We Love Letterpress Interview with Convivio Bookworks

For those who do not know, the JCBA's director, John Cutrone, & the collection specialist, Seth Thompson, has a press together outside of the Jaffe Center, making them busy boys. We Love Letterpress just released an interview with John about his printing press company with fellow JCBA'er & partner. It gives good information about their side company & you can visit their website at the link to the left.

When did you start letterpress printing?
1994, but I used to set the type & print personalized Christmas cards for folks at my family's card shop when I was a boy. My first time at the Vandercook, in fact, I wondered how the type was heated. Seth Thompson, my partner, began in '95 when we met.

What do you like best about letterpress printing?
It's such an amazing process, watching things appear on paper, mirror images of what is in the bed of the press. Very tactile, the paper, the ink, the mechanics of the press. Plus, rubber based ink smells great.

What inspires you?
Inspiration comes from unlikely sources sometimes & what inspires us most is the unexpected: that magic that comes when you least expect it. The alchemy of the everyday.

Which press(es), ink & paper do you usually use?
We have a Vandercook 4 that is our go-to press, but there's also a Golding Pearl in the shop. In our work at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, we are mostly printing on the Vandercook 4 again, but we also have access to a kick-ass Wesel Iron Handpress from the 1890s.

How would you describe your artwork?
Simple & clean, hopefully. Balanced. Not dark.

What kind of products do you create?
Most limited edition books & broadsides, though we have plenty of other things in mind for the future.

Do you custom work?
No.

Where can we buy your products?
At our website & in person at our occasional Open Studio Days... sometimes at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, too.

Do you offer workshops? If yes, what kind of?
We teach at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Some letterpress workshops & workshops in artists' books, & one really popular workshop called Natural Dyes for Book Arts Applications. The most popular, though, is an introductory JCBA immersion called Book Arts 101, which is taught numerous times each year, always with a theme appropriate to the season.

Is there anything you wished you had known as a beginner?
Things, it seems, have happened just as they were supposed to. Sometimes I think I missed something in never having taken a graphic design class... but honestly, I think we've done okay designing from the gut.
At our website and in person at our occasional Open Studio Days... sometimes at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, too.

Do you offer workshops? If yes, what kind of?
We teach at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Some letterpress workshops and workshops in artists' books & one really popular workshop called Natural Dyes for Book Arts Applications. The most popular, though, is an introductory JCBA immersion called Book Arts 101, which is taught numerous times each year, always with a theme appropriate to the season.

Graphic Novel of the Month: The Fountain

In the year 1535, Spanish Captain Tomas Verde & his soldiers are in the Americas searching for the Tree of Life. He is under the command of the Spanish queen, who has a target on her head from the Grand Inquisitor. They suspect the Tree of Life is being held a Mayan temple & are preparing to storm it. Forward to the year 2005, Dr. Thomas Creo is experimenting with new cancer treatments that involve untested plants and vegetation. Time is ticking for his miracle drug, as his wife has brain cancer. Further in the future, to the year 2463, the astronaut Tom is traveling to the nebula Xibalba. He travels in a clear sphere, accompanied by a tree and a woman who appears out of thin air time to time. Tom believes that the tree is dying & bringing it to Xibalba will cause him & the tree to live forever.

Darren Aronofsky, who wrote & directed a film of the same name, pens the novel. He originally wrote the screenplay, but when it seemed like a dead project, had the script become a graphic novel (but eventually was able to create the film.) The story is dense with themes & motifs, which includes obsession, love, trees & death. Aronofsky has left the connections between the three Toms to be created by the reader & doesn't spell everything out. All the Tom characters are distinct & well molded, but still have aspects of one another. Problems do arise from the transition of one era to another & it can be jarring to the reader.

Kent Williams paints the novel & does so beautifully. He creates an atmosphere for each time period, which helps with the time jumps. The conquistador sections contain many shades of red & gold, much like the Spanish flag; the modern scenes are grey & sterile, much like hospital; & the astronaut's scenes are colorful, bold, & otherworldly. Aronofsky let Williams' painting tell much of the story & they hold their narrative weight.

Phone Booth Libraries

The Department of Urban Betterment & architect John Locke have found a way to make the useless phone booth useful again: make them libraries! Cities are riddled with phone booths, but everyone & their dog has a cell phone now, making the phone booths obsolete, but the DUB has planted these plywood shelves that easily fit into booths, & they're popping up all over New York. Booths are already set up with books and follow an honor system. You can take a book, read it, return it, or keep it if you truly like it, and you can bring books of your own that can be taken by others. The phones are still useful and books are out in the open, being read. It's a win/win situation. Now, what else can we make into libraries?

