karen joyce
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Wonderful wooden type

23/10/2014

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Of course, I should never have signed up for it - I should have known that I would need (neeeeeeeeed!) every minute for finishing off my 20:20 print (and I have yet to work out how on earth I'm going to fit that in between now and when it's due) but I'm very glad I did go for a day's course working with wooden type, with New York book artist Roni Gross (she was sampling the joys of Salford for a couple of days).  I had a whale of a time!

I've been making some use of my wooden type collection, but not taking advantage of what you might describe as traditional methods.  I haven't been locking up my carefully selected and beautifully arranged words (or whatever) in a chase, but have instead been using the type rather in the manner of rubber stamps - carefully (and quite often not so carefully) manoeuvring them into (somewhere close to) the correct position before pressing down on them quite hard.  It's not as good in any way, of course, except not having to set up the chase, which could hardly be classed as a chore.  Well not surprisingly, the lazy approach wasn't the course approach, and consequently the results were better.  I'm hooked, and am looking forward to indulging myself sometime soon with an orgy of wooden type play. 

Roni set 'And Bob's Your Uncle', and suggested we set odd english phrases to intrigue her further.  Only problem was, we didn't have any idea whether phrases had made it across the Atlantic or not, but that's how Grin & Bear It happened - not a brilliantly centred bit of typesetting, but right then I was more interested in the inking side of things (I'll try to do better next time, honest).  Then we just played about to see what came out.  I found a twee little lead flower which I decided added something.  The infinitely more twee bejacketed bear picture block most definitely would not have done so!
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All over

18/10/2014

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Well that's it for another year - the 2014 Manchester Artists' Book Fair has now been and gone.  At the moment I'm still buzzing but no doubt tomorrow will be a bit flat.  It's a surprising amount of work beforehand to organise and every year I swear it's time to pass the whole thing on to someone else, but once it actually arrives I admit I always enjoy it.  Of course how I feel is not what it's about, but I like to think that the exhibitors - and the visitors - enjoy it too.  That definitely is the point of it all.

Time to move on to the next project.  20:20 print exchange here I come.  
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One track mind

14/10/2014

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Book fair, book fair, book fair, book fair, book fair, book fair - sorry, did you say something?
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It's happening again

5/10/2014

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I always have great plans for autumn.  It's my favourite time of year and I develop vague notions of a pleasing range of day-long trips to not-too-far-flung places (well obv, or they'd take longer than a day) where I will have a fantastic time and return tired but happy and with broader (geographical at least) horizons.  Something like that.

What I never remember to take into account is how full my head will be, first with the Manchester Artists' Book Fair and all the scattershot work that goes with it, second with how little time there is left to make an edition for the Hot Bed Press 20:20 exchange and how on earth will I manage and what am I going to print anyway, and third with my part in the sorting, packing up and posting out of parcels to a million million workshops for said 20:20 exchange.  And then it'll be Christmas and I won't even have picked up the atlas (yes, I still use maps.  I have no plans to change this method of knowing where I am). 

Not that the events that steal my autumn are without their own charms.  I do enjoy the book fair, once it's arrived, though I'm still researching some kind of herding method to get more people in there.  Cattle prods?  Maybe not, probably against the rules.  I like the printing for the exchange too, of course I do, and although 30 prints is a bit of a drag (I only need 25, but a safety margin is non-negotiable), I love seeing rows of (reasonably) identical prints all laid out.  Very satisfying.  The sorting is definitely more of a chore, once you get past the child-in-a-sweet-shop overindulgence of looking at many hundreds of different prints, but when the whole distribution thing is over, there's that pleasant feeling of a task definitively finished for another year. 

Nowhere near that point yet.  But I did sort out all the wooden type in my studio (neatly but randomly) into a variety of boxes (some bound for the fair and keen new owners) and the like, meaning that suddenly there are surfaces available to produce prints on.  It's progress of a sort.   
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Random wooden type - still needs dusting
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    Hi there

    I make prints and book arts, though nowhere near as often as I'd like - no good reason, just an inability to get on with things.  I occasionally go on about landscape (with which I am mildly obsessed) and various of its elements, and I like to pass comment on exhibitions I visit.

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