Just quickly as I’m running out the door…
Custom Coptic stitched wedding album in marine blue silk
And our little rooftop garden is just chugging away…much like us!
Racing around…
June 27, 2008, 7:23 am
To carry within us an orchard
June 22, 2008, 8:11 pm
We ended up with a welcome day to ourselves on Friday, since we had both taken the day off, thinking we’d head to Iowa for a wedding. Between the incredible flooding and damage being dealt with in Cedar Rapids and the ungodly expensive plane tickets, we nixed those plans. Instead, we headed up to the Dia:Beacon first thing Friday morning.
The museum itself is beautiful, and right along the Hudson. One of the perks of doing anything with Matt is that you have your own personal photographer for the day.
The museum is gorgeous. It used to be a box printing factory and the building is a pretty staggering 240,000 square feet. Their permanent collection includes work by Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Bruce Nauman, Donald Judd, Andy Warhol; many of the key large scale features of any good American-art-since-1945 class.
There is also an outstanding exhibit of Louise Bourgeois work upstairs in a sort of attic-like space with the original exposed brick walls. Her cast bronze pieces that resemble hornets’ nests are suspended from the beams, and one of her now somewhat classic spiders is carefully nested into a back room, leaving us wondering how exactly they managed to fit it in there. (The image I linked to here is a different spider than what’s there right now, but the same space.)
It takes the right approach to installation art to make a statement I actually appreciate. Oftentimes the conceptual element far outweighs the execution, leaving you with a nasty I’m-not-quite-sure-that’s-art feeling. The Tacita Dean exhibit in the basement of the Dia:Beacon is not one of those installation pieces. It is breathtaking. The Dia has given her almost the entire floor: as you come to the bottom of the steps, you enter a huge, cavernous room with ceilings on the order of 20 feet high and concrete columns throughout…and there are absolutely no lights on. As you wander through the space (and you have to wander because your eyes can barely adjust), there are 6 projectors showing video of Merce Cunningham doing a piece called Stillness projected onto 6 small panels (about 6′ x 6′ each). The video is just Cunningham shifting into different simple seated positions every 45 seconds or so, raising his hand to his chin or crossing his legs. Otherwise, he’s completely still. It’s a powerful piece, I think because it has such an instant physical effect on anyone in the room. You have to slow down. You have to move carefully.
After we made our way through the basement, to the outdoor side garden with a bizarre sound installation (imagine the most annoying birds you can think of from some sort of tropical jungle, yet you’re in Beacon, NY and the Hudson is just on the other side of those trees), we stopped into the bookshop to wait out a brief shower. While the shop hosted the usual selection of art books and a great selection of texts on modern sculpture, there was also an impressive assortment of small fine press chapbooks. I saw a lot of books that were definitely on the order of what I want to be doing over the course of the next several years: small, handmade, limited edition (anywhere from 100 to 350 in an edition, in this case) and beautifully designed collections of poetry, imagery, and essays.
We spent the afternoon walking through downtown Beacon and had a wonderful lunch, some amazing sorbet, and enjoyed being able to walk down the street and actually have room to let our arms swing at our sides. We needed a break.
We popped back into Grand Central after half-napping on the Metro North train all the way back, and decided to stop at Franklin Park when we got back to the neighborhood…a little too nice!
And, while I’m still terrible at calming down and just enjoying the moment, it’s been a fantastic weekend. I’m getting myself ramped up for the newfound time I’ll have to devote to books & printing, come August, and still kind of amazed, terrified, invigorated, and exhilarated that all of this is actually happening!
From Blossoms
By Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
continued here
Hands that are never still
June 19, 2008, 9:06 pm
Needless to say, it has been one busy week around here! Tomorrow, we’re taking a much needed break and heading out of town, just for the day, to the Dia:Beacon.
In the meantime, the other set of invites, RSVPs, direction cards & envelopes I just finished up!
These are all done with a copper ink and fuchsia ink on ecru Crane’s Lettra paper. The band of paper around the whole package (in the last photo) is a painted Japanese heavy rice paper.
I have a feeling this counts as another project which Matt could easily look at and say, “proof of concept”. It’s been a long way, from the initial design ideas to the finished product, but it all turned out just the way I envisioned it and I’m so pleased with and proud of the results.
Heritage
by Paul Engle
I have inherited
My mother’s nature,
Sensitive to light,
By any strong wind led,
Loving each living creature,
And from my father feature
In eye alert of sight,
In a horse trader’s head,
Hands that are never still,
Hair brown as a walnut hull,
And finally a will
Running through bone and marrow
Tough as grandfather’s skull
Which seventy years ago
Broke a hickory arrow
From a Dakota bow.
continued here
So purely and lushly new
June 18, 2008, 10:26 pm
You did say you wanted to see lots of pictures, right?