Kyle Durrie's Type Truck in Florida

If you were at FAU on this last February 2nd, then you probably say Kyle Durrie's Type Truck in front of the library. Thanks to our help & from many others, Kyle was able to make the trip across America with her moveable letterpress studio. It was a quick visit, but many happy students were able to take home one-of-a-kind postcards as well as print their own poster, which stated, "This is Not a Taco Truck" (humorously, I did hear someone say "mmm, tacos" as they past by, only to see the whole poster when they got closer.) I've posted below Kyle's blog entry on here trip to the JCBA. Let's hope she is able to come again.

http://type-truck.com/fl-part-iv-the-atlantic-coast/

Center Paige: Match in a Bottle

Match in a Bottle is a book of seven poems by Tracey Knapp & is illustrated by Kurt Gohde. The book is housed in a clamshell box & the box & the book are covered in Japanese red cloth. They both have a 22-karat gold foil stamp with the book's title on it. The seven poems are all about fire & smoke, and the seven illustrations that correspond with the poems are all made with smoke.

The smoke illustrations are all original "drawings" that are made with matches, kerosene lamps, "snaps", gunpowder & cigarette lighters. These illustrations are quite unique & intricate. It's hard to figure out how they were able to make these illustrations. One illustration looks like a black cauldron that is has smoke rising out of it, or there is an illustration of ghosts that is very eerie. There were 65 copies of this book made, meaning that there were a total of 455 illustrations that needed to be made, but I'm sure there were many experiments and failed attempts. Gohde refers to Jules Renard's quote about smoke as "the inconstant wife of the wind," probably out of his attempts to make smoke a constant.

The poetry is rich and fully descriptive. The first poem is short but is a good starting point as to the tone of the rest of the book:

Key


I am talking about fire
and that means burning.
About a lit match in a bottle.
About stirring up embers 
while walking through ruins.


Match in a Bottle is a beautiful book that shows off artistic skill, creativity & persistence & one of the most exhibited books here at the JCBA.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Asterios Polyp

I reviewed this graphic novel at the beginning of the creation of the blog, but somehow, that review has been lost, but that is fine, because Asterios Polyp is a graphic novel that deserves a second look. Written & drawn by David Mazzucchelli (who was the artist for City of Glass), this magnum opus follows a paper architect (meaning, he designs buildings, but they only stay designs) whose apartment burns downs from a lightning storm on his fiftieth birthday. Leaving everything behind, Asterios drives off until his car breaks down & becomes a car mechanic's assistant. Flashbacks then show Asterios' failed relationship with his insecure wife caused by his patronizing, self-important personality & her need to find a voice of her own.

The story is very layered & between the scenes from the present to the flashbacks, there are also many unique segments, like conversations between Asterios & his unborn twin brother. A favorite segment of mine features a theater like production of the Orpheus myth starring the characters of the novel. The narrative is rich with Ancient Greek inspirations. At one point, Asterios says that he feels like many, petty deities, like those on Mount Olympus, makes more sense than one all-knowing, all-caring god. He even says that his family's name was cut in half, which could make it Polyhemus, the cyclops of from Homer's Odyssey, which could also explain why Asterios is only shown profile.

The cryptic, layered narrative is just one dimension of the story. Mazzucchelli adds more meaning to the story with his drawings & he stretches his artistic muscle. At points, characters are drawn individually & stylistically different to convey their personality. The chapters are divided by a picture, which is a motif in that chapter. All of the drawings are colored in mostly cyan, magenta, & yellow, giving the novel a unique pop that I've never seen before in graphic novels. But, all of these artistic liberties that Mazzucchelli take doesn't bury the emotions of the story. They are not forgotten & Mazzacchelli's finely tuned hand actually makes the sentiments more pronounce.

I venture to say that Asterios Polyp is one of the definitive graphic novels of the last decade because he uses the form of the graphic novel to create new ideas in storytelling. Nothing is left untouched, including the half-covered boards & the not-big-enough dust jacket. Asterios Polyp has the potential to be a real game changer.

The Monster that is Amazon

I just received the Kindle Fire for my birthday, making me part of the digital book revolution (although, I have failed to read a book on it yet.) In December, Amazon released that they sold one million Fires a week, adding more power to the online retailer. Amazon used to be a seller of books, now it has become a seller of just about everything. You really never need to leave the house, unless you want to get some fresh produce. You can buy anything & Amazon is making it easier to get anything with special accounts that make quicker & cheaper shipments. It has changed the way the world works; some may say it has made shopping more convenient or some may criticize that it has made us more alienated. Still, I found this infograph that tries to show just how big the mega-store is.