Pulpy

I'm not ignoring you. I'm really sick, and can only spend about ten minutes in from of a screen before my eyes explode. I have a viral infection, and have been bedbound since sunday night apart from a brief attempt on Tuesday to do something quiet in my studio, an experience which resulted in a huge temperature spike and a hot/cold experience last night that I hope doesn't repeat itself today.

While I'm aching and sweating and bored out of my brain (there's only so much radio you can listen to), go over and have fun with the wonderful Pulp Fiction exhibition at the University of Otago Library, curated by my marvelous Donald-the-Special-Collections-Librarian and finally digitised.

Then come back here & amuse me by telling me which is your favorite cover or title and why.

Feeling windswept and weary

You know what?

I haven't unpacked my clothes yet.

I've looked at the books I brought back -- mainly because I'm in the grip of a Janet Frame frenzy, because I'd never 'got' her before in the way that I suddenly do, whether it's geography or age, I don't care -- and pulled out all the souvenirs and presents, and stashed the brown paper bag full of brochures and guides. But I haven't done more than open my big green & purple backpack to get out my toiletry bag. The rest is sitting there on the bedroom floor, daring me to pick it up and leave again.

Best Beloved usually makes some comment about my part of the bedroom floor or asks whether I want to get my washing out so that he can run it through the machine (he's the washing person of the house) but so far he hasn't. He walks past the bag quietly, so as not to startle it, or me.

I'm not going anywhere, but it is strange to be back after going somewhere that I really loved to be. Most holidays find me gagging to be home, to be back in the studio, to be in Canberra with its lovely wide sky and fierce sunsets (which were the things I really missed). But this time I really felt reluctant to return. It isn't casting nasturtiums at the people I hang out with in Australia, it's just that I really connected with Dunedin, because it had so many qualities that I carry around in my head as a kind of destination wish-list.

So I guess that means I will go back sometime. Donald-the-Special-Collections-Librarian and I hinted to each other that another residency down the track could be a good thing. He's in the habit of inviting people back, an excellent habit.

In the meantime, I am in the grip of an inertia, not helped by the slow transition to my usual waking hours. BB is delighted that I'm waking at 6am, nodding in my chair at 9pm. That's his ideal routine, whereas I prefer the 7am to 11pm scenario.

I got my own copy of the Prime folio in the mail the other day, and am happy to say that I still like it now that I've had some distance from it. Donald keeps sending me all the nice feedback he's receiving, and yesterday I got a lovely response from one of the poets.

I'd ripped up a few of the dud prints and made them into cards, and sent each poet one thanking them for allowing Otakou Press and I to use their poems. I've had emails from a number of the poets liking their particular posters, and yesterday I received a postcard from Les Murray, saying all sorts of lovely things. I don't know where to put it! Maybe I'll print off all the nice things and make myself a feedback box...

I have to get motivated soon, because in two weeks I have a huge task to achieve in collaboration with byrd: PRINT BIG, a Megalo group exhibition in conjunction with the National Gallery's 2010 Print Symposium (if you like or make prints, come along! To both events! It'll be epic!).

But I'm not going to get too flurried until after tomorrow, because tomorrow is my 43rd birthday, and while it's not as exciting as turning 42, I'm sure it will have its merits.

Akaroa at the end

Hello from lovely Akaroa, on the Banks Peninsula just out of Christchurch.

Best Beloved has flown home to attend his Big School (he's doing a degree in Social Governance or some such ponciness) and Bumblebee and I are having three lovely days just hanging, based at a purple-painted 1865-built backpackers hostel called Chez La Mer. It's the nicest place we've stayed to date: big comfy beds with hot water bottles, not electric blankets (we hates them, preciouses), fully-stocked kitchens, games, books, no tv, free bikes to ride, free wireless and best of all, a pub right next door with a pool table (Bumblebee is ecstatic).


Here I am, sitting with my laptop, in the little courtyard that comes with our room at the front of the hostel, watching the people in the street, while inside B does some homework (it's amazing what you can get out of him when bribed with games of pool).

We've had two earthquake aftershocks: yesterday at 6.30am, which apparently I slept through but B didn't, and one at 3.40am today, which I felt but he slept through, so we're even. Everyone here is over them, and can't wait for them to stop, and I can't say I blame them. Christchurch is looking quite orderly again, but every now and again there are cordoned off areas with piles of rubble, or shops with half their walls gone. It's quite dramatic (and byrd, if you're reading, I'm taking lots of photos and have lots of Demolition ideas...)

