Broadside Project – Page 11 – Green Chair Press Blog

Print Only in Natural Light

I’ve had a table several times at the weekend-long Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair. Two days of smiling and talking is really tiring, but the second year I attended I was lucky enough to have a table next to Chris Stern, a letterpress printer from Washington. When the fair was slow, we talked about printing and poetry and paper and maintaining our presses. I immediately forgot how much my feet hurt and how sore my smiling muscles had become.
Sadly, Chris died of cancer last year. Maralyn Crosetto, Day Moon Press, and Mare Blocker have designed and printed a poetry broadside as a fund-raiser to help with the medical bills. Mare’s poem has the wonderful title “You Told Me Once You Only Print in Natural Light.”
That’s Chris’ broadside “Good Mornin’ Joe” on the left. You can see more broadsides here and a gallery of all the work he and Jules Faye did together on their website.

What’s on your Shelf?

I’m an inveterate list-maker — all the books I’ve read since 1981, all the bike rides I’ve ever taken, the steps to the ballet combinations from my weekly class — not to mention the dreaded and never ending to-do list.

I’d not thought of them as anything but a compulsion until I saw Kate O’Conner’s Bookshelf Series mentioned on black . white . bliss. I especially like the inclusion of the imprint pictures. Maybe lists are beautiful — all of a sudden they look like they might be fodder for a broadside!

Life Forms Patterns

life forms patterns
haphazard and beautiful—
catch them as they fly by

This week I finished printing my 2008 calendar — a year of patterns and poetry. It’s a desktop calendar with 12 unbound letterpressed cards that display the month, a pattern and a haiku poem written for that month. It comes in a plastic case that doubles as the display frame.
It’s been the perfect project to end my “year of the broadside“, as each month is a mini-broadside with a poem and illustration. It was especially fun selecting the 2 colors for each month (and especially challenging to hand mix all those colors so they matched my swatches!)
Here’s a thumbnail of all the months (click on it to see a lot more detail). The calendar is for sale on my webite ($18 + shipping).

Synesthesia

“Synesthesia” means one sensory experience described in terms of another sensory experience, such as hearing colors or seeing notes. When I was a kid and learning arithmetic, I would get confused and think “5+2=green” or “5+4=purple”. But just as we memorize multiplication tables, I memorized 5+2=7. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I knew there was a name for my confusion (there’s even a sub-genre called “grapheme” for perceiving numbers or letters as inherently colored). I still occassionally get confused though, and as I was printing my latest wood type collage, I noticed that I was thinking of number pairs in terms of colors. So “synesthesia” seemed like a good title for this one.

Agapanthus

I’ve been looking at Chinese latticework designs recently and thought some of the patterns would adapt well to a letterpress print. The designs are clean and simple, and greatly enhanced with color. I had already selected a colorway for this pattern when I noticed that the agapanthus in our front yard were almost finished blooming. I always love the spikey blue flowers on long skinny stalks, and decided to ditch my original plan and use the blues and greens from the fading plants.
This is the first in a series of prints based on patterns. It’s a bit different from my other broadsides as it doesn’t have any text. You can see the whole print here.

Outside the Box

This is my latest broadside, Secret Sky. I wanted a large swash of color in the background, so I used an uncut linoleum block to print the light blue. It required a lot of makeready (shimming up the block in the back, as well as some under the tympan of my press. The block isn’t flat nor is it an even thickness. Next time I want a solid fill I’ll try another material!). The circle is a photopolymer plate and the rest is wood type.
Here’s the quote that inspired the title:

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”
–Rumi