paper tattoo press

introduction to book arts: bookbinding (two)

2011-10-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

We made our first humbling attempts at Japanese stab-stitch binding, and since the awls were cattywampus, as the instructor said, and my thumbs were destroyed before I realized I was trying to press-and-wiggle them into the protective book board underneath. The stark red cover was also unforgiving; a patterned one might hide a little of the stray lines.

Meryl's artists book will use this binding, which is appropriate, not only for the convenience of the paper orientation and printing, but also because this binding will allow for a sexy drape, which will not only invite touch but will evoke the line of the body at rest.

Our second book was The Big Project: tape binding. We used a punching jig, or punching cradle, and a template for the punches, which made the task seem smoother than it perhaps was. Of what we've learned thus far, I have developed a shy crush on the unassuming pamphlet stitch. Please, please ignore my five-year-old technique in cutting the cover above.

We also made a charmingly small dos-a-dos book at the close of the evening, and while cutting, I discovered someone had printed on the back of my ruler. The poem--Alice--

dream of a perfect interface (one)

2011-10-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

This afternoon was spent in the basement of the MCBA, which, I've announced, would be just as eerie and creepy as our own basement (which has its very own dirt floored vortex of hell, as our friend has named it), if it weren't for all the good company and whirring of presses. Alone, with the lights flickering off--no, thank you.

Meryl began that first essential step of editioning her book. She has put together her final book dummy, using overhead sheets to indicate how the text will look on her layered paper, and she's done practice runs on the Vandercook to test the bleed. She's noted the trip and ink measurements and has started moving toward that final object. She brought in a hard copy of the long poem she's been tinkering with over the summer and into autumn and hopes to send out PDFs tonight or tomorrow for final plates.

Her mentor in this program stopped down to discuss margins, and Regula, who was my instructor in a the weekend version of Letterpress I also came and discussed the gripper margin. My brain whirred at the precise nature of book arts, the ways in which one must measure down to the pica when approaching a more professional product.

The book itself will be 6 x 12 and Japanese stab stitch binding. The paper will be doubly layered--an internal tan center and the outer layer a cotton textured paper, which will be the paper the poem is pressed upon. When I tried to describe it after first seeing it a little over a week ago, I described it as a mix between a doily and snakeskin.

The paper had a cellular feel to it, which is ideal, given the topic of her long poem--she uses the skin's layers as the guiding organization and returned-to topic. I love it. I've read it as it has transformed, and I can appreciate the shifts and strengths.

Meryl's husband Shawn, who is a tattoo artist and is responsible for this, will do the design work for the inside--an adaptation of those dermis-layers, and Meryl will order polymer plates from Boxcar (I ordered my first last week, which I will share once the project is more underway).

The day was spent on the bad cutter; one knows which equipment is finicky in the studio and that particular one was being used by a bookbinding class upstairs. The press pulls when locked and this paper has a fabric-type stretch. I contributed a little bone folder action, which was meticulous and tricky, as the ends didn't always line up and the grain fought me a bit.

Colleen joined us, telling us about her experiences with Occupy MN and her reiki healing. She read through the hard copy, where we discussed such intricacies as single word choice, italics, and the shifts in meaning therein.

I'm glad to be present for this project--not only present for a dear friend but also observing the practice for when I delve into my own work, which might not be as elegant or ambitious, but celebrated and better for the shadowing.

M. made a little post about it on her blog, hinting at what is to come.

introduction to book arts: bookbinding (one)

2011-10-06T23:30:00.000-07:00

The essential, the kind. Book board, paper, scissors, bone folder, steel ruler, snap-tip knife. Also: awl, linen thread, needles. Ephemera etcetera.

Begin with the pamphlet stitch. You'll turn to it when you need to punch a needle through something. There is no easy way to draw it, so you'll simply spin through, watch and repeat.

But before all of this, there is the measuring, the cutting. Knocking the paper up, which gives a little giggle.

Test the grain by bouncing. Other ways: wetting the paper, tearing with or without ease. Fold the paper, use a thumb and spread lightly. Use the bone folder on the flat to create a sharp crease. Best not to fold one by one; folding together creates a nest.

The top of the book is the head; the bottom is the tail. There is the spine and the headband, where you might expect. There are the front covers / boards, the back covers / boards. The end paper, the foredge, the text block. There is the square, she points--which protects the book block, which can be an eighth of an inch, whatever you want, or flush. Single signature, for now. Or: single quire.