Otherwise, we've been in complete rest mode. We got here late in the afternoon on Wednesday, after I completed my last commitment for the residency: an interview with Radio New Zealand for their Arts on Sunday program (will be aired sometime soon, they'll let me know when, and also the podcast link). After that, with BB gone and all done, I switched off completely. We put our bags in our room and went for a walk down to the harbour (took all of five minutes) and took in the serenity, watched over by a full moon. Bumblebee was overwhelmed by the beauty of it all and had a surge of energy and joy -- he started leaping around like a spring lamb and expounding loudly about the loveliness and peacefulness until I reminded him that he was actually destroying it all and maybe he should leap joyfully around quietly? Heh.

We've seen a LOT of spring lambs, which is the best thing about travelling in NZ at this time of year. The freaky weather is balanced by the gorgeousness of lambs either lying peacefully on the grass with their mothers, covorting in twos and threes around the paddock, or suckling, tails spinning happily as they drink. It's so life-affirming to watch them.

There is an abundance of nice shops and galleries around Akaroa, probably because it's an easy daytrip from Christchurch, and people come here to buy nice things and eat good food and then go home again. When the locals hear that you're staying a few days, they love you. In my case, when I tell them that I came here for less than a day 20 years ago and was determined to spend more time here, well, I'm being treated like royalty. If you get here, don't miss LAVA Gallery, full of fun quirky locally-made things. I found myself a wonderful pendant carved from the base of a beer bottle. Very NZ-looking and personally less problematic than buying a piece of Maori greenstone or bone (I don't feel comfortable wearing them, it's not my culture, although B bought himself a lovely piece to wear and loves it).

The food is good too; I had a chicken, cranberry and brie pizza at the pub the other night, and it was great, although NOTHING beats the blue cod fish pie I had at Stewart Island. I can still smell and taste it in my head, and the memory will sustain me for years. last night we cooked for ourselves and ate it while playing Scrabble. I've almost whipped Bumblebee into a worthy opponent, although he needs a lot of help with word ideas and spelling. We're pretty even opponents at Chess, which makes games fun. No tv (and an additional Gameboy ban) means that we're taking the time to read and play together, and we're having a lot of fun.

Today we're going on a harbour cruise to see the local attraction: rare Hector's Dolphins, which are very little dolphins that love to play around the boats and check out the hoomins. Hopefully we'll see some penguins too.

Tomorrow we head back to Christchurch, where we're going to stay in a hostel that used to be the jail, sharing a cell together! Should be fun. I'm also going to visit a fellow letterpress printer, see how his equipment fared in the quake, and also pop in to see one of the Aged Poet's sons, who plays in the orchestra there.

Then we'll do some creative packing and fly home on Sunday. That's unless I chicken out and stay here. Sigh. It's tempting, but the government is crap (have you heard the latest scandal?) and I like my Canberra life quite a bit, I suppose. :)

Unless I get the chance on Saturday night (although B wants me to take him to a movie), I think the next chance or inclination to post will be when I get home. We've got one of those flights that means we'll have to move fast between the international leg and the domestic one, so there won't be much sitting around except for at the beginning when we're waiting for our first flight.

So, o my goodness, it's all winding up. What a fun time it's been. Must do it again sometime!

(I'll post more photos sometime soon, just haven't had a chance to do the latest batch!)

POSTSCRIPT

The cruise was WONDERFUL. We saw rare white-flippered penguins (very little penguins), and lots of lovely fat basking fur seals, and right at the end (just when the guide was starting his 'oh well, that's wild animals for ya' apology speech, we saw the Hector's Dolphins. Beautiful little lithe and slightly frilly dolphins, playing coy at first, then getting into the swing of things and playing up for us, leaping and doing backflips.

And -- I made a joke a few weeks ago about the likelihood of running into people we know in NZ, but it was only half a joke -- we were on the boat with an old friend from uni, whose son is in Bumblebee's year at his high school (they know each other, but don't 'hang out', so to speak). She and her partner and their three kids are doing NZ in a campervan, and, as with us, the weather hasn't been very kind to them. Mind you, today was perfect -- blue sky, warm sun, wind not too windy (although it's picking up and greying off now, a few hours later).

