forgetgutenberg

(Slightly bonkers but still wildly entertaining project, two of three. The middle one.)

Ever since I took the rocks for jocks class in college (ok, it wasn’t really rocks for jocks, it was rocks for people who wanted to hear Mark McMenamin talk about Hypersea and Ediacarans and salt), I’ve been totally fascinated by the Burgess Shale. It’s a remarkably well-preserved fossil bed, and one day I will visit it. (It’s in Canada, so I will have to get a passport first.)

You know how sometimes you’re really bored and kind of cranky, so you cast desperately around for something to make? Because making things usually helps with being overwhelmed by crap? (Maybe that’s just me. It could just be me.) Well, imagine that’s how it works. And then imagine that your weirdo housemate was a geology/English lit double major and has this weird plastic Anomalocaris toy. (And Wiwaxia. I’m pretty sure there are others, but those are the two that stuck in my mind.)

Also, I’ve been procrastinating as well as feeling overwhelmed. I like my procrastination to be at least a little productive. Actually, I like to claim that when I’m procrastinating, my brain is making fancy connections and coming up with things so that when I get around to not procrastinating, there will be nice, fully-formed things for me to do.

This is mostly crap.

Sometimes, though, I can pull something out of one of these bouts of feeling like my brain reserves are totally dry. I’ve been designing posters of Burgess shale fauna. They’re pretty awesome. I’ve got the creatures drawn, I need to do a couple of layers of background, and then I’ll post samples. (They’re actually so much fun to do that it might happen in the reasonably near future. Although I might need different pens or something, because instead of using watercolor paper like a sensible person, I used bristol board. I know. What was I thinking?)

But because of the way I did the creatures, I have a dilemma: originally, I was going to do linoleum cuts. Now, there are all these delicate lines much better suited for engraving or (maybe) photopolymer. I could go through one more redesign in an attempt to make them more linoleum-friendly, or I could put them on hold until I have enough money to get the photopolymer.

If it was just that, I would probably just make them into lino cuts, honestly. But there’s also the text. Yeah, there’s text. I wanted it to be a good solid sans — and I started the designs with an interpretation of Franklin Gothic. Which I could do in linoleum — it wouldn’t be the first time. But here I am, questioning lino, at least in part because I don’t have the right size blocks as it is. (I admit, my first thought was reduction blocks. Because that’s always fun.) So maybe it would be better to wait, and buy a font of 72 pt Franklin Gothic caps. (It’s possible — it’s in the Swamp Press catalog. Actually, no, wait, it’s not. Futura is, though, and Futura would be all right too.)

And, you know, then there’s another doubt: do these need to be letterpress? I keep thinking about making them more easily reproducible. On the other hand, limited editions are kind of my thing. And I know what paper I want to use. And I do need to experiment with pressure printing — which, if I went with my usual printing machine, would be how I’d do the backgrounds.

I’m going to debate this for a while, I think. In the meantime, I’ll finish the first designs, because they’re wildly entertaining. I enjoy making ridiculously complicated full-scale mockups. Also, it helps a lot in terms of visualizing details, even though the media I use for my mockups are usually quite different from my final printing process.

That’s project number two. It’s probably the most complicated to actually start, but once I make decisions, should be possible to finish quite quickly. It’s just that at this rate, I might not make any decisions for months.

One of three.

Well, ok, two. The middle one is actually pretty small, I just need money to fund supplies.

So: this thing. There’s a lot of talk about biking and urban planning, especially around where I live. There’s not a lot about walking. There’s some – although it never really seems to be about purposeful walking, but that’s probably a different issue. I think, in some ways, bikes are just as problematic as cars.

One of the problems with cars is that you don’t usually get to see a lot of the place you’re traveling through. Well, you don’t see a whole lot on a bike either. More than from a car, maybe, but not much.

On the other hand, when you’re walking, you can see everything. It’s fine if you stop all the time to look at things, you’re kind of on the right level for both architecture and nature; it’s pretty awesome, actually.

