Deconstructing that artichoke and other bookmaking tales

OK, this is random...

...a link from my friend Ryan. He was distracted by the artichoke lamp at Compostmodern 09 (just kidding, he thought of me). Here's a link with more info.

Setting Type

Over the weekend I went and set type at Betsy's. It was pouring rain! Plus it was freezing! It felt so good. I used my right arm to reach for each piece of type and put it in the composing stick. I had to flip the type to have the nick face up, so it was hard to do, but I did it. I don't know how you would set type like a lefty; I'm sure I could figure it out, but I thought hey, if I could do it with my right hand, I would. That's therapy for you!

After going to Betsy's, I went over to Judith's house to give her samples of the type I had set, so she could proofread it, and I shared an idea that I had: the Literary Leaf of Deconstructed Artichoke Press. I think I'm going to print little 'zines of poetry. So she gave me her baseball series and her family series. I'm thinking I'll xerox a dos-a-dos of her baseball series and my baseball series--Giants v. Dodgers. Don't hold your breath though; it probably won't happen until summer!

The Future of the Book

There was a great deal of hullabaloo created on the book arts listserv by the keynote speaker's definition of a book at the Tools of Change conference. In the Publisher's Weekly article, Stein, the speaker, says that the text "scribbled in a bound book or as a comment posted online to a digital text" make the scribbler or the commenter an equal with the author.

As a scribbler in many books of poetry and short prose (probably other things too), I would disagree with the first part of his thesis. I don't consider myself to have an equal role in the text to the author. My scribbling is a reaction to what the author is saying. I'm in agreement, or disagreement, or it made me think of something else, etc.

A comment posted online is different though. As the author, maybe she can react to the comment, and the person posting the comment can have an active role in the creation of the text. Who knows? Maybe the author will just say, "Aah, this is bullshit," and go back to her typewriter and write the next great american novel.

Codex and more

Today was the Codex International Book Fair. I took the day off work to go, and boy, was I glad I did. It was a terrific experience. I saw so many people I knew and introduced myself to new people. I saw Andie Thrams, Cathy Miranker, Macy Chadwick, Bill and Vicky Stewart, and many, many more. Not only that, I met folks, like Carolee Campbell of Ninja Press, Donna Seager of Donna Seager Gallery, and Jonathan Clark of Artichoke Press (I had to admit to him that I had the name Deconstructed Artichoke Press).

The quality of work was high. There were people there who were book artists from Europe. I met Emily Martin of Naughty Dog Press, whose work I really admire. I can't say enough about how impressed I was by the Codex Book Fair, so I'll stop here!

Tarot cards

I don't think I've posted images of the tarot cards yet. That's the project I'm doing with my friend Judith. She wrote the poems, and I did linoleum cuts. Right now I'm printing the whole project. We're doing 50 decks (yowsers, that a lot of printing and a lot of paper).

I'm hoping to have them done by the PCBA's Printers Fair in May, but we'll see. I'm trying to focus on my recovery right now, and I don't know how good of a job I'm doing on that!