Finally, the boat, which was a catamaran, put on a big burst of speed to get back on time, and we charged through wind speeds of about 100km. I was right at the front of the boat, with my sunnies on -- and B was inside the boat looking bemusedly on as only a patronising teenage son can do -- and my hair streaming back, holding on for dear life and loving it. It was like having a facial with Vicks Vaporub. Actually, it was every (grown-up) kid's fantasy, like hanging your head out of the car window on the freeway and not having a parent shout at you to put your head back in before it gets knocked off by a roadside sign. My hair's now a tangled knotty mess, but my cheeks are pink and I feel like a million dollars.

Awwww... do I have to come home?

Fiordland

I'm sitting in a backpackers lodge in Te Anau (and the only way I remember how to pronounce it is by activating my Laura Branigan Te Amo earworm, which has been extremely annoying), using very slow wireless, and feeling a bit disappointed.

We just went to the Info Centre to book a glowworm caves cruise for tonight, and found out that the Milford Sound road is closing tonight and won't be reopened until the weather settles out... maybe tomorrow, maybe in three days. So we might not get to see Milford Sound, which is such a shame for the boys (I've been there before) but I guess this is just one of those things when you travel to wintery places in Winter.

We're all a bit tired and snappish, but it's a result of having fun. For the last two days we've been at Stewart Island, the third Island of New Zealand, and yesterday spent the afternoon at Ulva Island, a small bird sanctuary in the inlet of the island. We've seen so many fabulous birds, including Kakas, Robins, Tui, and a large flightless beach-foraging bird (not a Kiwi) that I can't remember the name for: Weka? Weba? Something like that. I have a bird book, but it's over in the other building, and I'm just happy to be sitting right now.

We stayed at the most wonderful Bed & Breakfast, called Jo & Andy's B&B. Jo & Andy are two older people with oodles of life experience who set up a B&B to give themselves better entertainment than the TV, by the looks of it. The house is charming and stuffed to the gills with books and places to read them, and is clean but not overly clean (dusty ornaments but clean floors, which to me says conscientious but too busy to be constantly dusting). Jo is more business-like, and is obviously The Boss in an understated way, and Andy is the handy dreamer, who builds his own fish-smoker in the back yard (I can still taste his home-made smoked salmon) and adores talking to the visitors as he rolls a cigarette (smoked outside) about anything from world politics through to last month's hit movies, all with a big grin on his face, and frequent and joyful use of the word COOL. Once we got talking, we kept talking. It was great. He also makes his own bread, and provides a hearty breakfast every morning of oatmeal & muesli and yogurt mixed with banana and blueberries, followed by a poached egg on his homemade toast. Yum.

Andy is also a masseur, and yesterday afternoon I got one of the best massages I've ever had. That was after Ulva Island, which I'd been thinking of giving a miss because the morning had been a sheet of rain, but Andy told me that the weather there is so variable that I should 'just do what you want to do and let the weather follow you'. So we went to Ulva by watertaxi -- seeing penguins swimming in the water next to the boat -- and once we got to Ulva, the sun came out. Good old Andy.

That's it for now. I've got lots of beautiful photos, but will wait until I get to more stable internet before I upload them. Hope you're all having a fun time where you are too!

Moving right along

Done.





and dusted.







(of course, there are more photos at flickr)

I've cleaned up the studio, packed up some parcels to send home, and left the place ready for the next project.

*sniff*

Now we're on holiday, and leaving Dunedin today for a two-week jaunt around the south island, including two nights on Stewart Island. I'm not sure what sort of internet access I'll have, but I'll blog when I can.

Just would like to thank everyone who has participated in and contributed to this residency in any little way, whether making me a cuppa or reading a post. It's been fabulous.

Catch it while you can

My television appearance last week has come on line, and I suspect it's for one week only, since there doesn't seem to be an archive page...

Watch it here if you dare. I'm sandwiched between a few other guests; the whole show is 29 minutes long, but you'll find me between 13:07 and 18.10 minutes.

I pleasantly surprised myself, as it all went by in a blur and I was nervous that I blathered, but apart from being all chin and hands, I didn't too too badly with the very short time I had!



