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Saturday, September 04, 2010

Distracting myself

In my head, I was going to have finished the folio title page by lunchtime today, and then jump around a little bit feeling righteous, and then get a few other things out of the way, like some printing for the BIG PRINT show I'm doing two weeks after I return.

But that was before the earthquake, and tales of borked runways and impending aftershocks. My mind has been quite ruffled, and all my work has been slow and painstaking and what I can usually do in a couple of hours has taken me all day. So I've started printing the title page, but only just, and will have to finish it tomorrow before I go out to dinner with the master of Hardcore Bibliography, Shef Rogers, and his family.

My boys have left Canberra; they have made it to Sydney as I type, and are awaiting their connection to Christchurch, which is slightly delayed but running. The airport is open, and as yet they haven't experienced the threatened enormous aftershock, but evil weather with high winds are predicted, so I don't think I'll be sleeping soundly tonight. Their plane is landing sometime after 1am, and hopefully all will go smoothly until I can ring them at their hotel in the morning.

So, to distract myself, my work. Let me show you it:

Prime title page
Title page. The result of much chopping and changing today as I tried to get my head into gear.

Prime colophon page
Colophon page. I will show you the text in more detail.

Prime colophon deet 1
Some of the nicest, sharpest printing I've done to date, which shows that my learning curve reached a peak :)

Prime colophon deet 2
Suggested by Donald-TSCL, whom, you can tell now, is a Babyboomer. But it was a great way to rationalise any bad inking, so I'm more than happy to include Leonard's wisdom.


I also made a wee movie of myself in action, with a head, which differentiates it from the one the students made:



And here's a nice design student who came by to interview me for his dissertation and drool over the wood type:

design student


I'm going to write more later, about the tv stuff etc, but right now I need a nice glass of white wine and a crap video to distract me even more. Ciao.

5 comments:

dinahmow said...

From the briefest of handshake-hugs... I barely know you, but do understand how you feel in an earthquake-y situationan.

And, yes, maybe Leon Cohen is the best quote.

Sleep tight and all digits x'd for your family.
(For what it's worth...the Ozzie news(all channels) is beating it up into a news-fest.)

Worst news? Bob effing Katter could hold the balance of power!
Fercrissakes stay where you are!

Carol said...

I think Di just said it all. Thinking of you and your boys tonight. Have another glass of wine. And I do like seeing the little vids of you at work.

ronnie said...

I'm not unconvinced that the christchurch earthquake was caused by all the stampeding ozzies - desperately running toward the pacific ocean in order to escape the manic political situation here (NZ is suddenly looking very civilised)

I do hope your guys touched down ok - and things aren't too chaotic

I suppose you're coming to the end of the printing now eh? bummer! I've so enjoyed these posts.....

so I suppose now is a good time to add - if you are bringing home souvenirs - I quite fancy that columbian.....

fifi said...

oh, those pages are absolutely lovely. You are so clever...have been looking very admiringly at your work over there.

New Zealand is so lovely, which is a good thing because, like someone said, I am sure there are hordes of Australians considering rushing over to escape Mr Rabbit.

Have a great time, and I am sure that you and the lads will be just fine amongst the shakery.

birdmonkey said...

wow! lots of upper body work with that press- time consuming for a print too- or is that a special three roller number just for the title page?