Letterpress--and the impression it left on my heart

I took a letterpress workshop this past weekend at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts as part of my larger journey into the book arts. I'm in a certificate program, and a letterpress class is a requirement. I'd been dreading it. Large pieces of equipment, lots of technical know how, the fear of actually designing some visual something to go with whatever carefully chosen words I finally, after much second-guessing, chose. Good lord, we had to carve a linoleum block and make an image with a pressure print. I'd never heard of either of these things. And I had no idea what a historic Vandercook press was.

It turned out that the bigger picture, outside of my personal insecurities, was so much bigger than I expected. Printing and the power of it, political and otherwise, is staggering.

The first newspaper printed in America pre-dates the United States of America. (It was letterpress printed.) The publisher had fled England after being punished for publishing seditious pamphlets. He got into trouble in his new home too. After Publick Occurrences was published in Boston in 1690, the governor banned it. The very first newspaper in North America was the first to be suppressed. In this era of living with a president who lies and spews insults about journalists, their struggle is even more profound in its long historical context.

And, on a somewhat lighter noter, as someone whose blogging activities have been restricted by a divorce related restraining order, well, I felt a resurgence of my powers. Ha!--the restraining order constraining me says nothing about leaflets or broadsides or little booklets. I'm mostly joking here. I seldom think of you-know-who.

This hangs in the letterpress studio at MCBA. If you zoom in you can read the attribution on the bottom.

I did actually feel that I was on sacred ground in the basement of MCBA. 

I carved a lino block for the depiction of the ocean waves (hard not to laugh as I type this.) I can't draw, so I knew not to get in over my head. But a person can trace onto a lino block and then carve the tracing, btw-- so maybe that's what I'll try next time.

I made cards. 

I plan to make suminagashi marbled envelopes to go with them.

Here's what the type for the text looked like all locked up on the Vandercook. 

And wouldn't it be fun to make protest posters on the Vandercook press!?

Travels With the Red Velvet Buddha

There he was on the top shelf of a second-hand store in Kingman, Arizona. I had no doubt that he would come for what remained of the trip. The niche in the backseat of the rental car seemed custom made for him. Though he did get rattled to the floor on a washboard road somewhere in Death Valley, making a terrible metallic clunk like a hubcap falling off, he was reinstalled without complaint.

We saw many wonders.

In the entrance of La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona 

Front entrance, La Posada. 

La Posada will become part of an annual pilgrimage, I think. Google the art of Tina Mion if you're in the mood for a weird and wonderful journey. She and her husband rehabilitated the ruined hotel over many years, and it serves as a gallery for her paintings. It's still a work in progress--and a wonder.

More wonders:

Did you know there was a yin-yang rock at the mouth of Mosaic Canyon in Death Valley? Maybe the red velvet Buddha knew, but I didn't. And how about this?

I don't know what a flagellated eukaryote cell is, but that's how un-evolved many of our current politicians seem to be.

Rhyolite, Nevada was once a prosperous bustling place. Now it's not. This could happen anywhere, given the right (or wrong) circumstances.

Did you know there are fish swimming in Death Valley? They are living fossils, their population once reduced to merely 50.

Some of them are Sapphire blue.

I love to stay at interesting places. I didn't stay here--it's been abandoned for years.

But I did stay at the Amargosa. It has an astonishing story. Google Marta Becket.

And if you're a billionaire or a talented grant writer, start your life over near Death Valley and fix this place up before it returns to dust. They have the most luxurious sheets and towels, but the building needs help. I hope to stay there again.