University of Utah Book Arts

Earlier this summer I had the wonderful opportunity to work (albeit briefly) at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library in the Book Arts Department. I feel like such a fool not knowing such an amazing program existed in my fair home town. I moved so far for something so close.

I felt truly humbled to be able to jump into such an exciting work space and welcoming atmosphere. Marnie Powers-Torrey, Managing Director of the Book Arts Program and Red Butte Press , welcomed me with open arms and put me straight to work in the stunning facility. Over the last several years the Marriott Library has undergone an extensive renovation to make the Library ready for ever encroaching, impending earthquakes. The end result is a visually stunning, research drool inducing, librarian, bookworm, and artists wet dream of windows and light (oh yeah, there are books too). And at the end of this transformation, the Book Arts Program was given a floor to ceiling paradise of glass and light on the east side of the building to house the 10+ presses, 20, 000 zinc cuts, row upon row of movable metal and wooden type, classroom for thirty, lobby exhibition space for students, and the Red Butte Press. On a clear day, you can see Mount Olympus from the presses.

The majority of the work I did in my two week express internship consisted of shop upkeep and material prep. I helped sort metal furniture which had not been addressed since the big move. I scrupulously scrubbed 50+ years ink and dust off a tiny portion of the zinc collection. I had the wonderful opportunity to print and catalog several of these zinc cuts on a Vandercook 4 Proof Press. I had never printed on a 4 before and I think I may have fallen in love.

U of U Book Arts Program runs a K-12 reach-out program, Treasure Chest, during the school year where people will go out to local schools to teach kids history of the book and some basic bookmaking skills. Last year the program reached 10,000 school children and expects to reach even more next year. I assisted in prepping materials for all the different structures that will be taught. This included a lot of cutting, scoring, folding, gluing, and sanding. I got to use a Guillotine which I had never used before.

Marnie was kind enough to arrange for me to visit the Special Collections Lib to spend a few days looking at, holding, examining, and being in awe of real life Artist’s Books. I was able to see works by Ken Campbell, Julie Chen, Claire Van Vliet, Timothy C. Ely, Jan and Jarmilla Sobota, and Karen Hamner amongst others.

Working with this program and its wonderful staff was an amazing experience and I hope to stay in touch and work with them again in the future. I really want to thank Marnie, David, Becky, Amber, Mary, Laura, Claire, and Shidasha who I worked with.

Chapbook

Spring semester I letterpress printed a 20 page, 5 folio, single signature chapbook containing images and text created and written by yours truly. This part fact, part fiction piece pushed me from the ends of devastation and euphoria and everywhere in between.I was faced with, what felt at the time, insurmountable obstacles.

Writing your own material to print is incredibly rewarding and highly frustrating. I am not the creative writer in this little duo, and I have always struggled allowing people read my writing. But I wanted to get this idea that has been rattling around in my head. Boy was going back to where it all began, he and I. And it got me thinking about this cool idea for a chapbook. Only trouble with that is the words you write need to be worthy of being printed on the page. Pressure to write something good...

The extent of my previous art training was an AP Art History class I took in high school (that's right, I got a 5, people). I have no formal training in design, drawing, or even the most basic functions of photoshop. The most consistent thought in my brain during that semester: "Why the hell did I think I could get a master's in ART when I can't even draw?" The artwork to accompany the text was the biggest struggle I encountered. I spent tens of hours pouring over certain images I was determined to make work. Finally, with the support of my professor, I had to abandon all the work I had done and start from scratch. I was faced with not relying on other sources but having to create the images all on my own. Again, I was faced with creating something worth creating.

After hours of toil, tears, and a few break throughs I have my first printed chapbook, The City.

Printing Project: French Fold

First Semester of my printing class was mostly just to get us used to the processes. We had five different projects ranging in different styles of printing and as of yet I still don't have any pictures of all of them. This semester was meant to get us into larger projects and teach us how to plan several elements at once.

The relationship between text and image, letter and letter, baseline and baseline is a delicate, complicated balance between white space and legibility, readability and optical alignment. I've read all kinds of essays, papers, and chapters from old typographic style manuals explaining how all the different styles of type faces interact or fight against the reader. In any project where you have a body of text, more energy goes into the planning than into the printing. You spend hours pouring over the text not only looking for typos but line spacing, letter spacing, how many words are in a line, how many lines are in the paragraph, where the text lies on the page, how does the text interact with white space, does the text belong on the recto or the verso, how close should the text lie to the fore edge, how close to the gutter? Hours and hours of planning...