Having a lovely clean-paper day today, sorting and sifting the prints and getting them ready for collation into the folio covers. Tomorrow I'm catching a bus to Oamaru to meet the boys and driving back to Dunedin with them. They're staying the rest of the week with me at the college before we head off on Sunday for a bit of a South Island jaunt, weather, wildness and all.

relief

OF COURSE they were ok. OF COURSE they touched down in Christchurch safely. OF COURSE I worried too much. OF COURSE, after talking to me on the phone, they plan to go and eyeball the damage as closely as they can before the authorities prevent them.

And now I'm light-headed with relief, and, perversely, realising that I have two days of solo existence left before they get to me, so I should enjoy it. Because I do enjoy it, when I know that everyone I love is safe and happy.

I'm going to knock this printing on the head now for a few hours, and then I might drop across the road to the museum's butterfly house to enjoy a bit of ephemerality.

In the meantime, you go and have a look at my Sister-Outlaw's blog, revived after a period of doubt. It is lovely to see her writing more than a twitter entry, and she is very good at it. Go and encourage her, as all talented single parents should be encouraged.

And here's a silly thing:



dugadugadugadugadug...COUNTDOWN!! This is the NZ version of Woolworths. Cute, eh? Every time I walk in I expect to see satin pants and eyeliner, and Molly behind the counter. Sigh!

BRB.

PS: Happy Father's Day to Colonel Duck, who apparently was not only delighted with his gift of merino/possum socks, but with the fact that they arrived ON TIME, which is very rare in my world. Enjoy them, Dad, hope they feel nice on the feet, you deserve it.

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:


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


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


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


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:




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.

Basking in the light

Guess what I've been doing tonight?

PRINTING THE LAST POSTER. Well, not the last print of the last poster, but I'm now editioning the last of the seven images. And then I have to print the title page and colophon, so there's still over 250 pages to pull, but YAY nonetheless. I'm aiming to pull the last wet print on Sunday, maybe Monday at the latest, because we want them snug inside their folios and ready to launch by the Thursday afternoon at the Otakou Press wayzgoose.

The second-last one was tricky. Each poet had sent me a choice of poems, and I selected them not only by whether I liked them (because, I have to say, I liked all of them in different ways) but also by whether they would work on a wall. Because some poems are better in the hand, or in the heart, but not on your office/bedroom/loungeroom wall.

Michael Harlow is a local poet -- he doesn't live in Dunedin, but they claim him as theirs, especially when he comes second-up in the NZ Post Book Awards (it was won by Brian Turner, who is also local, and is a past Otakou Press poet). He's also a practicing Jungian psychotherapist, which, when I was told, put the fear of Ceiling Cat into me. The pressure to understand! To make the poster MEAN something! ARGHHH!

I kept putting his poem, The Piano's Birthday, aside; then I thought that I'd better not leave it for last, so tackled it after I finished Sarah Holland-Batt's poem. The few poems that MH had sent me were lovely, but not WALL, except this one, which at least had some visual triggers in terms of colour. Bear with me, I will show you the poem, but I just want to talk about the process for a mo before I show you the outcome.

I looked at it, and looked at it, and felt lost. It seemed dense and loaded, but accessible if I could find an 'in'. I decided to google the term 'marjatta tree' as it seemed to be the most obvious clue.

Lo, there is no such thing as a Marjatta tree, but there is a Marjatta, who is the heroine of a Finnish legend. She was a virgin who became pregnant after swallowing a mysterious talking whortleberry [!!!] and she gave birth in a stable to a God-like child who went on to achieve Finnish world dominance. So, a Finnish Christmas tale, I guess. SYMBOLIC!

And that's when my brain imploded and the poem opened up to me. I don't claim to understand it completely, but it became clear that it was a piece about inspiration and creation, and that there was two completely separate parts to the poem: the first, which is about raw KA-BOOM creative energy, leaping out of foreheads and fighting out of wombs using whortleberries and so forth. The second part is much quieter, and more about inspiration, about hearing and seeing and thinking and being moved, ever so gently, so write a Poem.

Then I was thinking about the colours he'd given me: green and red, and I was thinking about adding some blue somewhere, when Donald-the-Special-Collections-Librarian, seeing me fiddling and leaping and fistpumping and puzzling, offered to show me the facsimile copy of Jung's Red Book that Michael Harlow had donated to the library. Oh OH OH! That's when it all fell into place.





Jung made this incredible dream diary, and decorated it like a medieval illuminated manuscript, and the text is black, with three dominant colours for the decorative elements: red, green and blue.

BINGO.