Before threading the linen (three times the length of the book), run your fingernail along the curl, pull away excess wax. Punching the holes can be the most difficult; sharing an awl with ghosts of classmates can be wonky--cockeyed and harder thrust. Weave, then: square knot. Just as a square dance, right over left, left over right, consider the ways in which strangers meet.

This binding: ribbon. Another, later on, a tri-fold. A folder. A lip and insert.

We use the papers we marbled for end papers. I imagine them differently. I love them just the same.

We accordion and measure: we create a simple pop-up, and I imagine the decorative books Maya can dissolve in her mouth. We concertina. We book board.

We are like children watching the clown fiddle a balloon into a creature. This one, there are papers folded, nipped at the corners, then inserted to create a bound book without thread, without glue, covered bookboards and all.

The first time I took introduction to binding, I made miniature versions with printer paper at my desk when my students were taking a test, were creating posters for presentations. I wouldn't write a word on the books I made, just put them on a shelf, forgot about them. Now, I will write a letter, will write a poem, will keep them for something, for a life outside of the craft, and will practice, still, with printer paper, with delicate paper, with pieces so I progress and settle.

introduction to book arts: marbling

2011-09-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

The day has been windy, the sort that bends the trees, limbs and leaves like hair on a woman in a convertible'd car. There's something freeing about this point past the equinox, where the leaves are just flashing colors, brief head-craning as something brilliant slips by.

Winter will be long here. It always is.

Show and tell: silk worm cocoons. The creatures rattled inside; gifts inside an egg. Sorrow at knowing they'd boil to unskein.

We discuss the questions that have arisen since last week: Would autumn leaves make vibrant paper? Likely to turn brown. But using some slurry to affix an undivided leaf might maintain its color. One instructor of the instructor used lilies--the flowers, the stalks, the pollen still clinging--and developed an allergy so strong, she could not even touch the paper when it was done. How does one make paper in one's own home? Buckets and supplies from a hardware store. A solid drill. I'm thinking of collecting, setting up a mobile studio.

Tonight: sheets of paper and paint in a pan.

One must wake the paint. Acrylic dries so fast. Drop color into water, watch it unravel. It grows and reaches; a second layer and you are gazing at an x-ray film, organs on varicose display. [Recommended: Golden Fluid Acrylic.]

image source: jacquard

Alum the paper, let it dry while you work. Each color holds the paint differently--the darker the paper, the darker the hold. We use white to start; my purple print is pinked.

There is: the stone. It's beautiful alone, untouched. One uses a dropper to plunk the paint onto the size. One uses a whisk for smaller splotches. The magic number--four to six colors mingle. Consider the product; consider the book binding, the wrapping paper, the box cover.

There is: Spanish wave. One wave is a mistake, a distortion. One can also start on one side of the paper and galumph it down, rocking the paint, creating an illusion of fabric folding.

There is: Gel get. Get gel. (Get pronounced the same as one might expect; gel with the guh-sound, as opposed to the juh.) Turkish: back and forth. These gel-gets are feathered; one can also keep a straight arm and find chevrons arising.

There are ghost prints. Sometimes more lovely than the initial. There is a space in the center where a paper once was. And the paint circles that have sunk to the bottom of the tray won't change the tenor of your print.

There is: snail. Small singular loops with a dowel or use the comb. My own hands spasmed, the snails a confused, crushed shell.

There is also: non-pareil, peacock. There is try and fail and try and find some other unique meeting of ink on paper.

Most of the night, there is attempting color combinations that might appeal to those I love--and left on my fingers, there is a stubborn royal gold-and-purple, on another the red I do not care for but know belongs in the pages of a beloved's scrapbook.

There is the evening bath you take with your daughter, the soapy residue from last night's bubble bath rising up, swirling and spinning beneath the tap, and there is imaging drifting a sheet of paper on top and slipping it away, coming up with the imprint of bodies from before, of patterns upon patterns.

introduction to book arts: papermaking

2011-09-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

Stop. Reverse. Begin again, from the beginning. The fifth in a string of pearls, but this is the one that lives in the sky. An overview of it all, an introduction.

[I've taken classes at MCBA before: binding to letterpress to platen press to layout. I've decided to restart, with the idea of a core certificate in mind. Maybe one day a mentorship. Right now, their poet is my girl M.]

These twin mounds of cotton remind me of lungs. So soft, like little lambs. Sarah passes them around: abaca, flax, cotton, papers made at various lengths of beater times.

We apron. We rubber boot. I fantasize about Wellies. I think of puddles and yellow ducks.

We watch the abaca get beat. A open-top funnel. A fiber in rotational pull.

