& IN THE MORNING THE AIR IS BRILLIANT & AS THE DAY EXTENDS WE EXPAND

& now another week, another morning, and things settling back down a bit, at least for now.

This past weekend brought a tremendous amount of excitement. The trick is to see if it goes anywhere. At least I can say that I learned a lot, at least I can say that I sit here this morning with a renewed conviction. Regardless of how things go, there is always much work to be done, and it is in this quiet work that we will be realized.

I was very pleased and very excited to see this Printeresting post yesterday. It’s about the now forming Baltimore Print Studios, a community access print studio in Baltimore. The whole thing is being run by Kyle Van Horn, a printer and artist that I went to school with at MICA. Last time I was in Baltimore, this whole project was still in the early planning stages. Kyle had already amassed a fair amount of equipment, and had begun to think about a space and funding. It is hard for me to express how happy I am to see that it’s getting off the ground.

I know from personal experience the transformative, revelatory power of printing and bookmaking, and I know that once this studio opens up that same power will be broadly accessible to the Baltimore community. The boldness and generosity of the work that Kyle is doing will change that community for the better.

The image above shows posters that they are selling to help raise money. Buy some. Tell everyone you know to buy some. This project, this place, the activities that it will teach, and the welcome that it will extend, are absolutely critical to the continued vitality of the field and to the larger book arts and literary community. Many of us already know places and institutions like this that we are deeply committed to, that have played a positive role in the lives of so many people. Let’s do what we can to see that another such place opens its doors.

HITTING THE ROAD

Pennsylvania bound. Everything hangs in the air.

Will return next week.

TO BEGIN AGAIN, AGAIN

Many years ago, when I was 16 or 17, as I stood in front of the “Literature” shelf at the bookstore at the local mall, my friend Charles handed me a book to check out. I read the first page:

I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.
Last night Boris discovered that he was lousy. I had to shave his armpits and even then the itching did not stop. How can one get lousy in a beautiful place like this? But no matter. We might never have known each other so intimately, Boris and I, had it not been for the lice.
Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet. The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves. The hero, then, is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.

It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom.
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen away from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God.

Everything changed. I knew immediately that I was holding and reading a kind of book like no other that I had read before. I bought the book, took it home, where it lived for a month or so, on the top of the stack of books on my floor. I had recently gotten back into reading. I didn’t read the new book immediately, because I was in the middle of On The Road, and that was supposed to be an important book. Everyday I looked at my new book. I opened it, read snippets, admired the cover. Somehow, even though I had really only read the first page, and had no idea what the actual book was like, I felt like I was connected to this object. Finally, I was able to read it.

The book was Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. An infamous book, and for good reason, but there’s a great deal more to it than all of the scandalous and/or offensive parts. And it did change my life. It’s helpful sometimes, necessary often, to remember the reading of that first page. To infuse this white morning, every morning, with the possibility of that first page. Waiting for everything to fall away.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (11): WHAT YOU WILL (10)

Nothing like a long weekend to get some work done. 20 more runs down. Images of the “tagged” pages below, minus one that I couldn’t find. Will it ever come back? The detail shows the printing of the “opaque white” ink on the black paper (the covers). Letterpress/offset ink that is labeled as opaque is still very transparent at such thin layers. I am trying to take advantage of that fact with these covers, by using the white ink and black paper to make another kind of transparent gray.

The colors got a little weird on these. My apologies.

A BRIEF HIATUS

While I take care of some backlogged correspondence, grading, and a few other things.... Be back after the holiday.

FOUND/ALTERED No.1

A! Square! (Neutral! Shapeless!) Canvas! Five! Feet! Wide! Five! Feet! High! As! High! As! A! Man! As! Wide! As! A! Man’s! Outstretched! Arms! (Not! Large! Not! Small! Sizeless!) Trisected! (No! Composition!) One! Horizontal! Form! Negating! One! Vertical! Form! (Formless! No! Top! No! Bottom! Directionless!) Three! (More! Or! Less!) Dark! (Lightless!) No! Contrasting! (Colorless!) Colors! Brushwork! Brushed! Out! To! Remove! Brushwork! A! Matte! Flat! Free-hand! Painted! Surface! (Glossless! Textureless! Non-linear! No! Hard! Edge! No! Soft! Edge!) Which! Does! Not! Reflect! Its! Surroundings! A! Pure! Abstract! Non-objective! Timeless! Spaceless! Changeless! Relationless! Disinterested! Painting! An! Object! That! Is! Self-conscious! (No! Unconsciousness!) Ideal! Transcendent! Aware! Of! No! Thing! But! Art! (Absolutely! No! Anti-art!)


