Month: November 2008

More Typewriter Men

TypewriterI own a 1890s letterpress, as well as several 40 year old cars, so I clearly have a weak spot for old out-dated machines. I’ve found another article about a shop that fixes typewriters (my other entry about a shop in NYC is here). The article, from the LA Times, includes a very sweet video, showing the shop and the family that runs it, as well as the owner fixing a typewriter.
The owner says there’s been a small resurgence in people using typewriters. Using a computer tied to the Internet can be overwhelming — too many distractions when you sit down to write something. A typewriter, alone on a table, doesn’t have all the commotion and diversion of a computer. (It’s a toss up for me — could I give up the spelling checker for no distractions?!)

Quilt -> Broadside -> Book

Walking spread

Recently as my friend Cathy was showing me her latest quilting project, I felt a pang of jealousy and then frustration. She’s been working in fabric and color and with patterns of those colors for a long time and very successfully. I’ve been trying to design broadsides that marry type and patterns of color with little success — type alone or patterns alone yes, but not together. I blurted out “where would you put type or words or a quote in your quilts” and after a minute she said “in the white space between the colors.” I went from frustration to “aha!” Later, in an email, she suggested I look at maps as patterns. From there I was off and running.
I started playing around with shapes from a map and putting words in the roads and streets. Looking through my book of quotes, scanning for ones appropriate to maps, I remembered that many of my own haiku are about my walks. And that’s how my latest book got started. Above is one of the spreads. Below is the resulting book, titled “Walking“. You can see more pictures here.

Walking

Pyramid Atlantic Book Fair

My table at the Pyramid Atlantic Book Fair

I’m awfully ambivalent about selling my books and artwork at craft and book fairs. On the plus side, I replenish my bank account and meet people who love books and reading as much as I do. On the negative side, the days can be really long and my jaw hurts at the end from smiling so much. But I’ve done enough fairs now over the years that the preparation is routine, and I’ve figured out how to pack effectively for fairs that require me to fly to get there.
Last week-end I had a table at a 2-day book arts fair across the country from my home, in Silver Spring Maryland. I wasn’t expecting many sales, what with the screaming headlines in the papers saying this holiday season is going to be the worst ever. But my Mom, sister and brother-in-law live near by, so I thought of this as a family visit rather than a “business trip.” I kept my expenses down by staying with Mom and using my sister’s car. And my sister, who owns a bakery and went to cooking college, made yummy dinners and provided Mom & me with pastry for breakfast and cookies for lunch.
After eating so well, maybe I was predisposed to have a good time at this particular fair. I sold more than I expected. I met several people who have written articles for Ampersand, the quarterly book arts journal I edit. When things were slow, my table mate was fun to talk to. As they looked at my books, many people commented that my work is happy and colorful and well displayed. And what fun to watch the smiles break out as people flip through my flip books!
Back home now, the next few weeks will be hectic as I get ready for 2 more holiday fairs here at home in San Francisco — Bazaar Bizarre in Golden Gate Park, Sunday November 30, 10am-5pm, and at the San Francisco Center for the Book on Friday December 12 (6-8pm) and Saturday December 13 (12 noon-5pm).

Books on Books: 500 Handmade Books

500 Handmade BooksWhen I have a table at a book or craft fair, I’m usually manning it by myself and the day is too hectic to allow me to look at all the other vendor tables. I especially missed doing that at the BABA Book Jam fair a few weeks ago. When I got home and remembered that I hadn’t really looked at the copy of 500 Handmade Books I’d bought recently, I sat down with the book in my lap hoping to get the hit of book-artist-ness that I’d missed. It’s part of Lark Books’ 500 Series, essentially fat picture books of contemporary (mostly handmade) design on subjects ranging from chairs to bowls to 50 types of jewelry to dolls.
I was hoping to be inspired. But instead I had my usual reaction to most such treatments of artist’s books — oh to be able to touch the books and read the words! Yes, the photos are beautiful and most have 2 images per book. But the larger one is usually the cover (boring and tells nothing about the binding or the content) and the second one is too small to see any details. The books appear as static sculptures and completely miss what drew me to artist’s books in the first place — the interaction with the words and binding and paper and makeup of the book. A few sentences by the artist for each book, about the content or the binding, would have gone a long way to making this collection much more interesting and inspiring.

Leila the Cat

Leila the CatRecently Leila, my little black cat, died. That’s the flipbook I made about her there on the left. She was elderly and had bad kidneys. She wasn’t the best pet — she liked to hide under the bed a lot and was often too nervous to stay around us much. She always came out to see my husband Harold when we didn’t live together, but when she & I moved in with him 2 years ago, she developed a deep dislike of all things male, no matter what we did. Even so, I miss her alot, especially her inexplicable visits — she’d jump into my lap while I was working on the computer and stand (never sit) in my lap for 15 or 20 minutes and then just as inexplicably jump down and leave again.
And I’m really glad I made that flipbook about her. Because I often gets notes from people who buy one about the antics of their own black cats. And I’m surprised how many people name their cat Leila or Lila or some variation. A woman even bought the book because HER name is Leila!