Goodness me, it was a finicky print to edition. I was printing four colours in each pull of the press, and if I vagued out at any point, I'd miss a bit and stuff up the print. Like this:



when I forgot to ink up the green bit. And this:



when I forgot to ink up the bottom black block. GAH.

This is when music is very important. You need to be in the moment, following a routine, not thinking about anything except the print and whatever music is playing. The music needs to be familiar, but not so much so that it puts you in a trance. If there's nothing to think about, you go into a trance. There needs to be a lyric or two to chew over while you check your work. On this vein, I'd like to thank Laura Cantrell for her newish album Trains and Boats and Planes, especially her most excellent cover of Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It did very well in the role of editioning aid.

It took all weekend to get the print printed. I did some other things: on Friday night we had the opening of Donald-TSCL's marvellous exhibition of Pulp Fiction, where we were all asked to nominate our favorite titles from the show. I'm torn between Slay-ride for Sandra and Tall, Dark and Dead. The covers are amazing, and Donald-TSCL has managed to source a few process pieces, where you can see the photo of the nude model, the drawings of her, and then the finished cover. This is going to be a very popular exhibition, more so than the ALL ABOARD Railway collection exhibition that just came down...

After 3 glasses of exquisite Otago white, I stumbled into town with my Australian librarian friend Allison and we caught the latest cinematic offering from Flight of the Conchords' Jermaine Clement, Predicament. It won't be a smash hit, but I can see it getting a gentle cult following, and has some very good moments of hilarity.



I also had another couple of hours playing European board games with Allison and other librarian types on Saturday, flexing the skills I'd picked up a few weeks before to come equal second in Alhambra. w00t!

Now I'm working on the final piece bar the title and colophon pages: Robert Adamson's poem The Sibyl's Avenue, chosen because it has a cat in it, which makes the folio complete. You can't have a print folio without a cat, peoples!



I wanted to use some of the fabulous ornamental blocks that they have in abundance here, and found one that suits bird chitter:



It's a lovely calligraphic flourish (guaranteed to make Ronnie moan more than usual in the comments :) ).

And the cat chitter? Check this out:



I've never seen anything like it; most ornaments have confident design lines, but this one is deliciously wobbly and warbling. It just looks like the noise my cats make when they're trying to talk bird. Wonderful.



And this print definitely holds the touch of the maker, as I'm using my finger to ink up the bird 'footprints', as it's the only way to get them fading out as they're supposed to.

Goodness. I also entertained a posse of schoolboys with their teacher this afternoon, from Otago Boys High. At least one of them was fully engaged, which made it fun.

Tomorrow I'm doing a live interview on Channel 9, the local television station! It's a show called Dunedin Diary, and the producer said today that I'm only being interviewed for 5 and a half minutes, so feel free to talk as fast as I like... I don't think she realises the speeds at which I can reach when I'm excited and nervous.

It's funny, standing not quite at the end of the tunnel but clearly seeing the light. Best Beloved and Bumblebee are flying over on Saturday night, and taking their time to get to me, arriving in Dunedin on Tuesday to hang out for a while before we start travelling around the south island for a couple of weeks.

I haven't mentioned them much... Best Beloved has been living up to his name, doing a fantastic job as a single parent. He's wrangled Bumblebee through a load of accelerated homework (so that he can take 3 weeks off school) and kept the cats from fretting too much. I can't thank him enough for holding things together while I came here. I couldn't have done this without him.

OK, time to turn off the radio -- I listen to it as a break from my personal playlist, and I've kept it on the position on the dial at which I found it, which is a local commercial station I've lately dubbed INXS FM because they play at least 4 INXS tracks a day, consciously or not -- and head back to my digs to flake out on the couch with my feet high in the air. I've just finished reading Jude the Obscure on my iPhone (which almost made me break out weeping in the dining room of the college over my bowl of fruit and yogurt), and am halfway through Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave (something I dug out of the college library, which is a weird mix of donated Classics and abandoned airport novels). Life is tough...

Rolling along

So. Week four, and I'm on schedule, I think. I've printed 5 posters, and two of those have been double layer printings, so that's at least 700 pulls of the press already.



The folio cases are being made at the University Bindery this week. I've been overprinting all the poster images on a few sheets and they're going to be cut into strips and inlaid on the front of the cases. That's another reason why I love this place... they still have a university bindery.