Quote from Ad Reinhardt, with exclamation points added after every word, replacing all previously existing punctuation, and capital letters added to the beginning of each new sentence.

FAILURE, AGAIN

This morning all attempts to write ground to a halt under the weight and complexity of the issues being written about, and a general crisis of confidence on my part. This writing practice of this blog has been failing lately. There have been announcements of things. There have been some good subjects taken up, but they have been inadequately explored. The lines of thought are fragmented. They stop short. They fail. This is indicative of a larger struggle.

This is a post that admits failure. But it does not ask for pity, or forgiveness. Failure is a part of the process of development. But to admit failure does not excuse it. Failure must be accepted, acknowledged, and changes must be made. The changes that are made, the changes that lead to success, to happy and productive work, those are the important things. Because those changes provide a framework to overcome the failures that are further down the road. Failure will not stop you. Fear of failure will.

THE PCBA PRINTERS’ FAIR IS THIS SATURDAY

And if you live in the SF Bay Area, you should come. I will be there, behind a table, waiting to show you (maybe sell you) some books and broadsides. The details:

Pacific Center for the Book Arts
Annual Book Arts and Printers’ Fair
Saturday, May 15
9 AM - 3 PM
Fort Mason, Building A, San Francisco
Free Admission
www.pcba.info

And if you’re very interested in this whole thing, I’m sure they still need volunteers to make it go.

QUIET, LUMINOUS, SUSTAINED: I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD MAKE IT THIS FAR

I have been looking forward to this day, today, for some time now. Today, May 5, 2010, is the official 10th birthday of the NewLights Press. It is hard to believe that the first book was released 10 years ago. I really didn’t know anything when that book came out, and NewLights was founded. I didn’t really know what a small press was, what they were supposed to do. I didn’t really know much about making books. But I knew that I wanted to make books, and that I could do it, that I had to do it. I could not have imagined where I would be now, the kinds of book that I would be making now, ten years ago. I think that means I’m on the right track.

This tenth anniversary will pass with no readings, no exhibitions, no fanfare beyond this blog post. It will be a quiet anniversary, marked by reflection and determined work. This day is important—but everyday is important, every moment of activity applied to a work larger than the self, is critically important. It is in those moments, when no one is looking, when we are alone with and focused on the task at hand, that a luminous future is carved into the days to come.

When I started writing on this blog, one of the primary concerns that kept popping up was the idea of maintaining a vital studio practice despite all of the monetary/temporal obstacles that face young artists (paying job or making work?). That remains a primary concern, perhaps the primary theme of my logistical scheming from day to day. I’m not sure that the struggle to work, and to work well, will ever disappear. Perhaps there will be a magical day when NewLights will become my sole source of income (I think I’m trying to talk myself into making that leap), and the issue won’t be time, it will simply be a matter of staying sharp and making sure that the work is still vital, dynamic, moving, that the work is still doing work.

This will always require effort, energy, and thought. If it didn’t, it would be time to quit.

So the struggle continues, thankfully. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done.
The official close of Year 10 will be about a year from now, on May 15th. The goals of the NewLights Press in that year are:

What You Will, a book of poems by Kyle Schlesinger
91% Battery Power Remaining, broadside by Justin Sirois
South of the Beast, broadside by Brian Evenson
Hotel Rules, broadside by John Yau
The Tragedy of Cymbeline, broadside by Brenda Iijima
Meat Cove, Cape Breton, broadside by KC Trommer
Detourned Painting, artists’ book by Asger Jorn/NewLights, et al
The New Manifesto of the NewLights Press (second iteration)
(De)Collage, unique altered book
Some sort of editioned altered book
The Heads, a book of poems by Justin Sirois
ZZZZZZZZZ [an island], fiction by J.A. Tyler, a multi-part book published by several presses—more on that project as it develops.
& others still in development, still under consideration.

Looking at that list, my heart skips with an ecstatic fear. There is a lot of hurt on that list, because of that list. A great deal of joy, though, too.

I can’t wait to show you all of the new books. Thank you for your support over the last 10 years. I couldn’t have done it without you, it wouldn’t have been worth doing without you.

& so we begin again.

