Green Chair Press Blog

Rock-paper-scissors

My husband got me watching the TV show In Plain Sight with him by convincing me I wanted to see a show set in our new home — New Mexico. On an episode we watched recently, the 2 lead characters played rock-paper-scissors to determine who would have to do something neither wanted to do. I immediately thought that might be a good tool for me — moving and getting our new house in order has been full of chores no one wants to do (who’s going to call the city recycling again because they missed our pickup? Or worse, who’s going to call the manufacturer yet again because the appliance we bought has broken for the Nth time — I finally got them to take it back as a lemon…) I got my husband to agree to the rock-paper-scissors decider game, but then I saw the poster below (here) explaining how to win rock-paper-scissors every time — which I read immediately, and now can’t in all honesty play it with him. (Who knew there were tournaments and world championships!)
And while this post isn’t about book arts, it is about a well designed broadside…

Tape Brothers

When I was designing To a Friend Going Blind, I wanted to use a sewing measuring tape for the binding. A conventional measuring tape, bought from a sewing supply store, was too thick and too expensive for an edition of 50. Then somewhere I found rolls of tape that looked like a measuring tape. (As a binding it was strong, but a pain to prepare — I had to unroll the tape and apply it to tissue paper first as it had adhesive on the back, then cut the blank top off by hand.) When I packed up my studio in December, I found 1/2 a roll, and carted it here to Santa Fe, although I’m not sure why.
When I found that 1/2 roll, I had already packed up my copy of the finished book, so I couldn’t go back and look at it. And of course I quickly forgot that I wanted to look at it again… until the other day when I read an article in Salon called “The craft that consumed me” where the author mentions making duct tape wallets and says “Check out TapeBrothers.com, which features an extraordinary selection, even my most-loathed pattern of all time after perhaps animal print anything: camouflage.” So I did. The measuring tape tape is filed under “Artist Tapes.” Seems like a good resource to know about. Then I went off and found my copy of To a Friend Going Blind and re-read the poem with a cup of tea.

Despalles éditions

In conjunction with the CODEX book fair next February, the KALA Institute in Berkeley is offering several book arts-related workshops. I took a peek at the list, and was intrigued by one title: “When poetry meets contemporary art, or: how the text is getting a shape.” The description says it’s a lecture-workshop that will discuss, among other things, “the liberation of typography as a visual art; the variable aspects of the double-page as the basis of the book when its form is the codex” using books produced at the publisher Despalles éditions
Of course I went to their website to see what sort of books they’re making. I immediately found Cozette de Charmoy’s Oracle, below. The explanation text is in French, and unfortunately beyond the smattering I’ve retained from high school. And while Google translate is somewhat helpful, just looking at the pictures is a treat. Go here to see their work, there are several pictures for each book.

Book Carvings

Australian artist Kylie Stillman carves images in the sides of books. See here work here. I first saw a mention of it here. Once I looked around the web for more references, I found this great comment from Lee Kottner about Stillman: “Her book stack carvings remind me of the elaborate fore-edge paintings in their distortion of the book. In this case, instead of fanning the book to create a canvas, she disregards the boundaries of the book, like covers, to make a sculptural surface.”

Shadow Type

This past weekend I went to the Spanish Market at the Santa Fe plaza. There were all sorts of crafts, including papercuts (called papel picado in Spanish). They are so intricate, and I thought, not for the first time, about trying one myself. I also saw a demonstration of tinwork — decorations punched into tin (see some examples here) — and I got to look at several punches.
When I got home, I found this page about papel picado that says the designs are sometimes cut the same way as tinwork: “the artisan … cuts through multiple layers of paper using a mallet to pound finely sharpened chisels of varying sizes and shapes through the paper and into the sheet of lead.” (Who knew? I assumed they used scissors or an xacto blade!)
Today, courtesy of Steve Mehallo’s blog, I found a seemingly easier papercutting method — shadow typography done by Seree Kang — see below. You can see more of her work here including a variation she calls “Cube Typography.”

Photographing Bookworks

Photographing artist’s books can be tricky and frustrating — getting the lighting right, staging the book to show off all its features… The 23 Sandy Gallery blog recently had a 2 part post on “What Makes a Good Photograph for Submission to a Juried Show or Gallery” (which also applies to photographing your work for selling online). Part I is here and Part 2 is here.