December 2007 – Page 2 – Green Chair Press Blog

Holiday Fairs

This coming weekend is a busy one for me — two days of selling at holiday fairs. If you’re in the SF Bay Area, hope you can stop by!
For me, this is probably the end of my holiday selling — since most of my wares are mail order, in the next week I’ll send out the last of my holiday packages. Whew, it’s been a busy fall and I’m looking forward to a quiet end of December when I’ll put my feet up and enjoy a glass or 2 of eggnog and give my press and studio a much needed rest!
But, until then…
On Saturday December 15th from 11am-6pm I’ll be at the Bazaar Bizarre in Golden Gate Park along with many other Etsy sellers. You can see a full list of vendors here.
And from 12-5pm on Sunday December 16th is the holiday fair at San Francisco Center for the Book where you’ll find artists’ books and journals, letterpress goods and lots more, from a variety of vendors. SFCB is on Potrero Hill in San Francisco.

All these are vices

I think my favorite time to drop in at the SF Center for the Book is mid to late afternoon, maybe 3:30. Usually several people are letterpress printing in the front studio and there’s a quiet hum of activity. All sorts of projects get printed at the center: invitations, cards, wood block and linoleum prints, broadsides and even the occasional book. Last Friday Roger Snell was printing an 8×12 broadside for a reading December 4th at Moe’s bookstore in Berkeley, “a gift … to celebrate the new year 2008 and publication of the Collected Poems of Philip Whalen by Wesleyan University Press.” (That’s what it says on the back.) It’s printed on thick thick creamy stock, and has a blind embossed hit of wood type below the quote. Roger gave me one, and I’ve photographed it to share the quote, and maybe think about my own vices. (Read more about Whalen on wikipedia, but better to read Alastair Johnston’s reminiscences.)

Daybooks

Every month this fall, Mary, over at Red Squirrel Studio, has been binding a book to fill, day by day, with a drawing of her hand. When she was visiting California from Maine recently, she enlisted several of us to try her experiment with her — to make and fill a book “one page a day, with a brief recurring art exercise of our own choosing, related (or not related!) to our regular art form”.
So, starting in January, four of us will be getting together once a month to share our results (or lack thereof!). One of our group has already chosen her repetitive exercise — small weavings of paper and other materials. But I’m not so sure what I’ll do. Originally I thought I’d make small collages, but I’m not committing quite yet. Good thing I have until January to decide!
Of course such daily exercises aren’t a new idea — so for inspiration I’ve been poking around on the web to see what other people do for their daily practice. For starters, my friend Cathy pointed me to an online exhibition of daily collages by Janine Wong called Quotidian Practice (that’s one of her collages to the left).