ART, FAME, AND BEEVES

Here are some zingers from the sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957):

I met icon-makers during my youth in the country. I remember that an icon-maker before starting to paint, or a maker of wooden crosses before starting to carve, would fast for a few weeks in a row. They prayed continually that their icons and crosses would be beautiful. Before it is begun, the creation of any artist needs a pre-established orphic atmosphere. Today painters work with a beefsteak and a bottle of wine by their side. The sculptor holds a chisel in one hand and a glass in the other. The vapors of alcohol and rich food come out of the artist’s mouth and pores like the fetid emanations of a horrible corpse. This kind of thing is no longer pure art; it is art governed by the earthly forces of alcohol and over eating. […]

One day, in Switzerland, in front of a beautiful mountain there was the most beautiful of cows, and she was contemplating me in ecstasy. I said to myself, “I must be someone if even this cow admires me.” I came closer; she wasn’t looking at me, and she was relieving herself. That tells you what you need to know about fame.

Both of these statements were taken from: Roger Lipsey, An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art, (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), pgs. 228 and 229, respectively.

NO CONCLUSIONS

Making notes this morning for the Al-Mutanabbi Street panel discussion this evening (scroll down for info). This is what I’ve ended up with:

I have never been to Al-Mutanabbi Street. We were not there. Most of us probably will never be there. How can we bear witness to an event that occurred so far away, so long ago? How can we make ourselves witnesses to what we never could have seen? Why is it important, in this time, and in this place, to continue to witness, to see? How do, or can, these broadsides actually make a difference? Or are we simply tossing pebbles into an ocean of tragedy?

I have lived my entire life on Al-Mutanabbi Street.

Every act of violence, every bomb, opens a wound in the world. It destroys everything near it, continuously, even well after the bomb has exploded, the dead have been gathered, and the rubble has been cleared. Even three years after it happened, the bomb, this bomb, our bomb, any bomb, continues to incinerate any action or any language that tries to get near it. These words you’re hearing now are dust before they’ve left my mouth.

If not for this bomb and for this project, I never would have heard of Al-Mutanabbi Street. 130 people were killed or wounded in the attack. There are now 130 different broadsides in the world: produced, producing, embodied, and embodying. Broadsides can not protect anyone from a piece of shrapnel, can never heal a wound, or “right” a wrong. They are, at best, shrouds, or photographs of the lost, creased and worn.

130 acts of creation, laid over this wound in the world. 130 moments of remembrance, burying the dead. 130 pieces of shrapnel, continuously opening and reopening the wound. 130 broadsides, by more than 130 artists and writers, who have chosen to try to see, to feel, to make.

I have come to no conclusions.

We will live our entire lives on Al-Mutanabbi Street.

AL-MUTANABBI STREET STARTS HERE (ON FRIDAY)

If you haven’t seen the show of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadsides yet, or if you’d like to learn more about Al-Mutanabbi Street, the project, and its future, you should come to the panel discussion “Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here” on Friday, April 30th. Along with the panel discussion there will be a screening of the short film "A Candle For The Shabandar Cafe," which is about a café that was destroyed in the bombing. All 130 letterpress broadsides are still on display, but the show comes down on May 2, so this may be the last good chance to see them. I will be a member of the panel, as well as:

Grendl Lofkvist (printer)

Celeste Smeland (artist/printmaker)

Tom Ingalls (Graphic Artist)

Felicia Rice (printer)

Beau Beausoleil (poet)

And this is all taking place at the San Francisco Zen Center. I hope to see you there.

Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Exhibition
April 2 – May 2
Panel discussion on April 30th at 7:30 PM
300 Page St.
San Francisco
news.sfzc.org

CURRICULATING (4)

I want to elaborate on the facilities post, particularly in regard to the idea of having a Book Arts program that teaches students how to use production presses: both high-speed letterpress and offset lithography. Why is it important to have this equipment? How is it beneficial for the students?

There are a few reasons why I think it is important to teach this equipment. The first is very practical: learning to use these presses will help students in finding a job after they graduate from school, because these presses are still used commercially (in small studios, generally). With the number of small, commercial letterpress studios still growing, more and more of these jobs will be available. And as I know from experience, being a letterpress printer at a small commercial studio is not a bad way to make a living, especially for someone just out of school. And commercial printing is an education all of its own.

