I grew up in Nebraska and Iowa, but every other year or so (although it seems like every year in my memory), we would drive to northern New Jersey at Christmastime to visit Grandmother Maggie and Grandfather Bud. I’ve written about Christmas at their house before; it was always magical, without fail. My grandmother embodied the Christmas spirit right down to the tips of her toes.

Iowa to New Jersey is about 1,000 miles, almost all of them on Interstate 80. When we (finally) reached the Delaware Water Gap, we would all cheer, knowing we only had about an hour left in the car. Our whole family – Mom, Dad, Charlie, Willa, and me – would pile in our 1988 Dodge Colt station wagon and make the trek, crushed into the backseat with comforters, books, and the way back stacked with presents.

This new card is a drawing of my memory of those drives, coursing along I-80 as we closed in on the end of the rainbow at the end of the drive. We’d pull into the driveway, past the Joy flag on the left, the Minettis’ house on the right, and into the end of my grandparents’ driveway and their waiting open arms.

P.S. If you’d like to listen to a beautiful song, here’s Karla Bonoff singing “Home”

P.P.S. As with all of our new projects, we’re giving back a little with this card. 5% of every sale goes to support Iraq Veterans Against the War, in memory of our friend Josh Casteel.

A detail of our new 2013 calendar. This detail is of calendar No. 10/60.

From the beginning

In school, I only ever studied art because I loved it. Photography, printmaking, ceramics, bookbinding, and drawing were electives; things I loved to do, not things I was required to learn. High school was your standard blur of self-doubt and academic ambition, and when I was at Grinnell I tried to take myself seriously in an academic way and majored in History and English–two things I use indirectly every single day of my life.

But the moments of greatest clarity and comfort were the times I found myself in various studios and darkrooms, usually by myself, over-dedicated to making images and objects of varying quality. The smell of ink in a printmaking studio, the feel of paper under my hand as I tore pages for books, and the moment in the darkroom when the image begins to appear in the developer tray–those turned out to be the markers on the road heading toward where I am now.

Anna Atkins cyanotype of sea algae

Images & artifacts

In October of 1843, the British botanist Anna Atkins published Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, considered to be the first book ever illustrated with photographic images. The algae specimens recorded in Atkins’s book are splendid, sprawling cyanotype samples in the white-on-brilliant-blue characteristic of that process.

Cyanotype is an early photographic technique made by coating paper with an ultraviolet-sensitive iron salt solution. When exposed to the sun, whatever covers the paper leaves a filled white outline, and the remaining negative space turns a brilliant, deep, oceanic blue.

I pored over my mom’s copy of Ocean Flowers, a catalog for an exhibit that ran at the Drawing Center in 2004. The exhibit featured 19th century botanical illustrations in a variety of media at the meeting point between drawing and photography, with Atkins’s cyanotypes as the centerpiece. I was sucked into their deep blue and I was hooked. The images were captivating, and the text as compelling; a discussion of natural history preservation techniques and approach. To me, the most fascinating idea was the following thought:

“Conserved specimens do not tell the whole story about living nature.”

In short: We can’t tell the whole story of anything from a preserved specimen because the specimen is removed from its natural, living habitat. The remnant we study is a cold sample; the structure is there, but none of the life. The hard truth hits: we can’t take the living past with us, just the tangible artifacts of it.

New techniques & new directions

As a 7 or 8 year-old, I remember making my own cyanotypes (sun prints) with paper from a kit we probably got at the Science Station in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We would lay rocks and flowers on the papers, set them out in the sun, and rinse them in water to develop the image. With this new, grown-up look at Atkins’s sun prints in a historical context, I wondered whether the technique I first knew as a child might be something I could use in my own work. Would this style of imagery be just the thing to pair with the ideas that filled my head? An idea germinated.

Early evening over the Mississippi

Every year, I think about making a calendar for the coming year. It’s not that I feel some urgent need to mark specific days and times, but I want to acknowledge the beauty and significance of each moment of our brief lives. That’s heavy, I know, but honest.

