 To celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration, Carol Barton designed this do-it-yourself pop-up commemorative. You can download a PDF from her website and make one too. |
Thank You Calendars
This past fall, I felt particularly swamped with getting my online store ready for the holiday season, and blogging seemed like just another chore that took too much time. My friend Cathy convinced me to keep at it anyway, maybe just once a week or some reduced schedule until after the first of the year. I’m not quite sure what magic words she used, but instead of slowing down, I’ve been posting more frequently and enjoying myself. Just like those accidental maps I wrote about last week, I’m seeing blog posting possibilities everywhere. And my enthusiasm has been doubly boosted by emails from quite a few people telling me they’ve enjoyed reading my entries! As a thank you to my readers, I’m giving away 2 of my 2009 desktop calendars. Just put a comment on this blog post by Sunday Jan 25th, and I’ll pick the winners on Monday Jan 26th. (If you already have my calendar, I’ll send you a print of your choice instead.)
Falling Words
Image by Marina Camargo. More here. (Found on swiss miss.)
Maps Everywhere
After my post about Nigel Peake’s maps, I got several emails about other interesting map sites and blog posts.
- Strange Maps, a blog about, you guessed it, odd maps. A recent post is about accidental maps, such as the cloud shaped like the UK, to the left.
- That lead me to Making Maps: DIY Cartography, subtitled “Resources and Ideas for Making Maps”. It includes posts on one of the oldest maps known and lots of fascintating map symbols. And that’s just on the first page!
- Over on my friend Cathy’s blog about bookmaking with kids, she has a recent post about “Me on the Map” books where kids draw maps of what’s important in their worlds.
Book Collecting: Math Curse
What’s an artist’s book? Does it have to be handmade? A small edition? Wikipedia has this (rather convoluted) quote from Stephen Bury (Artists’ Books: The Book As a Work of Art, 1963-1995)
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“Artists’ books are books or book-like objects over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself.” | |
I’d argue that many children’s books are artist’s books. Especially Math Curse, by writer Jon Scieszka and illustrator Lane Smith, with their inventive type treatments and illustrations (you can see more pages from the book here). Two more that I have in my collection are The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales also by Scieszka and Smith and The Incredible Book-Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers.
Atlas Landscape
Last week I saw the exhibit “Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. I knew I was going to see Lin’s large-scale installations that interpret natural topography — one was the geological surfaces of a mountain range. But I didn’t expect smaller works, like altered books made from old Rand McNally atlases. She’s cut into the book’s pages to form a precise and detailed topographic view into the map (although it doesn’t appear that the result has anything to do with the map on the top-most page). The smaller works were a good balance to the large ones, although the installations cried out to be seen outdoors and from above as well as at ground level. The photo is a detail from one of the altered books, Atlas Landscape. There’s a nice overview of the exhibition with photos here.