Offset is a bit trickier, as small run shops are moving toward digital presses (should the program have a good digital press as well?). There are a few Book/Print programs that teach offset printing (University of the Arts and Columbia College in Chicago come immediately to mind) and the number of artists who print their own offset books is extremely small (see JAB 25). If offset is going to mean something as a medium, it needs to be used by artists and designers who fully understand its unique capabilities—it needs to be used for more than 4 color reproduction.

Which I think brings us to the more “abstract” reason for integrating this equipment into a Book Arts curriculum: that the use of this equipment enlarges the field of possibilities for artists, and for the art as a whole. It changes the terms of production—quantity and reach expand, without sacrificing the elements of finely tuned control that we expect and demand from “analog” processes. When the terms of production change, the discourse within and around a particular medium changes as well. Letterpress no longer has to be precious, and offset no longer has to be mechanical to the point of absolute transparency. What the processes could mean grows. How they mean becomes observable in a different way. The discourse groans and expands.

Of course, we are basing this whole premise on the larger idea that an educational program in the Book Arts should expand the field. Some might argue (more in the way that they teach and less in what they say) that the job of academic institutions is not to expand the field, but to maintain the (or establish a new) status quo. How can a program be continually expansive? Just by having some fancy equipment?

COMPOSITION n

“Let us now perform the work of daylight.”

Piet Mondrian, from The New Art—The New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian, ed. and trans. by Harry Holtzman and Martin S. James, Boston, 1986.

CURRICULATING (3)

Now that we have the general setting of our Book Arts program figured out, we can move on to the really fun stuff: studio equipment and classes. Today’s post is on equipment, guided by the following questions: what specific equipment does a book arts program need? Are there types of equipment not commonly found in schools that could be used to broaden the program in interesting and valuable ways? (We are, after all, trying to build a new, distinct program.) And remember, in our perfect world, money is not a problem. But we will only ask for what we really need.

As mentioned in the last post, the Book Arts department would or could share a building with the Printmaking department. It makes sense to me to share, because there’s no need for multiple studios dedicated to one technique, and having everything in the same building will make the combination of techniques (which we want to encourage) much easier. So the Printmaking department would have its usual run of studios: intaglio/relief, litho, screenprinting, and digital. And what studios would Book Arts have? First a list:

Letterpress
Bindery
Papermaking
Offset Lithography

Then some brief descriptions:

Letterpress: The letterpress studio would have all of the traditional components: 3 or so Vandercooks of a few different makes/sizes, a small proofing press, and one hand-fed platen press. It would have a generous selection of lead and wood type, and part of the budget set aside to replenish worn faces. There would be equipment for making photopolymer plates—a nice A2 size platemaker, and maybe even an Imagesetter for making film. The thing(s) that would make this letterpress studio a little different from the rest is the inclusion of some serious production presses: A Heidelberg “Windmill” Platen, and a Heidelberg Flatbed Cylinder. Why these presses? Because they change the terms of production for letterpress: suddenly it becomes reasonable to print an edition of 500 or 1000 or more of multiple colors and a fair amount of complexity. The problem (and an interesting pedagogical problem) with these presses is their complexity: you can’t really teach a class to use them efficiently and/or safely by giving one demo to a group of 10+ people. They require individual training and a lot of time on press to gain proficiency. They would perhaps come in later, as independent studies for advanced students (already the equipment shapes the program).

Bindery: All the standard bindery equipment: book presses, nipping presses, lying presses, etc. Tools for leather binding as well. A foil stamping machine and type for it. Generous table space. A small hand guillotine for trimming books, and a large (30” wide) electric guillotine for cutting paper. Board shears too.

Papermaking: One or two 1-2 pound Reina and/or Valley beaters. A hydraulic press, vats, and moulds large enough to comfortably accommodate 22” x 30” sheets. Vats and moulds for Japanese papermaking. A forced air drying system. Some brilliant solution for drying felts with ease. Drains in the floor (though we will teach the students to be neat).

Offset Lithography: This is equipment that I do not know at all. But I think it could be an exciting part of a program, for the same reasons that the production letterpresses would be. But offset is even faster, and it opens up possibilities for photographic work. 1 or 2 small, Heidelberg offset presses, and all of the darkroom equipment necessary for making plates. Maybe the offset studio would have its own guillotine. I’m not really sure what else an ideal offset studio would have—suggestions are welcome.

& of course suggestions are welcome for all of the other parts of this thought experiment as well.