I'm lying on the couch in my flat, listening to the wind howling outside my window. We had a couple of beautiful days, quite warm with no rain, and then today the rain came back, the temperature dropped, and the wind started up. There might be snow, who knows? It doesn't bother me, I'm in t-shirts in the warm studio, looking out at the world through the big glass window. Last week I watched a line of children leaving the museum carrying sleeping bags, having just had a sleepover there. On Sunday I glanced out from my work and witnessed a Haka ritual:



Why do I need to go anywhere? But I do get out. I got some crazy op shop bargains, two colourful light merino jumpers (one red, one purple) for $8... one was $5, and the other was half price for $3! My feet have been killing me, so I went looking for some Crocs (fabulous for all-day standing on concrete, as I may have mentioned before, and much safer for clumsy sorts like me than tripping on rubber mats) and I found a pair for $6! Happy feet, happy Duck. Within half a day of wearing them, my feet stopped complaining. Bliss. I do only wear them in the studio, though.

Anyhoo, I was going to show you some work. Here goes:

When I last left you (apart from the last post, which jumped forward a bit), I'd printed the first layer of the Vincent O'Sullivan river poem



and perhaps the first layer of the Stephen Edgar poem, Sight Reading...



With the Edgar poem, I'd found boxes of a fabulous outline font, very carnivalesque (is that a word?), with solid letters and outline letters that could overprint, and I knew I had to find a way to use them.



Edgar's poem is all about potential, and ability, and confidence, and strangeness, and... lots of things, but the visual image he provides is one of floating text, and the keyword for me was sunset. So my first layer was in pinky red, and then I added a second layer of orange and black:



to make:



I kept thinking about whether to use found text, or to just randomly pull letters from the box and arrange them, but in the end, after wandering around holding the poem loosely in my head (which is something I do a lot, because I have a dreadful memory for words, but the sense of things lingers, especially visually), I hit upon the phrase YOU WILL ALWAYS WONDER, and I used it all through the print. I like to think that people will discover it in the print at some point, and it will extend the reading slightly.

That print wasn't a hard one to set up and print, but it was laborious, especially with the two print runs.

The next one, Vincent O'Sullivan's river poem (it has no title), but excruciatingly tricky. For one thing, getting the second layer of colour to work with the first was hard, as I have no scales, and can't mix colour accurately. Took me over an hour to get the colour right. And then there was the layout:









It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle. And even once I'd got it all set up, a lot of it wasn't working properly because the wood type I was using was so old and worn, it needed to be packed up a lot.

I'd hoped to get it all printed by Sunday night, but I spent Saturday faffing with it, and then I went to see the bands, and I spent the rest of the night dreaming about rolling it up. I woke up on Sunday determined to resolve it. So I mixed a stiffer ink for the text (silver and black, to make a dark silver), and I changed the layout a bit to make rolling easier, and then I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck into it.

I did finish it on Sunday night. Late Sunday night.







I'm happy with it. I wanted watery, I wanted elegant, plus churchy and bridal without being saccharine. I think I got there. It's very subtle, and a lot of its printing is embossed as well as inked, so you have to hold it and shift it around to get the full effect.

Then it was time to pull it all apart, make another frisket,



and start on another one. I gave a little taster of it this morning, because my last big post about printing was reposted on Spike the Meanjin blog, and I thought I'd better have something printy online at the top of my posts.

This poem, by Sarah Holland-Batt, has a dark, dreamy mood to it, which I wanted to convey visually. I decided to try some more freehand rolling, straight on to the paper, which gives a very velvety feel to the colour, a plum colour meant to evoke squid inkiness.

But! first I had to adjust the platen of the Columbian, which was listing rather badly to one end... I asked the magical Library Custodian (that's what they call the helping background staff: the tea ladies {yes, they also still have those}, the maintenance and cleaning people) if he had any WD-40, and lo! he did, even though no-one else, including Donald-the-Special-Collections-Librarian, knew what I was talking about.


Have tools, can wrangle bolts.



I have a wonderful book, belonging to the library, about printing with the iron handpress, and it goes into a long and complicated explanation about making the platen straight that involves pressure tests with little tags of mylar etc. I don't have time for that, so I used a spirit level. It's now not perfect, but it's close to perfect and it took ten minutes.

Back to Night Sonnet.