Combine this with two things I think about a lot: first, mapping the place where I live, so I can actually navigate effectively and stop getting lost at the drop of a hat; second, being aware of all the cool stuff. Tourist things, sort of, although I generally try to get off the beaten paths when I can. But since the conversation that got me thinking about this aspect most recently was with a person doing tourist things, it seems reasonable. (I had to take a detour to investigate: there’s purple glass in some of the windows right off the Common. It’s purple because it’s old, and has the sort of impurities that change color with age.)

Anyway. So when I found the really useful assessors’ maps of Somerville, I decided I’d start taking this little nugget of an idea more seriously. I’ve been thinking about making it a point to walk every street in town, and maybe to document the good bits with photographs, and yes, probably eventually make it into a book of some sort. It seems reasonable, right?

And today I wanted to go for a walk, so I went out to Ten Hills and the Mystic River. Which was pretty excellent. I’ve done a couple of other areas recently, including some of the landmarks of Somerville’s industrial history, and I’ve taken a lot of pictures. The project part of this will be sorting through photos and making a coherent collection – fortunately, I’m not on a deadline, and that sort of thing can be fun.

This one is from somewhere near Davis Square, I think.

Which I suspect you already knew.

Due to a slight miscalculation, MLK came up short on type-high squares. Fortunately, they’re 36 point, which is half an inch, and you can buy square dowels. Unfortunately, we don’t have quite the right tools for making tiny, precise wooden things.

So, an hour and a half later, the miter box is covered in sawdust, I have a new appreciation for the pre-existing squares (which were made by Bill of Virgin Wood Type) and are actually beautiful little pieces of type-high fabulousness, and we have some things that might work. They’re not all the same height, which means fun makeready, but that’s what printers do. (It’s also only a problem on the least important color, so … that’s a very good thing indeed.)

If you’re curious about what on earth could require 31 type-high squares, there are pictures of the work in progress at MLK’s tumblr, and when they’re done and photographed, she’ll be selling the posters at the MLK & toast Press etsy shop.

So, Berecka, if you read this: I’m making paper for your poem.

From about a pound of dry rag (cotton/linen blends, so probably about 55% cotton, 45% linen) to 31 sheets of paper and some leftovers to make into pulp balls.

It’s got some formation issues — for whatever reason, I’m getting cloudy sheets with thin spots at the edges. I’m going to have to ask someone who’s made more paper than me what they think the solution is. (It might be the deckle, it might be the pulp, it might be me.) What this means is that when I cut it down (I’m making 12″ x 18″ sheets, doing a work-and-tumble on 9″ x 12″ half-sheets, and cutting them down to 6″ x 9″ for the finished product), I’ll go through and pick the best quarter-sheets. (If only I had a better cutting system.) And I’ll print damp, which should keep my type from getting too dinged up. Before any type people have hysterics about my casual attitude about type, let me point out that I’m using easily replaceable monotype for this, not foundry, and there aren’t a lot of knots.

I suppose eventually I should explain the whole series this is part of. Eh. Not right now, though, I have to go check on the beater & also prep more rag because I’ve got seven more poems to make paper for. (Two of them are ready to go. I’m not sure about the other five.)

Yesterday was not the day we wanted, but I’m glad Boston’s first responders seem to be mostly good at what they do.

MLK & toast (aka my friend Megan, who is a visiting artist at the paper collective) is printing up a storm of 36pt squares – sadly, today I am running errands and trying to read two books on deadline and thus missing all the fun. We’ve set up drying lines across the studio – they’re a bit awkwardly placed, but working very well otherwise. I’ve also actually seen a pressure print made, so now I think I get them. I may try one later this month, so stay tuned for updates.

I’ve prepped seven batches of rag for paper (they’re not all a whole pound, but I’m trying for close to a full beater-load with most of them). We’ll see if the one I did last night is actually good – I had to rush it a bit near the end, because it was 12:30 and time for bed. I did take notes, though, so I should be well on the way to being able to do semi-consistent batches, instead of having to do all six pounds of rag at one go when I need 200 sheets for a book. One of the batches I have prepped is the third of six for, in fact, a chapbook. The rest of it is for a broadside series, or for sale (it depends on whether or not I can print what I want to on it). I’m playing with rag-based color mixing again, because let’s face it, uncertainty about results and a certain chaotic element does a lot to make creating objects entertaining. I have one that should end up a really excellent green, but who knows?