To be continued…

CURRICULATING (2): GROUNDWORKING

So that first “Curriculating” post (just scroll down to see it) was kind of a mess. But it got this thing started. Let’s review the premise of this investigation, and begin to lay the groundwork for the rest.

The “Curriculating” posts are (or will be) a thought experiment, an attempt to imagine what a dedicated Book Arts curriculum, or major, would look like. At this point, I have no idea what shape the entire experiment will take, or when and where it will end. But that’s the end, and we need to begin at the beginning.

(At this point I am having trouble deciding what to write about next—do we begin with a foundational philosophy for the program, or do we jump right in with a description of the program itself, establishing its parameters and context? Although it makes a certain sense to begin by trying to establish some overarching principle(s), I think such things will have to emerge as the thing is worked out. In fact, perhaps the goal of the entire experiment is to yield such a philosophy.)

As the program is built and refined, it is important to note that this will be the imagining of an “ideal” situation—for me. (Or perhaps it is a way for me to realize my “ideal” teaching situation.) And so there will probably some big, real world problems that I will skip over or simply not see. For example: we are going to assume that money is not an issue—that the resources to make the program its ideal size and breadth are there. This is often not the case in the real world, especially now, when it seems like every department in every school is constantly under the threat of having its funding cut down or completely taken away.

Our Book Arts Department will be one department at a small school focused on the visual arts and design. A general listing of the other available programs: Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Ceramics, Fibers, General Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Illustration, Digital Media, and Intermedia. And since we’re talking about ideals there would also be an Art History/Criticism/Theory major as well. The overall goal of the school is to produce professional working artists, whether they are designers with full-time employment, or studio artists depending on the sales of individual pieces for their income. There would be BFA and MFA programs in all, or most, disciplines. Our focus, for now, is on the BFA program(s).

Book Arts would be its own autonomous department, connected to, but not a part of, any of the others. As such it would have its own core faculty and its own classroom/studio space (perhaps in the same building as Printmaking). The ideal number of faculty members is hard to determine at this point, but let’s say 5 or 6, with a broad range of approaches and areas of expertise in the field, both in the studio and in theory/history. There would be other faculty as well, perhaps adjunct or perhaps culled from other departments to provide more in-depth coverage of subjects not usually found in Fine Arts programs. Example: a studio class about concrete and visual poetry.

A studio class about Concrete and Visual Poetry? Can you imagine such a thing?

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (10): WHAT YOU WILL (9)

Picking up some momentum on printing again. The images that follow are a series of set-up sheets from What You Will. “Set-up sheets” are the sheets of paper that are run through the press to test feeding, impression, registration and print quality. They are often fed through multiple times, resulting in layered, haphazard compositions. Each of the set-up sheets below have been “tagged” and will be released (inserted randomly) back into the main pile of set-up sheets. And after every week I will pull them again, scan them, and post them here. So it will be yet another way for us to track the process, the growth in complexity of the book. The sheets that you are looking at are the result of printing 11 different plates. (Note: the images got cropped a bit: the real sheets are slightly taller (about a half inch) than the bed on my scanner.)










This last image is a close-up of a section of text, so that you can get a sense of the layers of transparent ink. Eight of the eleven plates printed so far have been printed directly on top of each other to build up images like this.

NEW LIFE SCHEDULE

Trying to be organized. Trying to have goals. Trying to achieve them. Trying to stop trying, get on to the doing.

MONDAY: Write, Work, Print (Books), Read
TUESDAY: Write, Work, Prep for class, Read
WEDNESDAY: Write, Teach, Read
THURSDAY: Write, Work, Cut/Peel Broadsides, Read
FRIDAY: Write, Work, Cut/Peel Broadsides, Read
SATURDAY: Read, Print (Books), Other*
SUNDAY: Read, Print (Books), Other*

REPEAT.

* Could include one or more of the following: Prep for class, Grading, Writing emails, Watching movies, Reading, etc.

STRUCTURE & STRUCTURE

When we say we we may mean us. & by us we may mean &. & by its nature will never fall apart, therefore it is not an adequate representation of us, we, or, and. Perhaps this & nothing more.

CURRICULATING (1)

At most colleges and universities, there is not a degree specifically in Book Arts. Usually any Book Arts classes fall inside the Printmaking department, or exist in some other strange extension, like the library or the English department. Sometimes, students can cobble together a pretty thorough Book Arts education by taking classes from a series of departments. But usually they just get a sample. So a thought exercise: what would a Book Arts curriculum look like? What classes would it entail? How would it be structured? How would it relate to other departments? Is there a Foundations program specific to Book Arts?