Having straightened the platen, I then try to print a forme that has an extra amount of pressure in one corner... doh. I was embossing the title and the wooden O (to make a moon) so that I could hand-roll ink over the top and make the embossing POP. Unfortunately, if I embossed hard enough to make the moon pop, everything couldn't print clearly. So I compromised, and made it a dark moon, with outlines only, which works with the surreal musing of the poem.



Excuse the tatty header on that example... it's what happens if the roller hasn't got enough ink on it: it gets sticky and pulls the fluffy paper apart rather than depositing ink. You only do it once (or twice).

It was such a gloriously easy print to do once I got the pressure working: one colour, good easy rolling with no overlaps on the press, a couple of strokes with the roller on the bench, and done. I got the whole edition done at a leisurely pace today, and now I'm onto poster 6.

I'll leave you with a photo and a link.


I can't believe this man could get to GG with a name like that. I wonder if he collects Hardy Boys novels?

Also: you have to see this. It's the best LOLcat link EVER.

Kia ora

Hey ho, sorry for the silence. This is the first day of wireless access for me, having jumped through many hoops and filled out one of the very first applications for access (sorry, excess) as an external visitor staying longer than 2 weeks. The university has, of course, had other medium-stay visitors, but they've never had a formal process for them. Until now. Excuse me whilst I remove my guinea-pig costume.

I wrote a post on Sunday night, on the evening of my first full Dunedin day, but haven't had the ability to upload it. So, while I'm organising my photos from the last few days, here it is:

Kia ora from Dunedin!



After experiencing my special cat alarm service (the one that wakes you half an hour before the alarm you actually set), I spent all day yesterday wrangling earcraft and earports, with my first plane at 6:40am and arriving at DUD (AirNZ’s acronym, not mine) at 7pm their time (5pm Canberra time). I was a bit knackered by the time I arrived.

My host, Donald the Rare Books Librarian of Otago University Library (say it all in one breath, please), took me to his amazingly beautiful Victorian villa on a hill overlooking the bay to have a lovely home-cooked roast dinner with his family and friends, and I managed to muster enough energy to be articulate and witty for a while, before needing desperately to go and have a lie down.



I always knew that I would be staying at one of the university’s colleges, and assumed that I would be getting just a basic student room. But no! I am in a guest room at St Margaret’s College (above), which is a posh college that has formal dress-up Sunday dinners (except this weekend, when most of the students are off on a ski trip) and gorgeous landscaping and facilities like a lush common room with a piano (that someone is playing to a small but rapt audience as I type). My room is off to one side, near the dining room, and it has its own loungeroom, small kitchenette, bathroom and bedroom with double bed! LUXURY! Am very happy.



I spent today getting to know Dunedin a little, walking in huge loops and taking photos of all the beautiful things I found, which seem to fall into some distinct categories: street art (thanks to Byrd’s influence, I notice these things now); the textures of things, such as peeling paint and flaky metal; and hand-painted typography on walls. Also the usual: nice architecture, funny signs, etc. I’m putting some photos up here, but the rest will be at flickr.



The University of Otago is beautiful, with new and fancy architecture butt-cheeked next to Scottish-influenced Victorian gems and through the whole thing flows the nostalgically-named Waters of Leith, which is running fast but low at the moment, but quite obviously (from the manmade barriers and desperate student-installed sandbank walls) when the snows melt the river rises very high. I hope I get to see that!



Tomorrow I start work in the university library, in their print studio. At first I’ll just be exploring their type collection, learning to work their presses and marshalling my army of volunteers to help me tear paper, but once I get a grip on things I’ll be designing my 7 broadsides and title page & colophon, and then working hard and fast to print an edition of 100 each while not wasting too much paper. I’m also giving a talk, maybe running a small workshop and, I was told last night, I’m being interviewed by the local paper soon.

So tonight I’m going to have a quiet one…

Heh. Turns out most nights are quiet ones, as dinner is at 5.30pm (and I've not quite caught up with being two hours in front of myself, so in my head I'm still waking at 5am and eating dinner at 3.30pm). I found out that Thursdays and Saturdays are the Big Nights Out and indeed tonight there is more student nocturnal movement than usual. The tv stations are abysmal, with no state-run station like the ABC, so they're all commercial channels, and people avoid them by getting cable. I just joined the local video store, and it has a really good range of foreign and alternative titles, so I'm now happy. Plus I can blog again, which makes me even happier.

Next time: Starting at the Print Room.