In packaging. (I used two different kinds of paper, um, yarn. Both made of hanji. From a workshop Aimee Lee taught at the studio. The white ones are the handmade paper copies for the author, illustrator, and me; there are red cords on the other paper, and one handmade paper copy with a blue cord. Did I intend to color-code things? Well, not originally, but it seemed like a good idea.)

As you can see, I cleverly made the little tags integral to the edition — that’s the only place they’re numbered. (And I’ve decided to keep doing external colophons, because it actually worked very well for the last book. Which I should do a comprehensive post on soon.)

Anyway. I hope I’m not the only one who thinks they worked out pretty well. The edition is coming to Oklahoma with me. I’ll probably be selling them online after that, unless people buy all the ones that are for sale. (Which isn’t that many, since I need to give both the author and illustrator a couple of copies, and I’m keeping one for myself.)

A couple of things about the edition: I printed it on paper cut to the maximum print size of the press (a little bigger in a couple of cases, oops). The type is 12 point Bembo. It took three runs because I ran out of type after four sections of the poem.

Four of the sheets are handmade cotton rag paper from last year’s giant-paper-extravaganza (we’re doing that again this year, with more people and possibly outdoors); the rest of the paper is some kind of Canson printmaking paper. The covers of the accordion books and wrappers on the portfolios are cotton and linen rag papers from my stash. The portfolios come with a bonus print (on chipboard) of the last image in the poem.

There are pictures in the colophon.

Accordion books are totally fascinating.

Another plan coming together:

Heh heh heh.

Cutting 30″ sheets with an X-acto and a framing square is exactly as much fun as you think it is. The folding part makes up for it, though.

Two plans, in fact.

One, I can show you a picture of:

Thanks to my neighbor’s giant stash of scrap wood, a jigsaw, some drywall screws, and a driver … I finally have a press table that’s actually accessible in the space I have.

The other thing will be a printed thing. Which I can’t show you yet. I was going to try doing it with no ink, but it turns out that cutting stencils was not what I wanted to do yesterday and blind impression (even the ridiculously deep impression I’m willing to do with a photopolymer plate) isn’t actually all that legible. And when it comes to text, difficult as this is to believe, I do value legibility.

Now I need to get over my newfound noise sensitivity (there’s a person moving in upstairs, and I think she’s building things), contemplate stapling brown paper up as a ceiling-substitute (it’s an old building, so … things fall out of the not-ceiling), and cut down the insides of the accordion books.

Some freaking amazing things:

1. We have this (new! shiny!) beater, right? I’ve been putting it through its paces, and I think I may have a reproducible cotton text/book/drawing waterleaf paper that I can sell. (I’m going to make at least one more batch of it this week, to check.) (And use for a book.) I also think I learned how to actually beat jute, thanks to a piece of incredibly helpful advice from one of my compatriots in papermaking.

2. I’ve been procrastinating — there are some things I need to cut by hand with straight lines and precise measurements, and I find this slightly intimidating. So I pulled out a drop spindle and started trying to learn new tricks and techniques using internet videos. With, I must say, mixed success, but at least it’s fun.

3. My neighbor loaned me (most of) an Indonesian backstrap loom, HOLY CARP amiright? Heh. (The reed is totally amazing.) It needs some kind of heddle-thing, and I’ll need to dig up a long shuttle, but it’s got all the major parts. So clearly it is time to finally try to make some useful fabric, right? With all that crazy handspun?

4. That jute I beat yesterday? Yeah. Totally going to do some pulp painting on top of it with cotton. Whatever abaca. I don’t need your fancypants fiber. (It’s possible this will fail miserably, but either way I will have learned something. Which makes it a win.)

5. Loose leaf tea improves things at the studio so much — we need more! Obviously more tea is the solution to all our anxieties! (Except it has to be the right kind of tea. Feel free to send us your Ti Kuan Yin. Or your Pu-erh.)