French Fold Assignment: Our first project this semester is called a french fold wherein everything is printed on one side of a sheet of paper then the paper is folded twice. I chose to make a traditional french fold, like the birthday cards my brothers and I printed out from the family computer back in the good old days of dot matrix printers and Prodigy. Anyone remember that? Anyway, in terms the kids from day care would understand, you take a piece of paper and fold it hamburger style, then fold it again hot dog style and you've got yourself a traditional french fold.

For the text I had boy write a short short (a short story aboout 200 words or less) and I created the images.
The images are the nutmeg tree and the nutmeg seed. I found the images online, traced them and transferred them onto a linoleum block. The linoleum block is then carved around the image, leaving a relief block to be printed. First I printed the lightest color, in this case white. Then I carved away all that I wanted to stay white and printed the next darker color. For the cover the next color was light green. Then I carved away all that I wanted to stay light green and printed the last color, dark green. This exact print cannot be printed again, because by the end you only have the darkest color of the block left to print from. This process is called a suicide block. This process is incredibly time consuming with all the carving and multiple press runs, but incredibly fun and exciting. I personally love the raw, jagged lines. Its almost like a wood cut, but not quite :)
The inside image is made in the same process. You can only barely see the white in this photo (an argument for artists books in person, not online). I printed the red next, then the brown.
In the long process of planning the text, I had the crazy idea I would have this display letter at the beginning of the text. So I had to figure out just how much room to make for this O, what size font to use and just how to place it so it looks optically aligned. I printed the text first. I struggled soo much getting that damn little O in just the right place. But finally I got it right!

Making up for lost time...

I know, I know what you're going to say... And for all the aunts and mothers and dear friends who have been wondering where the hell I've been, allow me to just say, it's been a hell of a semester. That said, I'll try and post as much as I can about all the crazy things I've done this semester.

But before I get into that, just look and see how pretty my yard is :)

Papermaking

This semester I am taking papermaking. After only a few weeks, I am already officially hooked. Fun, deeply interesting and incredibly hands on, Papermaking totally changes the way you think about paper, the craft of hand made objects, and the time, effort, money and skill required to be a true artist. UA has made a reputation for itself for making Banana paper. Our professor and headmaster of our humble book arts program has been given the grand task of making samples of banana paper for Papermaking Magazine. So we intrepid few endeavored to make the 1700 samples.

First, the banana stalks were chopped and soaked overnight.
Then the stalks must be cooked for about 45 minutes with soda ash to begin to break down the banana.
Once the cook is done, the banana is rinsed and then placed into a Hollander beater to break down the banana into fibrous pulp.


All this prep can take anywhere from a couple hours to several, depending on the fibers you use. In the mean time, the moulds and deckles are soaking in water so they will be ready for the pulp.
Then with a little conviction, several tries and a well practiced wiggle...

After letting the water drain, remove the deckle and couch (sounds like cooch) your paper onto a felt.
After we had a large enough post of felts with our paper on it, we placed the post in a press to squeeze out all the excess water.
Then we took the sheets up to the library to dry.

The whole process was long and by the end of the day I was a little sore and ready for bed. But I am so excited for the rest of the semester. I'm sure I've caught the papermaking bug.

Food, HandyMen, and New Projects...

After a long break, we are finally starting to feel settled in again and gearing up for the semester ahead. We went to one of our favorite bars to watch the Big Game. Despite years of irrational hatred of the sport, I would be lying if I claimed I didn't totally get into it. Football is a completely different animal down here, and you best be prepared. Roll Tide Roll!

After the excitement from the game, Dan and I went on a cooking-and-freezing-so-we-will-have-food-later-in-the-semester-when-we-have-no-time-to-cook spree. We made two different kinds of pasta sauce, one plain ole wonderful Tomato sauce and Turkey Meatball and Chipotle Adobo sauce. We also made up some of Dan's step-mom's wonderful Chili.

