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.

Wolves

Behind all that mesh fencing is a red fox. An urban red fox. Near the back corner of my condo building.

I'd been on the bus for a while by the time the man got on. I was in one of the senior/handicapped seats facing the center, and he sat near me in the first forward facing row. As people got on many were exclaiming about the weather since the temperature was dropping. Chit chat. I don't mind talking to people on a city bus. It's not forever. And there's this thing here known as Minnesota nice.    Which is way more complicated than it sounds, but anyway. "Did you have a good day?" the man asked me.

"I did," I said. 

"What made it a good day?" he asked.

"Good people," I said.

"Mmmm," he said, are you sure they were good? Sometimes people fool you."

"They were good," I said.

"How do you know?"

"Intuition," I said, though my intuition certainly has steered me wrong in this department more than once. 

"You got to watch out for the wolves in sheep's clothing," the man said. About this time the rowdy gaggle of addicts so high they practically had needles hanging from their arms moved past us to exit. "Look at them," the man said. "What the hell?"

They were wolves in wolves clothing. But too fucked up to be of any harm since they could barely stand. The man was right. Wolves in sheep's clothing are far more dangerous. 

I stood up to ask the driver how far east he went after the bus turns on Washington.

"Hmmm," the man said after I got my answer. "I didn't even know that was east. Look at that, I learned something from you."

"Well, I know where the sun sets," I said.

The man got off just before the bus turned. "Take it easy," he said.

[happy] New War

It just so happened that today I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to see the exhibit Artists Respond American Art and the Viet Nam War.  Coincidentally,  this country of ours is now back in the saddle on its war horse. Will it ever be any different? I doubt it.

It was a moving experience to wander through this exhibit. There were a lot of guys my age or somewhat older. Groups of us stood in silent clutches looking at old photos from "Life" and "Look." If those photos brought the Viet Nam war back for me, bringing it back meant something else entirely for someone who served there.

And there was this. Thick sheaves of responses to the questions below.

And there was a Hmong component to the exhibit because so many Hmong now live in the Twin Cities. A local artist has painted a 50 panel series telling the story of his people and their flight from Laos to Minnesota post Viet Nam war. Some of those panels were on exhibit today. It made me think of the Kurds.

So yeah. Hopes and dreams for the New Year. 2020--and all that BS about perfect vision and seeing clearly. I think our nation is blind to suffering. Viet Nam was the first televised war. It was shocking. Walter Cronkite. The nightly body count. 

And here we are.