(I don’t foresee this being a simple task, so this subject will probably occupy the IDE(A/O)(B)LOG(Y/UE) for a little while, for the week, or longer. Perhaps with interruptions. Almost certainly with interruptions.)

This is a fun exercise for me, a way to think through and visualize what an “ideal” teaching situation (for me) looks like. So in keeping with that ideal, we’re going to place this program at the kind of school that I understand best (and think I want to teach at, ultimately)—a small school focused on visual art. (& I suppose that we can expect this “program” to reflect my other biases as well.)

One of the first problems that we run into is the radical inclusiveness of the book. How can we define a curriculum for a field that has been notoriously hard to define? Most academic art programs are defined by media: the Painting program, the Photography program, etc. But books are not a medium, they are a form, an entire cultural paradigm that can easily include all of the media, together or one at a time. (Note: it could be argued that any medium can contain any of the other media (ex: a painting containing photographic images, photographic images deployed across a 3D form) but the difference is this: when media are combined the boundaries of those media are stretched and/or dissolved; all of a sudden a painting is no longer just a painting, it’s a sculpture. But a book can contain both painting and photography and printing and drawing and always has sculptural qualities, and still be, easily and recognizably, traditionally, a book.) So then a Book Arts program stands with other hard to define or perpetually changing academic programs, like Intermedia/New Media, or Digital Arts. Could we base our program on such structures already in existence?

Possibly. But we may need to go further, because the production of artists’ books extends out into fields normally outside the direct purview of the Fine Arts (Department). What about classes in Graphic Design, Typography? What about classes in Writing? Creative, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and/or critical? All of the above? How would a writing program change when bent toward the visual/material nature of language and books? (Aside: what if the Book Arts program was sub-divided into Concentrations, like a BFA in Book Arts with a concentration in Bookbinding or Visual Poetry? That seems like a frightening amount of specialization, the kind we want to avoid, the kind that could negate the expansive, critical potential of the program that we’re outlining.)

-------------------------------------

A brief break from writing this post, and now I can see that this subject is very complex, and my handling of it is going to be very disorganized. But for now, let’s end on this idea: One of the most compelling and fertile aspects of the book-as-art is the questions it asks of the other “art media” and other areas of culture, that it asks of how art and art objects are made, distributed, and received in this culture. The book has enormous critical potential, the book is potential. How can a Book Arts curriculum communicate that? How can the curriculum be positioned critically, in order to ask questions of how art and art objects are made, distributed, and received in this culture?

Or are we asking too much already? Better to try and fail. Oh, to be drawn out and continued.

AL-MUTANABBI OPENING THIS FRIDAY!!!

Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Exhibition
April 2 – May 2
Opening on April 2 at 7:30 PM
300 Page St.
San Francisco
news.sfzc.org

The panel discussion will take place at the SF Zen Center, on April 30th at 7:30 PM.

I hope I will see you there.

PRODUCTIVITY

What follows is an excerpt from an in-progress analysis/review of the artists’ book Things I Wanted To Tell You by Kristen Merola, published by Preacher’s Biscuit Books:

It is possible to put forward a metaphoric reading of the book. We could start at the title, Things I Wanted To Tell You, and assume that the illegible writing represents those “things,” and that those things have been made unspeakable, either through their own urgency or through the layered complexities of delay and time. This then, would be a book about a relationship, a relationship ended or suspended, with many things unsaid. We could put forward such a reading, if we like our books to end when we put them down. Or we could elaborate a different reading, one based in the relationship between the images and the text, the images of the text, and that reading could be extended productively, infinitely. Because we want our books to keep going after we put them down. Because we are concerned with the real book, the book in our hands, and the processes that it enacts.

AS IMAGINED IN SPACE AND LIGHT

Picture a grid, rigid and impossible. Picture a grid as a physical object, permeated by space, now bending, now sagging, now descriptive of its own lilting surface. Like the pages of a notebook curling and crumbling under daylight. Picture the grid cropped and framed, a photograph of bent space. Gravity. There is nothing as human as a grid. With lines close enough to hum in silence. With lines far enough for the fingers to pass through. Seen and gouged. Surface and city. Silence, pressed through to the other side. Against which light is draped. Against which the morning is swallowed. Silences accrue to noise. Against which the morning dissolves. There is nothing as human as a grid, now bending, now sagging, now descriptive of its own lilting surface.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (9): ON AL-MUTANABBI (1)

This is the most difficult proofreading I have ever had to do.


