My Food Diary is mentioned in the November issue of Prevention Magazine. I’ve been making these little books using the double fan binding method for a long time for myself, and about a year ago made some extras to see if anyone would buy one. I’ve made 3 more batches since then, many more than I thought I’d sell!
Rhiannon sent me link to a post of 30 Alphabet Recreations — alphabets made of every day objects, like food or clips made to hang frames on the wall. Above is the one I liked best. The woman who made it says
Building up the letters also reminded me very much of typesetting, as every type made of colored books had to be blocked with white books, just as it is done in letterpress, where large areas of white space are created by wooden blocks called furniture.
See more details here.
 23 Sandy Gallery, in Portland, has an exhibition of letterpress printed broadsides this month. But you don’t have to go to Oregon to see it — they have an excellent online catalog of the show. It includes not only pictures, but the text of all the works! To the right is one I particularly liked — Katie Harper’s Everything Dances — probably because I’m always partial to wood type and any dance quote. |
After a lot of waffling about whether or not to print a calendar for 2010, I gave up on a month-by-month extravaganza and instead did a mini entire-year-on-one-page design — it’s 5″ x 7″, a small edition of 65, printed on 110lb lettra, in 3 colors. You can see some close-up photos here.
Yesterday I met my friend Cathy up in San Francisco to see an exhibit called Bookish at the back of a shop called Adobe Books in the Mission district. The front of the shop is chocked full of shelves of new and used books and a few comfy chairs for readers. On the way to the gallery space in the back, we passed a guy hunched over a typewriter, single-mindedly tapping away.
The exhibition space is small, but full of surprises. In the corner was a fake flame crackling on top of a pyre of books — which unfortunately had the wrong effect on me, as the noise was comforting, like a cozy fireplace to curl up beside to read a book. There were about half a dozen other works on display with the best being a small shelf with five “classical” books that viewers were invited to read. Turns out they each were hollowed out, and nestled in the removed space was a handwritten, very funny summary of, and running commentary on, the book’s plot. The artist is Jennie Ottinger. Below are images of 2 of the books — Anna Karenina, so you can see the structure (the tabs on the right help you to turn the pages). Below that you should be able to read part of the one we both particularly enjoyed, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.
The Guild of Bookworkers traveling member exhibit, Marking Time, at the SF Main Library was pretty much equally divided between fine bindings (a rebinding and covering of a published book) and artists’ books. For the fine bindings, what was on display was everything the artist did — cover and endsheets. The artists’ books, for the most part, weren’t displayed nearly as well. The descriptions of the books gave tantilizing hints about what was inside, but the viewer was lucky to see even one page!
There was one glorious exception, though. Jessica Spring’s Parts Unknown was arrayed in its own case — opened wide so I could sit on the floor and see all the pictures and read much of the text. According to the description, the photos were “ink-jet printed on handmade abaca (and) varnished”, giving them a transparent quality that was quite fetching. But the fonts she used were the best part. The description says it’s all handset type, but don’t give the names, so I wrote Jessica and asked her what they were — she replied “The script is Dorchester (new from M&H) and the text is Packard (very dirty from my shop) and good old Copperplate. The bottom titling is wood type. Not enough of anything, so there was lots of setting and setting again!” That’s a sample of Dorchester above, see the entire font on fonts.com. Jessica’s book is pictured below. You can find out more about her on her website.