The truly gorgeous cherry tree that climbs higher than our building and is - despite the best efforts of the old abandoned, dilapidated building behind ours - thriving and producing some pretty beautiful fruit, not to mention some stunning summer colors.
And another set of invitations from this week…
The design is the bride’s, not mine - she did a beautiful job!
And just to tease…there’s another set to show off tomorrow!
More Than Enough
by Marge Piercy
The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk
multiflora rose climbs trees cascading
white or pink blossoms, simple, intense
the scene drifting like colored mist.
The arrowhead is spreading its creamy
clumps of flower and the blackberries
are blooming in the thickets. Season of
joy for the bee. The green will never
again be so green, so purely and lushly
new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads
into the wind. Rich fresh wine
of June, we stagger into you smeared
with pollen, overcome as the turtle
laying her eggs in roadside sand.
Perking along
June 16, 2008, 7:10 am
One color down, one to go! Last night was a printing marathon of the latest batch of invitations, which I’m printing on Crane’s Lettra in ecru with a combination of a gorgeous copper ink for the text and fuchsia for the floral decorative elements. Copper is done, fuchsia later in the week! Also finished up a few extras of the invite for the shower on pearl white Lettra in pale green and chocolate brown inks for the same wedding.
This is sure to be yet another busy week! My perspective is in good shape, though, with all of the big-picture-outside-world updates heading our way from my family in Iowa. Everyone’s safe, but the extent of the flooding is unbelievable and it’s certainly been surreal to wake up in Brooklyn to NPR coverage of flood status in Cedar Rapids every morning.
On a slightly more humorous, but totally characteristic note, everyone can rest assured that the bulk of the collection of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art that was in storage is safe! My mom, dad, and sister - on a tear to help out somehow - called the facilities manager of the museum who is a friend of our family and went down to the museum on Friday and helped carry art out of the basement and to the second floor for safe keeping. Rumor has it that my mom was so focused on one painting in particular that she was carrying that she may have tripped up a step or two on her way to the second floor…which I guess brings the total injuries incurred in Cedar Rapids during the flood to, well, one.
The rumble that fills the mind
June 12, 2008, 7:16 am
Coptic stitch album with striped Japanese Yuzen paper
It’s been a wonderfully busy week so far, and Thursdays always seem good for stepping back for just a second and feeling a sense of progress and satisfaction. Also, a little insight from Matt about how we feel some of the time these days.
Around Us
Marvin Bell
We need some pines to assuage the darkness
when it blankets the mind,
we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly
as a plane’s wing, and a worn bed of
needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,
and a blur or two of a wild thing
that sees and is not seen. We need these things
between appointments, after work,
and, if we keep them, then someone someday,
lying down after a walk
and supper, with the fire hole wet down,
the whole night sky set at a particular
time, without numbers or hours, will cause
a little sound of thanks–a zipper or a snap–
to close round the moment and the thought
of whatever good we did.
Just another Tuesday night…
June 10, 2008, 10:32 pm
Printing bridal shower invites on a Vandercook
RSVP cards and envelopes on C&P Pilot
Looking, Walking, Being
Denise Levertov
“The World is not something to look at, it is something to be in.”
- Mark Rudman
I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.
The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch
fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.
And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That’s
a way of breathing.
breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.
All that exceeds us
June 8, 2008, 9:46 pm
My feet hurt, my hands hurt, but my head is very, very happy. Before this productive little weekend even started, one major change happened in our little lives that - while terrifying - is wildly exciting. For a while now, my time has been pushed to the edges, as far as my books and printing are concerned. I get up early, I stay up late, and nearly all of my waking hours are spent working on books, designs, printing, and making this little business grow…I love it, but whew! Did I forget to mention that all of this happens around a pretty large day-job schedule? Well, I made a large decision on Friday that it was time to move on and throw even more into the business of books and ink. As of August 1, I’m a full-time bookbinder & printer…no more office, no more hefty commute to midtown Manhattan, no more splitting and refocusing my energy several times a day…at least not that way. It was a nervewracking decision, but one that I hope I made in the right place at the right time (fingers crossed!) and that leads toward the growth and happiness I’m envisioning. There’s no question that it’s whole new adventure!