This summer, Matt’s mom was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. If you want something to put a fine point on the fragility of life, that’s a pretty good way to go about it. Memories, joys, regrets, curiosity, frustration, sadness, love, family, worry, confusion, uncertainty, and urgency replaced any and all thoughts otherwise and we were instantly headed down a brand new patch of road we never saw coming.

We’ve already made several visits back to Iowa in the months since and have our next visit on the books for Christmas. We don’t really know what to do, or if there’s much we can do, but we are navigating this road as best we can, learning how we can be helpful, and focusing on what’s most important.

Pressed & dried Queen Anne’s Lace

When we visited this July, I gathered a bucketful of Queen Anne’s Lace from Matt’s mom’s backyard in rural Iowa, overlooking the Mississippi River. The view is nothing short of sweeping, and taking this bucketful of invasive weeds made no dent in the vast sea of lacy white that swathed every edge of the yard and bordering woods. I hauled the flowers back to my folks’ in Marion, and pressed several stems between glass.

“We live by no mind, that is only reason,
For there are in us strengths older than thought–
Memory of moon-earthed seeds, the treason
Of spring in our hearts, old family-named corn lands–
Eternal in us as ancestral-wrought
Curve of our thigh and the gripped shape of hands.”
- from “Earth in our Blood”, Paul Engle

Printing, printing, and more printing

We returned to Iowa in September, and I had a plan in hand. I ordered letterpress plates for a calendar I hand lettered, as well as paper, cyanotype chemicals, and the necessary tools in advance. We arrived in Marion and I began to coat the large sheets of letterpress paper with the iron salt solution. I coated 150 or 175 14″ x 26″ sheets with the yellow liquid, dragging a glass dowel across the paper lengthwise, then crosswise to spread the solution as evenly as possible. I wasn’t aiming for smooth precision, just a coating that would allow me to create a number of varied images.

Coating paper with iron salt solution

Exposing coated paper in the sun with Queen Anne’s Lace compositions

Once the papers were coated and dried, I set up shop behind my mom & dad’s gallery (where they also live). I sandwiched 3 large pieces of heavy glass on top of the compositions I assembled as I went: stems of dried Queen Anne’s Lace on the iron salt-treated papers. Three at a time, I exposed the images to the Iowa sun for 5 to 15 minutes. What is that, about 12 1/2 hours, all together? When the time was up, I moved the sheets to a water bath to stop the exposure, and moved on to the next composition. Over the course of about 5 days, I ended up with 140 or so finished prints.

I stacked the prints and weighted them a bit to push out most of the moisture and, with many still-damp sheets in tow, my dad and Charlotte and I packed up the Subaru and headed to Dubuque to use a large letterpress (a Vandercook 219, to be precise) at Slow Print, the letterpress home of Peter Fraterdeus in Dubuque’s buzzing millwork district.

Developing cyanotypes outside in a water bath

Tearing edges

At Peter’s shop, I set up the press with the photopolymer plates for the calendar I drew back in Brooklyn. After a few runs with inks that–though gorgeous–were totally illegible on the cyan background, I mixed a dark gray that worked beautifully on top of the images that I’d exposed for less time to the sun and were a paler blue. I ran each sheet through the press, checking the impression, registration, and the look as I went.

Of course, I didn’t stop at the plain cyanotype; that would be too easy. I’ve also hand torn the margins of all the images to leave a softly deckled edge, and bound each into an accordion fold book with linen covers that is punched for easy wall hanging display. All said and done, I ended up with a host of beautiful images, including 60 final calendar prints that are now available for sale.

Gluing up Books of Days covers

Limited edition Books of Days / this is No. 1/60

As for the remaining beautiful-but-didn’t-make-the-cut cyanotypes? I’ve used them as the gorgeous decorative papers they are and created a limited edition series of Books of Days perpetual calendars. I made a limited edition of 60 of these beautiful volumes. The 2013 calendars and the Books of Days are available on our site in batches of 10, beginning today.

Bringing it all together & giving back

That’s not the end of the story, of course. We like to give back a little with everything we do, and this year’s calendars and Books of Days are no exception. $15 from the sale of every calendar and $5 from the sale of every Book of Days will be donated to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, an organization that works to find a cure, as well as stop the disease before it even strikes, with early prediction and prevention.