We learn the discarded has a home here: peanut butter jars let us examine the density of fiber. She holds it to the light and the abaca worms there.

What makes a good fiber? Cotton, linen, bamboo. Sarah tells us of how she blistered her fingers cutting jeans into appropriate pieces. These are pancakes. I will show you three more.

What does not make a good fiber? Wool. Wool, when agitated, becomes felt. It does not sift but binds to itself. Plants can be integrated. Cellulose is key.

The pulp must be pinched slowly, dropped into the water. One pound of dry weight; add water to the fill line. (Imagine it.) Drain with a bucket and strainer.

The yogurt cup is another essential throw-away. Scoop two cups slurry into the vat. Stir with your hands. Reminds you of: high school art class, pottery unit. (I couldn't keep my hands out of the ice cream pails of slip.) All night, you could trail your hands in this water.

There is the mould and the deckle. One sweeps the matching components into the slurry, into the vat, and shimmies, as if panning for gold. I twitch; my hands stutter. My paper is smoother, the twitchier I get. I shake before rising. I learn the warp of the mould can crumple the paper on the felt. I learn to not shift so violently, or the paper can warp on the mould. I envy the mistakes of my classmates--the hills that are declared cells, the lines that resemble veins. I think of my (in)fertility poems, my patient-on-an-examining-table poems, my definition-of-a-cyst poems. I would press them right next to those throbbing, pulsing failures.

The paper loses its shine as it dries. Here it is: wettest in its form. I cannot help but make, over and over, the smaller size, the one that is closest to the trade paperback. Others make the larger sheets, varying according to whim. I am looking ahead, though to what, I do not know.

There is also pigmentation. Sarah tests the water; the water should run clear when the dye has been absorbed (one uses the slippery retention agent for aid), but this dye is the pigment of her pigment. Declared close enough, the cotton is called: salmon, dusty rose, insulation-pink. I add: tangerine. I think of palms.

The paper is pressed, boards and water. And after all of this, the best system, besides the drying racks or the window pressings, is the restraint dryer, which is little more than corrugated cardboard, blotters, and a linted fan.

They are there, sleeping. Peeled away from felt. In the basement of the center for book arts, the security guard leaning over a newspaper. Traffic has slowed outside; the sun is setting earlier and earlier every day. Equinox has passed.

I promised three pancakes. And there they are, free for students to slurry again. Blue cotton, red cotton, white abaca. Patriotic.

Linger at the installation. Think of the moon. Your thoughts will batter tonight; you've been energized.

weekend class at mcba: the intentional page

2010-12-02T21:23:00.001-08:00

I had forgotten the peace of that smooth rhythm, sewing the signatures together. I need to return to the full-length course on introductory bookbinding and then maintain that practice. My friend Meryl has amassed quite the collection in her mentorship experience.

The book we bound was one on intentional design--making font decisions, placement choices, the terminology of the book designers world. This class called to me when faced with the great privilege of designing my own book cover. I did not love what I did with the photographs I had, though I knew what I loved from my own bookshelves. But I couldn't translate that to the page.

Fortunately, my little sister could and came up with the front and back that is at the printer now.

I feel comfortable taking a photograph, but its transformation is beyond me. I do love the quiet peace of needles and paper, of linen thread and blocks of beeswax. It brings a certain calm.

film night: helvetica

2010-11-19T15:47:00.000-08:00

From the film: "It's like being asked how you feel about off-white paint."

I have an immense preference for the serifed font. I love black and white photographs of authors working at their desks. I am fascinated by scientific diagrams, taxonomy, marginalia, cartography.

I also love wood blocks.

From the film: "... all in favor of a certain atmosphere..."

When designing my book cover, my sister told me the sans-serif was easier to read; indeed, the awards announcement at the bottom of the image was originally in Helvetica. I asked her to serif it up, and instead of choosing the font I sent to her, she chose something easier to recognize.

Overheard in the MFA graduate assistant offices: "I'm in the market for a new font. Anyone have a good font to recommend?" We hover at the computers, using drop-down menus to show our preferences: High Tower, Cochin, Goudy.

From the film: "You will do what the typeface wants it to do."

I do see the quiet beauty of Helvetica when used in branding--a simple name, a small phrase. It's crisp, clean, lacking that clutter. Like binder clips.

From the film: "It's air. You have no choice; you have to breathe."

My friend Eireann's handwriting is so pretty, they turned it into a font for her first book.

I once wrote a letter to our exchange student from France entirely in WingDings with a decoder attached. I doubt she took the time.