With an amazing attitude on my side, I spent 6 hours at a C&P Pilot Tabletop press on Saturday afternoon, printing wedding invitations for 2 of our very best friends. It’s the first set of a few that I’m doing, and I managed to make a good dent in the project; all of the invites and envelopes are printed, and on Tuesday I’ll go back in to do the RSVP cards and matching envelopes, as well as try my hardest to get to a few other invitation projects (and hope that the heat has died down a a bit, since it actually started to give me some problems with ink coverage on Saturday!).
Here’s a sneak peek of the finished product (more photos once they’re off to the invitees, so I’m not ruining all the surprises!)…
As my dad reminded me earlier, I should probably share a little about the non-working portions of my weekends, too, since we usually have some pretty great food and a pretty good time around here! However, last night I completely forgot to take the camera along to document the fantastic meal we had at the apartment of good friends…2 types of seviche, a lovely green salad with apples & walnuts, and a tomato, mozzarella, bread salad (our contribution!). It was all uncooked food by design. When it’s 98 and sunny in NYC, even the thought of using the stove is a little much. It was a totally relaxing evening, capped off relaxing on the roof in S. Park Slope, with the BQE, the F & G trains, and lower Manhattan in our sights.
Today, I was once again in the midst of books and sewed up a custom guestbook/album that I’m very pleased with. The covers are a stunning black & white vine/leaf pattern that is quite striking, and this one’s a monster: 90 pages and room for photos!
With all of this big picture thinking, a brief passage to leave you with until next time…
“If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming But it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time in them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.”
- Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel
Paper, paper, paper!
June 4, 2008, 7:18 am
I said our apartment was going to be filled with paper and ink and, well, I meant it!
Also…some fun new albums in the works and a few new ones that should hit Etsy soon:
Enjoy!
The angels envy us
June 1, 2008, 10:06 pm
These weekends come and go and, just when I think I’ve reined in my expectations and remember that, in reality, the weekend is only 2 full days to ourselves (not 6, as my mental project calendar likes to assume), Sunday night sneaks up on me again!
I’ve been busy folding down pages for some custom albums and guestbooks, and also for three 7″h x 10″w albums that I’ll finish up in the next week (in between cutting down more gorgeous Crane’s paper than our apartment should really contain, and printing invitations, RSVP cards, and return addresses on envelopes, of course!).
My usual (often unspoken, except to Matt) mindset when I have this many projects going on at once is to freak out. I’m an organized person, but I set the bar pretty high for myself when I do anything, whether for the first time or the thousandth time, and I want to live up to a lot of expectations (those of my own and of three lucky couples, in this case). As my dad would remind me, though, “If you keep your expectations low, you won’t be disappointed.” The constructive approach I’ve been taking to everything going on is something along the lines of: just do your best and when you’ve done everything you can, there’s nothing more you can do (especially since being this busy is a great sign of things to come). In short, “Worrying won’t make it so!” (to quote another dear friend).
So far, this attitude is allowing me to take things far more in stride than my usual self would, and I’m enjoying the times in between bouts of paper- and printing-related activities, rather than worrying about what I should be working on (we’ll see how long this lasts!). This weekend, when I wasn’t ordering paper or ink, or tearing down pages, or planning my printing schedule for the week, we managed to have a great time of things, just doing our usual circuits here in our neighborhood (plus a poorly timed dash into Manhattan for paper in the middle of yesterday’s downpour), and our usual projects. We made it to the greenmarket yesterday morning and, in addition to picking up a few new heirloom tomato plants and 4 types of basil to try out in pots on our roof, we also got 3 containers of wheat grass for our little wild animal to chow down on. Our windowsill has turned into a lively little 24-hour buffet.
(Note the gorgeous piece these plants are all resting in - compliments of Prof. Beckelman himself!)
We also watched The Savages last night, which is a fantastic movie, but very sad and difficult to watch if you have a single sentimental bone in your body and happen to still - despite technically being an adult - not quite have come to grips with your own mortality, or your family’s. It was tough to watch, but those sorts of things always remind you that you’re lucky to have things going so well right now. The moment’s all we can ask for, right? Everything’s beautiful right now, it’s June, and I have more good work going on than I’ve ever had in my life, and I wish for the same for everyone.
Finally, as we start a new week in a new month, a sad but beautiful quotation that just kind of brings it all together from a former professor of mine at Grinnell:
“This, I think, is one of the truths at the center of beauty: that we love the world despite our certain knowledge we will lose it; that we will lose all those we love and eventually the world itself, and knowing this and choosing to love anyway makes that love miraculous, and makes our courage in allowing ourselves to feel it, despite our fear, truly heroic, one of the reasons the Angels envy us.”
- Mark Baechtel