2013 Calendar No. 1/60

2013 Calendar No. 3/60

2013 Calendar No. 4/60

2013 Calendar No. 6/60

2013 Calendar No. 10/60

Every one of this year’s calendars and Books of Days are a labor of love; a project I envisioned many months ago and am proud to have completed as I saw it in my mind’s eye. I’m even prouder that this project enables us to give a little something back to a cause much bigger than ourselves. 2012 has been a tough but rewarding year and we find ourselves on a great side of things as we head into everything 2013 has to offer.

Jan. 4th, 1895
Dear Edna,
The tissues of the life to be / We weave with colors, all our own, / And in the field of destiny, / We reap as we have sown.
Ever your friend,
Effie Naylor

Edna Foster Campbell, my paternal grandfather’s mother, kept this small leather volume as a young girl, with cushioned black leather covers embossed with gold lettering. The book is a little fragile these days, with yellow pages showing their age. On each page, though, there remains a clear sentiment, in careful pencil or ink cursive.

I drew and drew and drew and drew this summer, developing botanical images to match with each autograph.

I’ve studied enough history to know that the artifacts of our lives tell our stories after we are gone. They are a tangible connection to a time we can’t revisit or never knew ourselves. We hold them in our hands, though, and we feel a little of the hands that held them before. I often wonder how a digital age transfers to a collection of physical artifacts, but I know that there is just a different process now. All this new change seems to make even more precious what we can hold in our own two hands.

Brand new autograph cards! Available as singles or boxed sets of all 6 designs in our shop

I’ve taken six autographs from Great Grandma Campbell’s book, hand lettered them, and paired them each with one of my own botanical drawings. The resulting cards are my own small attempt to give a little more life to the love and friendship they celebrated nearly 120 years ago. I love to think that these cards will become the artifacts of others’ lives now, as well.

All of our new projects support organizations and work about which we feel strongly. 5% of the sales of Autograph Cards will go to Safe Horizon, a NYC-based organization that assists victims of domestic violence and child abuse.

Yesterday I launched the first collection in a very large batch of new work; a series of approximately 125 (very) limited edition photo albums and journals I’m calling Post-Marked. I’ve been making these books up for the last few months so they’d be ready to go this fall…and they are finally ready to show off. A new collection of books will be available every two weeks through December on our site. Collection #1 is full of vintage Air Mail stamps and it’s live in the shop now!

Process and materials

I developed a pretty solid stamp obsession earlier this year and wanted to find a great way to showcase each of these tiny gems. Each book in the Post-Marked series is covered in a cotton/linen blend cloth and a vintage postage stamp is inset into the cover. In addition to the Air Mail collection, there will be great US state stamps, natural history specimens, and world travel stamps coming in the next few months. Each collection is available exclusively on our site for 2 weeks, and then they’re gone! There’s a great selection coming and I hope you’ll check back often to see all the new books. I’m very proud of this work and I hope you enjoy it, too.

31 cent 1976 Red, White & Blue Air Mail Accordion Fold Photo Album (5″ x 7″)

Many of the stamps I’ve used on these books are from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s and I’m hoping to get into some of them in detail here, so stay tuned for a few more frequent updates very soon!

Here’s a peek at a drawing that may or may not make it in to a 2011 calendar or some cards or an invite design, plus a couple of shots of inspiration from around the neighborhood.

And here’s a passage that is quoted at the beginning of one of my recent reads, How the Irish Saved Civilization. I’m neither religious nor quite this realistic in practice, but it’s a beautiful statement:

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuos, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr

February, July, and September calendar images from the book of Belles Heures / All images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

There’s an unbelievably fine level of detail and an unabashedly ornate and sumptuous approach to materials and design in these pages. The border decorations are intricate, careful, and lavish and the text is stunningly calligraphed. The inset miniature paintings (often in the neighborhood of 2″ x 3″ or smaller) are perfection and, while occasionally quotidian scenes, also depict stunningly violent and grotesque images of saints’ trials and martyrdom.

It’s only April, but I’m already on to calendar ideas for 2011. I’m drawing up a storm and I think I’ve got something fun in the works – and it’s definitely inspired by the illumination exhibit.

