New News: Updates from January 2012

Recent and fun things include:

* Photos from the excellent London Artifice / ILK reading are up here.

* Some really exciting print and publishing projects are in the works for my return to Chicago this summer.

* I now have two author WorldCat library entries, which is pretty neat.

* A review of mine was published in the newest edition of Art in Print, on Richard Deacon's prints from Paragon Press.

* My 2011 poetry collection, Grow No Moss, was recently accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection.

* I've been invited to be the juror for the 2012 Mid-America Print Council exhibition, to be held this spring at Spudnik Press. Quite looking forward to seeing lots of new printmedia work!

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Madame Cézanne with striped skirt, c.1877, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)

I've been researching a bunch for school, and after thinking so much about Picasso's 1912 use of printed paper collage last term, I've become very interested in the use of printed, painted wallpaper in early modernist painting and portraiture. I'm starting to realize just how bizarre it looks. This is especially after seeing the Cézanne et Paris exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg (Paris) a month ago—an excellent show.

Wallpaper: it was everywhere for a long time! And now it is nowhere! I'm headed to the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A Art Library for more explorations later this week. Very exciting.

Easing In

There are these things about which you should probably know.


1.) Ash, London, is what we find inside wood, inside buildings, inside each of us, is the thing revealed by heat, is (as you noted) the secret heart of gray.


2.) ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::  [Red Lightbulbs #5] 


3.) "Your Personal Panopticon: An Interview with Christopher Meerdo" [The California Printeresting Printmaker]


4.) Oxford once, Cambridge twice. Venice for the Biennale. Paris next week (mainly for this). Then Ohio. Then, further secret adventures with compatriots await.


5.) It has been collage. Newspaper. Yet. Lately, my thoughts tend toward wallpaper.

Cate Marvin on being a poet.

"I like to think of poets as moving through the world with their minds poised like nets, intent on capturing scraps of language, resonant images. Thinking as a poet means viewing the world as a poem; thus, the poet is prone to existing in real space and time in a most vulnerable manner. This means being super-observant wherever your physical self takes your mind, as it requires being terribly receptive to light, images, movement, conversations between others, oddities many might be inclined to overlook in newspaper headlines, heatedly intimate conflicts overheard in public places, disingenuous directions offered by advertisements and street signs, etc." [From the BOMB Magazine Blog]. 


Cate's website is here.


Read the excellent poems "Fragment of the Head of a Queen" here and "Scenes from the Battle of Us" here.

Bonjour. Au revoir.

Tremendously excited about projects in London. Writing a lot. Working on a new poetry/prose collaboration using found and re-edited text, and very much enjoying the freedom and time to read books at my leisure and think about thesis-related ideas. It's nice to allow myself thoughts that evolve into new creatures after hours and days, rather than only having the headspace for short bursts of activity quickly forgotten. I am still myself, I will always have one too many things to do, but for now, for here, in London, in one of the most bustling cities in the world, I've managed to slow down a little. 

Mostly I've just been noticing how otherworldily-similar this city is to Chicago. Life seems to be the same, it's in the same language, except every third thing is just a little bit different, just that much more removed from what I expect. It's like Amelie changing her neighbor's shoes to a size smaller, or his lightbulb to be a bit dimmer. It's deja vu but not quite. It's a dream lived only in the corners of your eyes when you're trying to test your peripheral vision.

Today I visited Christie's South Kensington and had the treat of seeing an upcoming auction lot on display from the mysterious "Travel, Science, and Natural History" department. Loads of very strange and wonderful things.

Three taxidermied hummingbirds, c. 1850.

A Huntley & Palmers biscuit from the stores of the British Antarctic Expedition, 1908-1909, Cape Royds.

British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901-1904.  42 contact prints, the majority by Reginald Skelton, the subjects including Discovery in Winter Quarters at Ross Island, Mount Erebus and the scenery around Hut Point, sledging scenes and camps on the Barrier, and the return of the Southern Party.

A THREE-ROTOR ENIGMA CIPHER MACHINE, circa 1939. Number A-1206, with electric core, three aluminium rotors each stamped WaA618, raised 'QWERTZ' keyboard with crackle black painted metal case, plugboard in the front with ten patch leads, carrying case with spare bulbs, and green night-time filter.

A FRENCH TREPANNING SET, Leseur, late 18th century. Signed on the drill LESEUR also with a punched maker's mark of a crown over an A, drill-heads, perforators, elevators, lenticulars with turned wooden handles, in fitted case. 13.5in. (34.5cm.) long in case.

A MODEL OF THE 1784 GÉRARD FLYING MACHINE, FRENCH, LATE 19TH CENTURY. Painted wood and metal model with two wings on model engine mechanism, the tail feather and forward rudder operated by two interior handles, two opening doors, on three wheels. 21in. (54cm.) long.

Gah! It has feathers and a tiny door and tiny wheels!

Wonderful. From the larger poster, below.

TABLEAU D'AVIATION , French, Circa 1880. Lithographed poster illustrating mechanical flying machines from 1500-1880, by E. DIEUAIDE, 18, Rue de la Banque -- Paris, backed on linen. 21½ x 27in.

A BOXED AMERICAN ORRERY AND TELLURIAN SET. Josiah or Dwight Holbrook, mid-19th century. [With an accompanying awesome book: The teachers guide to illustration... 12th ed. (Chicago: Andrews, 1873).]

Grow No Moss: Process, Prints, & a Shop!

I recently posted on Printeresting about my time in the Ox-Bow print shop, and there are lots more photos from Ox-Bow on Flickr here. I thought I'd share some of the process behind making the lithograph that was printed as the cover of Grow No Moss. 

Some shots of the book being printed at Spudnik Press are below as well. Everything is being trimmed and bound at Salsedo Press today! 

And! BREAKING NEWS! You can place actual online book orders (pre-sale until August 25th) and check out more prints for purchase on the snazzy new Grow No Moss website.

Original lithograph in black ink on Kitakata paper that serves as the cover artwork for the book.

Lithographic stone (pre-etching) at Ox-Bow. Lots of tusche. Playing around with stamping, painting, and dripping with moss. (Yes, actual moss. Little bits of dirt and moss and sand on the surface of the stone there).

Lithograph on two small sheets of Kitakata paper, about 5" x 7" each, featuring poems from the book. More moss-tusche action on the left.

Lithographic stone (pre-etching) with poetry written backwards, playing around with cover options. This stone was big enough that I was able to print multiple sheets of paper for one roll-up and vary the size of the print.

This is the printed state #2 for one of my original cover ideas. A lithograph in black ink on grey Stonehenge paper. Tusche, moss stamping, pencil. Lots of experimentation in the margins.

State #1 on the stone (pre-etched) of the print shown above.

 State #2 on the stone (pre-second-etch) of the print shown above. The tusche is still drying on the stone.

Offset press-master Aaron Smith at Spudnik Press in the middle of printing my book!

Sheets just offset-printed drying on the rack.

The ethereal offset plate, ready for registration and ink.