Here are the two sauces. Turkey Meatball is on the left. Traditional Tomato is on the right.

Meatballs! (Notice fabulous Food Processor in the back. Smaller on is in the mail ;p )
The freezer. (From left to right: Two large tubs of delicious chili, two varieties of pasta sauce, two loaves bread, Lentil Soup and Butternut Squash &Pear soup, and frozen chicken.)
Still so much room!

A small setback...

So the temps down here have been abnormally low. There were about two weeks of below freezing temps for the high. So whats the big deal? I'm from the mountains! Rough and rugged, skiing in below freezing temps all day, walking the three miles home from work in the cold like it ain't no thing... The principle difference between my down home ruggedness and this southern freeze is that at least in the mountains people believe in insulation. That word does not exist down here. Our house was averaging around 45 degrees for the high and believe me, that is hard to strip down to take a shower for. Sufficed to say, we came out pretty good despite some minor whining on my part ;) However, our poor washing machine didn't come out as lucky.

After about a week and a half at home the laundry was beginning to creep into bed with us. I took it upon myself to brave the freezing cold of our back porch and do the laundry. After discovering the hoses were completely frozen, I got the bright idea to just put a space heater in front of them and once they were all nice and melted my problem would be fixed. Half a day later, my back porch was flooding, I couldn't figure out where the water was leaking and I needed to go to class! So I scooped out the soaking wet clothes (as the machine wasn't draining either) wrung them out and in the dryer they went. Dan My Man saved the day. He stopped the leak, discovered which part was broke, defrosted the drainage pipe and ordered the part we needed. I still had to use our neighbor's washer for a day but yesterday he fixed my washer and now I can do all the laundry I want!!

And, as if that wasn't HandyMan enough for one day, he built us a bookshelf!!
Now, its a bit wobbly and needs some minor propping in various places :) But we finally have a place for our ever expanding library.

So between the washer getting fixed and getting a new bookshelf I went a little crazy and cleaned the whole house, just in time for MLK day to contemplate our civil rights and mentally prepare for the upcoming semester.

I have a whole set of goals I want to accomplish and I figure if I tell y'all all about them, then I can't back out of them.

1-No Procrastination - I have so much work to do this semester, if I slack off I'm dead.
2 - Stick to the work out! - Dan and I are embarking on new scary territory of marathon training. We don't have one in mind and if we do eventually do one it will most likely be the half marathon. But we are going to train for one which will keep us active when we don't want to, don't have time to, or are simply making excuses. This way we can get into a habit of it and it won't be an issue of feeling guilty for not working out.
3- Flossing three times a week - The dentist was mean to me when I saw him last :(
4- Keep something for me -No matter how busy i get this semester, I will make time for me to do something for myself. Read a book, a book I WANT to read for at least fifteen minutes everyday.
5- Stay positive - something I always struggle with.

School Scoop:

4 Classes

• History of the Book: Print Culture and Society
• Bookbinding II Hard Case Structures
  
• Printing II Typographic Printing
• Papermaking

12 Major Projects including : Hard bound books in quarter, half and full book cloth, flat back, rounded and backed case binding and clam shell boxes to fit, various kinds of hand made paper with ingredients such as denim, linen, banana stalk, kozo, flax, and abaca, and a twenty page letterpress printed book.

Sound busy enough?

Roll Tide Roll

After a crazy busy semester and an equally crazy busy break at home with family, we are back in the land of the sever over reactionary. The football team managed to make its way into the national championships just in time for the school to over react and cancel the first week of school. Were there any likelihood that the majority of the student body and faculty able to attend the game, I would gladly admit canceling school to be a wise choice. However, as the game is in California and a mere 5% of all students and faculty will be in attendance, I feel this was on over reaction. Whatev, I didn't want to go to school today anyway.

This morning I dragged myself out of my nice warm bed into the brisk 50 degree temperature of my house and set off for work on this lovely chilly day. As I walked out the door I met the familiar site of snow flakes (an extremely rare occurrence in Tuscaloosa). I waited for forty five minutes locked out of work before I walked home only to find an e-mail from the University informing me that yet another over reaction has been passed down. The University closed down all none essential operations due to a snow warning. As of 4pm, not a flake had stuck. Whatev, I didn't want to go to work today anyway.