Green Chair Press Blog

Book Arts Jam 2009

I’m participating again this year in the Book Arts Jam, a one-day regional celebration of the book and print arts, at Foothil College in Los Altos Hills, CA on Saturday October 17 from 10-4. The event features an exhibition of artists’ books, hands-on demonstrations, make-and-take activities, and an exhibitors’ showcase with work for sale by over 50 artists and craftspeople in the book, paper, and print arts. You’ll find a schedule, directions and a list of exhibitors here. If you get a chance to go, please stop by my table and say hello!

The Alphabetography Project

Rhiannon sent me a link to The Alphabetography Project: A Study Of Letters, a blog where the authors “eat Alpha-Bits cereal, drink alphabet soup and watch Sesame Street for the letter of the day.” I quite enjoyed looking through their photos of found letters — the one to the right is for a radio station in NYC. Check out the blog here.

Marking Time Exhibit

My friend Sharon & I went to the Guild of Bookworkers traveling member exhibit, Marking Time, at the SF Main Library the other day. As we walked into the library, Sharon said “I’ve looked at the exhibit online, will it be any better in person?” The answer was decidedly mixed.
One of the books that hardly got a notice online mesmerized me in the case — Andrew Huot’s Walks with Rosie. What he says about it:

This book chronicles two weeks of daily walks with my dog in our Philadelphia neighborhood, marking the routes and occurrences on the way. The city is reduced to line, shape, and color, and transparent papers reveal the echoes of yesterday and an allusion to tomorrow.

The maps seem bigger in person, and the transparency made me pause and think about my own daily perambulations around town and my neighborhood. You can see more detailed images here or visit Huot’s website for more of his bookworks.

Google Map Alphabet

Below are 2 letters from Rachel Young’s Alphabet, found using Google maps. You can see all of them here.

Dictionary Story

I’ve had lots of friends raise great wads of money for their technology ideas from venture capital firms — but raising a few thousand dollars to bank roll an artist’s book can be impossible. The web has changed that a bit — there’s a website called Kickstarter that is “a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers…” It aims to match artists with small ($5-$50) donors. The donors get something for their donation — maybe a copy of the book or CD produced, an invitation to a party…
Sam Winston’s project is to turn his artist’s book into a trade edition. If you go here, there’s a video about this book (pictured below, and he says about the book “Initially Dictionary Story started as a short narrative in which certain words from the dictionary became living characters that met each other…”). On his blog he has more pictures of the book and the poster he made from it. You can see other projects looking for funding here.

Book Collecting: Summer Day | Winter Night

I haven’t written recently about my fledgling artist’s book collection, so I spent some time today looking at my books. The one to the right is called “Summer Day/Winter Night.” Claire Van Vliet has printed Ruth Fine’s linocuts into an accordion book. What attracted me first was the riot of colors, but what I like about it is that summer is one side (the green pages in the photo) and winter nights are on the other.