Green Chair Press Blog

Book Autopsies

An altered book is a form of mixed media artwork that changes a book from its original form into something else. I particularly like the ones that leave the book contents somewhat intact, making a sort of derivative work of the original. One of the best known altered books is Tom Phillips’ Humument, created over William Hurrell Mallock’s 1892 novel A Human Document. Phillips drew, painted, and collaged on the pages, while leaving some of the original text showing through.
But to my mind, the best altered books are the sculptural works of Brian Dettmer. He slices and carves into old illustrated textbooks, dictionaries and such to expose images and text. That’s one of them to the left. You can see examples of Dettmer’s work on this blog.

Word == Rice

I’ve always been a reader — which probably explains why I like to make books. And I also love words. So I had fun the other day playing the vocabulary test at Free Rice. It’s multiple choice (thankfully!) and for every word you define correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program. 10 grains doesn’t sound like much, but as of Nov 22nd they’d “raised” over 3 billion grains. In any event, give it a try. Especially today, Thanksgiving in the US, when we celebrate our good fortune in having enough to eat.

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.

A Few Grains of Sand Save the Day

The other day as I was letterpress printing cards from photopolymer plates, I noticed a small ink mark toward the edge of the paper that shouldn’t have been there. I quickly discovered that the bottom corner of the plate was curled thus picking up ink and printing on my card! My usual remedy for this problem is to tape down the offending corner and if that doesn’t work, to cut off the curled piece of the plate.
But what to do about the already printed cards? I remembered a trick my friend Laura Jane taught me — the errant ink can be removed by gently rubbing the paper with a bit of very fine grain sandpaper (I used 320 grit). Whew, cards saved!

Poetry Jukebox

Recently San Francisco Center for the Book had their yearly fund raising dinner which features an auction of prints, book arts ephemera, and other donations to the center. My favorite item up for bid was an evening with Richard Lang as “the Poetry Jukebox.” Richard, the proprietor of SF Electric Works, has memorized 129 poems and will recite them by number or author. To get the crowd fired up for the bidding and the rest of the auction, Richard gave a small sampling of his repertoire — first by author (the poem below by e. e. cummings, with a very sweet last line) and then by number (Mary Oliver’s Happiness) and finally a verse by Dante (in Italian!).

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

— e. e. cummings

Richard Lang’ as the Poetry Jukebox

Richard in his jukebox,
taken by Steve Woodall

You can see some of the prints
that were auctioned here

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.