Collaborations

Randall Hasson, this time, not alone..

The speaker at this month’s Santa Fe Book Arts Group was Randall Hasson, a local painter and calligrapher. He took a semester course in Book Arts, where the goal was to create a book in InDesign and publish it on Blurb. He decided his book would be a collaboration with a poet friend, Chris Baron. While Hasson had been working on his ideas for combining painting and calligraphy in bound journals, he apparently hadn’t done anything with sequential, related pages. In his lecture, Hasson talked about the 2 poems he’s done thus far, taking us through his design decisions, materials, techniques and research into the imagery he would use. You can see the first poem on Blurb here.
I found the second poem (a piece of a spread is shown below and there’s another spread here), much more compelling. In both pieces, it was interesting to see how his background in calligraphy informed the page layout.

Randall Hasson, Origins

Watch the Road

I’ve been thinking about making a scroll for inside one of my matchboxes and ran across this contraption from the 1920s—the Rootefinder. According to this blog post,

The technology—a curious cross between the space age and the stone age—consisted of a little map scroll inside a watch, to be ‘scrolled’ (hence the word) as the driver moved along on the map. A multitude of scrolls could be fitted in the watch to suit the particular trip the driver fancied taking. The system has several obvious drawbacks—a limited number of available journeys, and the inability of the system to respond to sudden changes of direction. Also: no warning of road works or traffic jams ahead.

There’s an article about “weird and wonderful gadgets,” including this one, here.

Routefinder

Books on Books: On Paper

On Paper by Nicholas BasbanesI recently read Nicholas Basbanes’ On Paper, a book chock-a-block with everything you ever wanted to know about paper and its history and uses. Each chapter covers a different aspect of paper: from the origins in China and how it made its way west, to the making of money, kotex and toilet paper, to origami folding, to how paper advanced architecture and the American Revolution. Endlessly fascinating! My only complaint was that every couple of pages I had to stop and look up something on the web, to see a picture or find out more (there are a few b&w pictures scattered throughout the book, but only a few). I have a long list of things still to look up and spend more time with. But I’ll leave this post off with a wonderful quote, near the beginning of the book, by a Japanese paper maker about his craft: “Never be in a hurry—and never skip regular steps.”

More Asemic

Here’s my response to January’s prompt challenge, asemic (mark-making that resembles writing but actually has no linguistic meaning). These collages were made from my letterpress and wood type prints. The collage is 3-1/2″ x 3-1/2″, on 6″ x 9″ paper and sits in a hand-debossed panel on the paper.

Collage, Green Chair Press

Collage, Green Chair Press

Collage, Green Chair Press

Prompt Challenge: Asemic

The January word for my prompt challenge book group was asemic: a word for mark-making that resembles writing but actually has no linguistic meaning. From the wikipedia definition: “Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means ‘having no specific semantic content’. With the nonspecificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art.” There are lots of examples on pinterest or this blog.
The word made me remember a book by Macy Chadwick called Letter by Letter. While not asemic writing, it has been the start of my own exploration into the idea of scribbling. She says

Letter by Letter is about the tactility of language. It was inspired by the String Alphabet for the Blind, from Scotland, 1850, where each knot signifies a letter of the alphabet…letterpress printed with handset type and polymer plates on Mulberry paper treated with persimmon dye. Each page includes a knotted linen thread.

The alphabet is described here as

The string alphabet is formed by so knitting a cord, a ribbon, or the like, that the protuberances made upon it may be qualified by their shape, size, and situation, for signifying the elements of language

Below is a page from Macy’s book, followed by a closeup

Letter by Letter, Macy Chadwick Letter by Letter (close up), Macy Chadwick