Broadside Project – Page 10 – Green Chair Press Blog

Hand Debossed Panels

One of the first classes I took at the San Francisco Center for the Book was to make an accordion spine book with a hand-debossed (recessed) panel in each page. For that class (taught by Howard Munson) we made collages to put in the debossments. I’ve used this debossing technique many times since then, mainly for cards but most recently for my newest set of broadsides. It’s a much more elegant way to display artwork or photographs than just gluing them onto the paper.
To make a hand-debossed panel, you’ll need a bone folder and a piece of davey board (or something that is about 1/8″ thick) cut to the size of the panel. The paper to be debossed should be thick and soft (for instance Somerset or Rives). I make a jig by cutting a piece of card stock to the size of my paper, figuring out where the debossed panel should be located, and attaching the davey board there using double-stick tape. (You can see the jig in the photo below.)

Now I lay my paper over the jig, lining up the edges at the top and side. I put a piece of double-stick or rolled tape on the davey board, so that once I’ve lined everything up, I can tack the paper down so it won’t move. To start the debossment, using my fingers, I carefully press the paper against the sides of the davey board. Then, using my bone folder, I work the paper against the davey board. This molds the panel into the paper. Do this slowly at first, as it’s easy to tear or mark the paper. Pay careful attention to the corners.

When all the sides and corners have been worked equally, I’m done.

Broadside Project Report

When I started this blog last year to record my attempts at making broadsides, my thought then was to play with combining typefaces, letterpress, text and maybe images on paper. Looking back a year later, “images” turned out to be abstract patterns, shapes and letterforms. And a lot of my broadsides don’t have text (a surprise to me!), rather I used wooden type in nonsense patterns. I’ve been calling these later prints “wood type collages” (you can see them all here.)
Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been experimenting with another type of collage using paper (wonderful Japanese stuff called moriki), and I thought I might combine some of them with poetry for a new set of broadsides. These have a hand-debossed (recessed) panel for the collage, and a haiku is letterpress printed below them. I’ve handset the type — which made for a very lovely, meditative morning recently. I’ve printed the same haiku on about 15 sheets of chewy Somerset, and debossed the panels. Then I’ll make a unique collage for each one. I’ve done four so far (see photos at the top of this post). A finished broadside is shown below. See them all here.

The Artist’s Survival Kit

Keri’s drawing of when you might need her Artist’s Survival Kit

Most Januarys I’m off and running, full of ideas and energy for the new year. But this month I’m dragging and feel more like reading a book than working in my studio. Okay, I did make up new batches of my most popular books for my Etsy shop, but I can’t seem to get started on any newer projects.
Keri Smith to the rescue. This weekend I stumbled across her Artist’s Survival Kit, a set of free downloadable PDFs meant to help you when you don’t want to do art but would rather lie in bed and eat chips. The kit includes a set of “What to do when you’re stuck” cards, lots of tips, and in general will make you laugh — and hopeful, in my case, get me into my studio!

All these are vices

I think my favorite time to drop in at the SF Center for the Book is mid to late afternoon, maybe 3:30. Usually several people are letterpress printing in the front studio and there’s a quiet hum of activity. All sorts of projects get printed at the center: invitations, cards, wood block and linoleum prints, broadsides and even the occasional book. Last Friday Roger Snell was printing an 8×12 broadside for a reading December 4th at Moe’s bookstore in Berkeley, “a gift … to celebrate the new year 2008 and publication of the Collected Poems of Philip Whalen by Wesleyan University Press.” (That’s what it says on the back.) It’s printed on thick thick creamy stock, and has a blind embossed hit of wood type below the quote. Roger gave me one, and I’ve photographed it to share the quote, and maybe think about my own vices. (Read more about Whalen on wikipedia, but better to read Alastair Johnston’s reminiscences.)

Daybooks

Every month this fall, Mary, over at Red Squirrel Studio, has been binding a book to fill, day by day, with a drawing of her hand. When she was visiting California from Maine recently, she enlisted several of us to try her experiment with her — to make and fill a book “one page a day, with a brief recurring art exercise of our own choosing, related (or not related!) to our regular art form”.
So, starting in January, four of us will be getting together once a month to share our results (or lack thereof!). One of our group has already chosen her repetitive exercise — small weavings of paper and other materials. But I’m not so sure what I’ll do. Originally I thought I’d make small collages, but I’m not committing quite yet. Good thing I have until January to decide!
Of course such daily exercises aren’t a new idea — so for inspiration I’ve been poking around on the web to see what other people do for their daily practice. For starters, my friend Cathy pointed me to an online exhibition of daily collages by Janine Wong called Quotidian Practice (that’s one of her collages to the left).

Floating Point

As you might guess from my 2008 Calendar design, I’ve gotten interested in graphical patterns. I’ve done one other patterned design, Agapanthus, using thick soft chewy paper that makes a very deep impression in the paper when printed letterpress. The deep imprint into the substrate makes the resulting print seem almost 3D, almost sculptural.
This new design is called “Floating Point” and I’ve printed four versions, each with a different colorway.