her the color separations, but as usual, she barely even batted an eye: “Yeah, we can do that.”

Or maybe she just knows me so well now that she’s expecting the crazy.

Love Nest: No. 15 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 126
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) was born in Kovno, part of the Russian Empire (now Lithuania). She moved to New York in 1885 to live with relatives, supporting herself with factory work. In the following year, news of the Chicago Haymarket riot changed Goldman’s life. In honor of the riot victims and the labor movement, she determined to “dedicate myself to the memory of my martyred comrades, to make their cause my own.” She joined Alexander Berkman—another Russian immigrant—in spreading her vision of an ideal society, based on the anarchist principle of absolute freedom. Goldman founded the political and literary journal “Mother Earth,” and toured the country speaking about anarchism, birth control and economic freedom for women. She was arrested numerous times over her unconventional opinions, accused of disseminating illegal information and inciting to riot.

At a time when even her fellow anarchists questioned her support of homosexuality, Goldman spoke out: “It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding … and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender.” She openly opposed U.S. entry into WWI, was jailed once more for obstruction of the draft, and finally deported back to Russia under the 1918 Alien Act. She spent the rest of her life in exile, supporting anarchist causes abroad. After her death, Goldman’s body was repatriated and buried in Chicago—near the Haymarket anarchists that had so inspired her.

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, who with Goldman “demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood.”

Price: $40

Available now in the Dead Feminists shop!

To offset rising supply costs, we’ve had to raise our price a bit. But through the month of June, you can still purchase Signed, Sealed, Soapbox at the old price. Starting on July 1, all Dead Feminist posters, including those available from resellers, will be $40, so complete your collection before the price goes up! The next Dead Feminist broadside will be released at Penland in August, and online in September.

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Sorry about that. Deadlines. Lots of them. I just had to put the blinkers on, shut off the computer entirely, screen all calls, and get down to business. For a solid month.

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Actually, I’m still going on that—this is proving to be a crazy (but productive!) summer. So I just can’t keep up with the trip posts right now. Instead, I’m going to take a hiatus on those, and just work on finishing them behind the scenes until they’re all ready to post here. In the meantime, I’ll be checking in with updates on the stuff that’s got me hiding from the Internets lately.

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Like (what feels like) a million tiny cut-out Space Needles, for example.

Which reminds me! The kind folks at Stanford University put together a little video demonstrating how my artist book Local Conditions 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.

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Speaking of exhibitions, my little Spaceworks installation is shaping up nicely.

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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!)

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Once I’m done drawing Tacoma, I’ll be gearing up to draw North Carolina. As of right now, there are only three spots left in the letterpress class I’m teaching with Jessica at Penland! So hurry and make those travel plans, because you won’t want to miss out.

And finally, look for more surprises here next week. First up will be the next Dead Feminist broadside. It’s a tad late, I know, but we wanted to make sure we did it right. As you’ll soon see, this is proving to be a tricky widget. I won’t spoil the surprise, but I will give you a little taste:

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Any guesses?

One last thing: I’m helping some friends of mine cook up a big ol’ basket of hometown pride. That’s all I’ll say for now, but we’ll be ready to spill the beans next week.

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It’ll be worth the wait, I promise.

See you soon!