From the film: "If it tells you do or don't, it's written in Helvetica."

- Official Film Site

Letterpress Demos

2010-10-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

After the Twin Cities Book Festival, Meryl and I headed to the Open Book where MCBA was hosting free demonstrations on letterpress techniques. We saw Monica and Meryl was introduced to Regula, who is one of the mentors in MCBA's mentorship program, a competitive series of one-on-one meetings and workshops designed for an artist in another medium to explore the book arts. Meryl is the winning poet this year, and I truly cannot wait to see what comes out of this experience for her.

Tattoo Lit

2010-10-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

My tattoo-in-trade has been published in a book, out by Harper Collins, and originally titled The Word Made Flesh, which is now used as the book's blog name. I love the matte feel of the book and enjoyed paging through, seeing how others might preserve the work that they love in unique ways.

Missing from my page is my entire last name (Molly Sutton Kiefer), my geographic location (hello, Minnesota!), the story of the tattoo, and credit to the amazingly talented Shawn Hebrank, whose work I hugely admire. But it is a truly impressive little book with so many wonderful tattoos celebrating the love of literature.

My mother took this photograph last Christmas; it's fully healed and receives much admiration when sported at places such as the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Twin Cities Book Festival.

And the little Kelsey is wedged into the Hebrank / DePasquale basement, preparing itself for a beautiful journey.

Platen Press Workshop

2010-07-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Meryl (that's her, up above) and I took a class through the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts this month with Monica Edwards-Larson, who runs Sister Black Press and previously gave me a quick-and-dirty tutorial on the MCBA's dusty and roller-addled Kelsey press.

I'm in the first trimester of my pregnancy, fully in the throes of morning sickness, tumbling up and down the wooden stairs, which meant I kept my fingers out of the lead and mineral spirits, and Meryl did most of the muscle work, finding those sweet spots, the hiccup and catch bringing handle down and running the new rollers down the chase bed.

shopping cart

2009-12-01T19:57:00.000-08:00

After much back-and-forth (my fault entirely), I now have an appointment to meet with Monica at MCBA, where she will give me a lesson on the Kelsey 5 x 8 platen-press. She's also kindly emailed me a pdf of an original Kelsey manual, so I can piece together my crated mess upstairs.

And I've begun the slow process of ordering supplies. Monica will email me a price list of her available materials, but I've begun to stock up on a few things:

:: two new rollers, one with trucks on etsy
:: form string, galley magnets, 12" and 9" quoins and quoin key, rawhide mallet, half pint dispenser can, soap, etc. on NA Graphics as well as the insects ornaments and ink scrapers and knives

I've also emailed Don Black about composing sticks and will order font through M & H Graphics.

It's a great investment, this.

trade

2009-09-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

I now have motivation to bring the press to working order: this weekend, in trade for time on the press, Shawn Hebrank (husband of one of my friends in the MFA program) gave me one of the most striking tattoos.

That's it just after, so it looks awfully red and painful, but several days later, and it's healing nicely, feeling a bit like a sunburn.

I've been doing some research and found this is a good site to start a checklist from, and my husband has claimed the right to be the first to order a set of type for me and found this as an excellent resource.

Halloween weekend, there is a platen press class at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, but my husband is standing up in a good friend's wedding in Wisconsin, so I will miss out, but I did email the instructor and she said she'd give me a private lesson; I just need to email her back and set up a time.

Perhaps the press will be up and rolling in time to make a few holiday gifts, though the priority just now is to get Shawn on the press. Of course, the priority really is to let me fumble through some things before I show him the ropes; I'd prefer not to be so wobbly, particularly since he is an artist who already does a great deal of screen-printing work.

Kelsey 5 x 8

2009-05-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

It looks like I've found what some consider the "perfect" starter press--a Kelsey 5 x 8. I found mine online, and am grateful that it was a tabletop platen press--we have no where to put anything larger (no matter how much I might have fallen for that Vandercook we learned on in letterpress class).

I've also joined the Ladies of Letterpress. It seems to be a fairly quiet social networking site, but I plan to use it, in conjunction with Briar Press's wealth of information to transfer what I've learned on the Vandercook to the Kelsey. I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that MCBA will eventually offer a class on platen presses.

Letterpress I

2009-05-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

I think, sometimes, about the ways in which image + word can converge. This weekend, an introduction to letterpress, where I fell in love with the Vandercook, vehemently sought my own platen press, made my first two broadsides and greeting cards, and was taught by the hugely patient and ever-charming Regula Russelle at MCBA.