Image from Brooklyn Museum site / Walton Ford (American, b. 1960). The Far Shores of Scholarship, 2003. Watercolor, gouache, pencil, and ink on paper. Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery

And, last but not least, I’m getting excited to see this Walton Ford show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in the next couple of weeks! There are also some beautiful intaglio etchings on view on the gallery’s site. We saw a fantastic exhibit of his work 3 1/2 years ago at the Brooklyn Museum and ever since then I can’t get enough!

Calendar page – image from The Met

Each page is incredible, the process is incredible, and I am so inspired by the pieces in this exhibit. I can’t wait to see how it creeps in to my work!

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in personalized letterpress stationery (check back in January for more on that!), custom albums, calendars, and cards for the last few weeks. In the meantime, Charlotte’s been helping out with the workload (by napping!) and I’m just shocked that I’ve gotten as much done as I have.

This time of year is one of my favorites, without a doubt. My grandmother and my mom have always made Christmas feel like the most special, joyous time. We’re not a religious family, but we do love the tradition of all gathering in one place to have fun and celebrate all the love in our family. And, yes, I know that sounds hokey.

Here’s the thing: this year feels even more momentous. We get to introduce Charlotte to Christmas as a Campbell/Steele/Raw and now I’m on my way to joining my grandmother’s and mom’s ranks…and I’ve got some gorgeous, elegant, narrow, hardworking shoes to fill.

We have a few years ahead of us where boxes and wrapping paper will be far more engaging than any toys, but it all starts now and I can’t wait to make it great. This little girl has already brought more joy to our lives than I ever imagined (and there come the tears) and she deserves nothing less than all the happiness and love we can surround her with.

And now, I’m off to finish up a few more packages and get ready for a very busy couple of days. We are leaving for Iowa on Tuesday evening and should be back in Brooklyn by the 30th or so. Happy new year to all of you and thanks for your support of our work throughout the year – it means the world. See you in 2010!

Life cycles are piling up all around us and we’re holding on to all the best parts of everything as we go. Life is hard, but great. As the Amos Kennedy poster over our bed tells me every morning, “Life is short but, as long as you got it, make something of it.”

I posted this last year and just have to post it again because its meaning has only grown: Wendell Berry’s “October 10″.

The new cards and journals are pretty much ready! I must have taken about 350 pictures this week, getting everything ready to go in to the next catalog, plus to have plenty to put up on the website to share with you. Everything should be ready to (finally!) share next week, and here’s a little more of a sneak peek, for now!

Bee “I love you so” card – up on Etsy soon!

An assortment of the new cards

Two of the new cards using that octopus!

A baby dragonfly perfect bound journal

Also – I’m putting lots of these pictures (and more!) up on Flickr as I go, so you may want to check in there.

The thoughts that have been occupying me the last day or two while trimming down and packing an invitation order and working on these cards: for centuries, Persian carpet makers have deliberately woven a mistake in to each carpet, believing only Allah is capable of perfection.

The second idea, simply because I found it pretty captivating this morning and thought I’d share: I listened to a Big Ideas lecture podcast this morning about color and chemistry in art history. Think about it: paint wasn’t manufactured and put in to tubes until the 19th century…that leaves a lot of centuries prior when painters were mixing and making their own materials from scratch. And, not only were they making them from scratch, but much of this was happening pre-Scientific Revolution, when the understanding and documentation of chemical properties and interactions had not yet occurred. It wasn’t as though a painter could just go pick up a tube of cadmium yellow and keep on working; they had to mix either egg or oil or another liquid base with various chemicals to achieve the color they needed. I’m not sure that’s as deep a thought as many, but it certainly makes you appreciate the accessibility and convenience in our own lives. The thing is, we want to know how all of it works (as my dad has said, we want to shake the box, to know what’s in there!) and so many of us are curious to know not only how it works, but whether we can make it ourselves. That’s probably why I’ll be cooking, canning, and freezing as much as possible this summer…just to see if I can!

Arthur Sze’s “Ten Thousand to One”, to send you in to the weekend on the right note.