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.
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.
Random wooden type - still needs dusting
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