This is the most fun proofreading I have ever had to do. They say it starts with one word.


These images are of laser printed proofs for the colophon/info printed on the back of the Al-Mutanabbi broadsides. We wanted to put the information in English and Arabic, so we had to enlist some help from some friends. All of the Arabic handwriting on the sheets pictured above is corrections and/or brief lessons for me. Even in the simplest, most mundane parts of a project there are possibilities to learn fascinating things.

ON AL-MUTANABBI

On Al-Mutanabbi
Poem by Justin Sirois
Arabic translation by Haneen Alshujairy
Letterpress with hand-mechanical printing and delamination
Variable edition of 15
12” x 18”
2010
Not For Sale


This poem and broadside were made as part of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project. What is the Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project? The official text from the poster:

On March 5, 2007, a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street, the center of bookselling in Baghdad, killing 30 people and wounding 100 others. The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition sent out an international call to letterpress printers to craft a visual response that would bring attention to this bombing.

You can read more about the project and see some of the other 130 broadsides here.

A note on process: This broadside was made in essentially the same way as the three described here. The primary difference is how it was delaminated. Instead of removing all of the surrounding paper, 130 different cuts were made into the sheet, and the paper was pulled away for as long as I could keep it intact.

But wait, there’s more: for those of you in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Zen Center will be hosting the first exhibition of all 130 broadsides, and a panel discussion about the project. The info:

Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Exhibition
April 2 – May 2
Opening on April 2 at 7:30 PM
300 Page St.
San Francisco
news.sfzc.org

The panel discussion will take place at the SF Zen Center, on April 30th at 7:30 PM.

THE UNDERSTANDING CAMPAIGN

Because learning a new language can see help us see the world in a different way.

Link!

WE WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU THERE

Registration is open for the Pacific Center for the Book Arts Printers’ Fair, at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Saturday, May 15th. The deadline on registration is soon, March 26th.

&

Registration is open for the 2010 San Francisco Zine Fest. The early bird deadline on that isn’t until July, but don’t wait too long—we are pretty sure that the tables will sell out this year. And there are now three stages of pricing: $30 for a 1/3 table, $45 for a 1/2 table, and $90 for a full table. The Zine Fest will take place in the usual venue, the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park in SF, on Labor Day Weekend, September 4th and 5th.

I would really like to see some more artists’ book and/or literary small presses at the Zine Fest. I know you’re here in the Bay Area. That show is a perfect venue for you.

I think that I’ve written this before, but shows and fairs like these have become my favorite way to show my work. They’re just so much fun.

RECEPTION IS PRODUCTION (3): LIBRARIES, CIRCULATION, CHANCE

The last post related a story, my personal experience, to the thoughts behind the New NewLights Press Library Policy. In light of that post I have been thinking about libraries, about how we, as (re)searching, potential readers, interact with libraries, and how the physical space of the library affects those searches.

It is important and necessary for libraries to have Special Collections containing artists’ books and small press books. Those collections are a great service both to the public (who now have access to amazing work, for research or just because) and to the artists and publishers (economic support from collecting institutions).

But there is one downside to having one’s work in Special Collections. Although it is (in most cases) accessible, it is not “out there.” Only the librarians and a lucky few others are allowed to browse the shelves of Special Collections. (But everything “back there” is usually stored in archival boxes, so browsing the shelves isn’t really that much fun anyway.)

That browsing, that wandering, is for me one of the most important aspects of the experience of a physical library. I rarely go to the library unless I need a specific book. I look that book up online, before I even set foot in the library, and write down the call number so that I can go right to it. And when I get to the library, I do, usually, go right to it. But then I wander, in the area around that specific book, to see what other books have been grouped with it, by the subject and by the way the collection has been alphabetically distributed across the physical space of the shelves. Looking, reading, looking closer, reading closer. The experience is often overwhelming. The wanderer in the library stands in the channel of the discursive flow, with a cross-section view of that channel, able to navigate through any plane that they choose. (This is both similar and different to than standing in front of a shelf at a bookstore, where the reader is simultaneously subject to, subjected to, the flows of discourse and of economics. In the quiet land of the library, where every book is free, money fades into the background. In the pulsing land of the bookstore, money is the river that has caught everything in its current. (What about small bookstores, used bookstores?))

