a (her)story-- a book

an announcement:

i've prepared

with enormous help from carol blinn,

my dear friend, who slaved over this job

through the dark of winter

(special edition with original printed cover and shifu left, 

photographed cover with printed sample on the right)

who did ALL the work

while i just printed and wove and wrote the stuff.

a little book for australia

about my journey through shifu

and printing.

after long conversations with carol 

who is a long time letterpress printer and book designer

(warwick press)

and who is still my friend after this herculean effort to be done,

and alicia bailey from the abecedarin gallery

one of a handful of book arts galleries in the u.s.,

i decided to use the nomenclature

that the book arts community overwhelmingly preferred:

"botanical pressure prints*.

fortunately the only confusion

with the word shifu

is the martial art also called shifu.

sigh.

these will be available first in australia

and back in the states 

at the end of march, when i will put a button in the shop to order.

there is an edition of 50

with 12 special ones that have an original print for the cover

and a little shifu square inside.

below is one of the limited edition of 12 

complete with blue berry prints

should you wish to have a copy

the price will be posted soon, 

and you can let me know and i will set one 

aside for you.

(you'll have to wait until after OZ)

*botanical*

alchemy has a certain glamour.

here is a little much cooked pot of walnut ink

water & 

a short slurp of vinegar,

it's lovely stuff.
more botanical alchemy.

*botanical pressure print: specifically, what many of us once called eco prints, then later called contact prints; book artists find it useful to describe this print process on paper, because the term "contact print" is a photo process on paper. clear as mud, right? 

tidbits

in my mail,

a record of experiments with wax and dye

by carol at warwick press

 carol loves birds

and color

see the beautiful layout on this sampler!

the tiny knots

someone is traveling through, again,

my backyard

another porcupine?

cat?

raccoon?

i couldn't tell, actually.

and a grandfather maple

who will not be tapped this spring

waits.

wings and heart

this woman is special. one day, when ian was 15 and hannah 12, we ended up in her shop, warwick press, unannounced. i'm sure that was a surprise, to put it nicely. we were visiting prep schools where i thought ian might find a scholarship (he did, but not a full one). i had been writing to her for several years. so we met. 


how did that happen? well, i ordered a book called once upon a time, book two. and fell in love with her storytelling, her drawing, her quirky sense of humor. yesterday when i got home from work, this card was in my mailbox. it's a drawing of a figure that hangs in her kitchen (and that kitchen is a very important place). i think they are sisters. carol j. blinn, proprietor of warwick press, and a little figure, made by anonymous (who was a woman) who has wings AND a heart.


carol is one of a handful, a very full handful, of special friends, mostly women, who have, at times, saved my life.

new book, new show, this week

my dear friend carol blinn sent me a prospectus in the mail. she has a new book called eye story. frieda fitzenmeyer is the actual artist, carol does the work. frieda has been eating lots of bonbons over the years, while carol slaves away, making all of frieda's books by hand. frieda? well, she's a bit ephemeral, but carol assures me she exists! in any case, travel over to www.warwickpress.com and have a look see. and buy this book, it's based, carol assures me, on frieda's real life experiences.

and then there is the photographic essay my daughter hannah calls north country hands at work. this is her senior show from college of the atlantic. hannah and ian followed me around all over the place visiting friends and artists, often for potlucks or a picnic or to gather wild things for dyeing... hannah has distilled this growing up into photos of ten very special people. a silversmith or two, several fiberartists, a calligrapher, a blacksmith, a letterpress printer, a boatbuilder. oh, and me, a papermaker. and she chose to shoot black and white and moody. she also bound one exquisite artists' book documenting the project. so if you're in potsdam on saturday afternoon, stop in at the arts council. i'll be there, too. 

meanwhile, back at the ranch.............some shifu eye candy.