And so in that wandering the reader finds books that they did not know existed, that can contain and lead to new thoughts, new directions. Wandering like this has led me to unimagined books, and some of those books have become extremely important to me.

If there are artists’ books and small press books in the library, in general circulation, they have the potential of both being searched directly and borrowed and of being discovered, of being a marvelous, convulsive accident that can reorient a reader’s relation to language and to how that language is distributed through culture. Books live (they always and only live) out there, in the active hands and desiring minds of readers.

LIBRARIES & CHANCE

About two months ago we put up a post concerning The New NewLights Press Library Policy, stating, essentially, that if a public and/or academic library buys a NewLights book for their Special Collections, we will give them another book (perhaps the same one, perhaps a different one) that they can put into general circulation.

I wanted to describe here, briefly, the experience(s) that motivated that idea and decision. When I was a graduate student at Arizona State University, I had, for the first time in my life, full and privileged (I was teaching so could check out books for months) access to a great library with an enormous collection. I could get my hands on just about any book that I wanted. They had some real treasures in their Special Collections, including a book printed by Nicholas Jensen, the Frenchman, (the inventor of the Roman typeface for books) in Venice in 1475. That book was one of my favorite to look at and handle (it is in Latin, which I cannot read), to contemplate the strange connections to history that all of us have.

But another important part of the experience of that history, of that library, the part that really informs the new library policy, is the experience of browsing the shelves, the circulating stacks, and the random finds of treasures that I was able to check out, take home, and spend real time with.

I rarely went to the library without a particular book in mind. And I would find it relatively quickly, and then wander around that book, seeing what else was near it, grouped into the same subject, arranged by their author’s names and the haphazard vertical structuring of the shelves. I would often walk away with several more books than what I came for, and those books opened new doors—doors that I couldn’t conceive of before I got my hands into those books.

And sometimes there were actual important (at least to me) historical works in the stacks. The poetry stacks had a bunch of small press editions, made by presses that I look up to, of the work of writers that have influenced me. And there they were, on the shelf, waiting to be checked out and taken home (Note: most of them had been placed inside an outer hardcover for protection, with the original cover still intact inside). I got to take home a copy of Jack Spicer’s Book of Magazine Verse and a pirate copy (the Jolly Roger Press) of his Holy Grail, to name just a few.

And after I felt that I had communed with them thoroughly I took them back, to wait for the next amazed person to find them, to read them, and to continue their work.

MONDAY’S ARABIC LESSON

Why? The main reason is because Arabic (both the spoken and written versions) is really interesting. The second reason will be printed, photographed, and up on this blog soon.

RECEPTION IS PRODUCTION (2)

[& so now infused with new old memories. & so now back again and subject to the flux, again. There is much to be done. Where did we begin?]

Recently the Pacific Center for Book Arts opened up registration for their annual printers’ fair. And the meetings for planning the 2010 San Francisco Zine Fest are underway, with registration opening soon. The CUNY Chapbook Fair hangs indeterminately in the future, and the 2011 Codex Fair, a year away, is moving as fast as it can. And all of these upcoming fairs, oddly, make me think about fairs.

Over the past few years art fairs have become a big deal. A lot of money gets spent on them, and even more money gets spent at them. For the moment of the fair the spectacle can expand and infect every piece of culture held up in sacrifice to it. And so we need not concern ourselves with such fairs. [If we ignore the raging and ravaging of the spectacle, will it cease to exist, cease to have power? Doubtful. We must produce against it. Hold your labor like a knife, like the blade of a plow. Cut into the spectacle like it was the land, it is the first land of culture.]

The concern then is small fairs, sometimes local fairs, sometimes not. (Sometimes one gets lucky and an international fair happens in the city where you live.) Fairs have become, over the past few years, my favorite mode of public display for the work. Mainly because the format allows one to sidestep the issue of “display” altogether. The books are there, on the table in front of their maker/seller, and they are there available for full perusal. No gloves and no cases. And if you like one, and if there’s more than one of the one that you like, chances are you will be able to take one home.

And not only do potential readers get to handle and interact with the work, but I get to interact with all of those potential readers as well. And “the crowd” at every show is actually made up of two groups: the people that come in to see the show, and the people that are there exhibiting as well as looking. And we are all there together, a community is visible, the connections are felt. And the community always gets a little bit bigger with every show. It reminds one of the necessity of kindness in this endeavor.

[Hold your kindness like a knife, like the blade of a plow…]