Doing things

I'm writing this at work from the BookStud, because I just can't find any other time to write. Excuse me if I get a bit disjointed, because I'll run off and do things and then come back in the spaces between jobs.



This is how life feels right now. It's been all go at this end, as I'm on the home stretch to a solo exhibition (opening 3 Sept) and there's still LOTS to do. The venue's been paid for, the statement written, the invitations are ready to pick up, and there's enough leftover booze from the studio warming to lubricate the opening, so I can't stop working, it's all too real and impending.

The best bit is that I actually like working under pressure. It releases all sorts of things from my brain that I'd forgotten about. The problem is that life goes on, and my family is getting a bit weary of all these working crises and deadlines. There's only so many times you can say 'Let's just get through this and then I can relax/fix that/help you organise that...' before no-one believes you. Even I don't believe me.

And it would be nice if I could drop everything else and just make things, but there's classes to teach, weekend workshops to run (I'm doing CMAG on Sunday for Book Week on Aug 23, plus another Intro to Book Arts at Megalo the weekend before I install the exhibition), old layout projects to finish off, and favorite television shows to watch. The latter is being solved by recording, but I'd rather watch them live, and the Spicks & Specks half hour is absolutely sacred, so much so that it is the time when friends drop around to spend time with me.

Huzzar! I just managed to arrange some last-minute framing; I thought my show would be all objects, but I happened upon a cache of prints I'd run off a couple of years ago when I was mucking around with some hell-type, and if I may say so myself, they're very pleasing to the eye. So now I shall have some 'real' prints on the wall! Goodness, how arty farty of me.

The staff show opening was fun, and the range of work is terrific.



This is a shot of the speechy bits, with Annie Trevllian's wonderful floor rug on the right and Annie herself standing to the left of it. There are lots of good artistic personalities in the shot, and the man giving the speechy bits is School Head Gordon Bull.

There's a lot of good shows on at the moment: ANCA has an excellent tenant's show (I'm not in it because I seem to be in everything else. I'll be part of next year's show); and at M16 there's a marvellous show of mechanical art called REFLEX: A show of Mechanical Poetry that is magical and excellent for kids, both big and little.

It's that day of the year again for me today, but it's not having more than a passing thought this year because I don't have the time to indulge myself. The way I am indulging myself is by making sure I have a glass of wine every night, and peeking at delightful and therapeutic blog posts like this one, and this one, among many others.

OK, enough said. Tally ho, see you in the soup!

Show time

Sorry, this is a bit last minute, but there's an opening tonight of ARTWORK: works by staff members of the ANU School of Art. SofA Gallery, 6pm.

I'm in it, with both my fine press books together at once, with reading copies that you can touch with your -- gasp -- bare hands. After all, it's all about touch with books, isn't it?


-- Post From My iPhone

Me again

I am so in love with Lucy English on this week's RN Poetica that I'm listening to her again for the third time.

Can you tell I'm procrastinating? I'm going fine with the exhibition making; it's the other stuff I have to do that I'm dithering about.

I adore Lucy's poem about being old enough to tell the truth to everyone, even yourself.

virtual watercooler post

Cruising through the webs at work, trying to work out how best to use some scraps of vellum I've been given; visited a fav blog and discovered this beaut site at The Guardian, comparing various cover designs for Wuthering Heights.

I particularly like this one, as it has repackaged Bronte's novel to fit the teenage Twilight zeitgeist:





Poor Jane has been going through this as well, with P&P plonked into the Chicklit market, from which I fear it will be hard to recover:









I must admit, part of the reason I bought Pride & Prejudice and Zombies was for the cover, which is lucky, because the book was quite disappointing. Latest news is that it's about to become a graphic novel, which is much more exciting, as I think that format will be a lot more interesting than the book or a movie.

In other other (pretty stale) news, there's a sequel to P&P&Z called Sense & Sensibility & Seamonsters. I don't think the cover is as interesting, but if it's going to be pitted, as the link suggests, against the latest Dan Brown yawn, then I'll root for it to succeed. Then again, it would be nice to have some real writing pitted against boring spin-offs any day.

If you have other 'repackaging' loves or hates, SHARE. Time we had a coversation (I meant to type conversation, but that spelling works in this context, doesn't it?) around here. I'll break out the iced vovos to go with the tea. Or would you prefer cashews with a nice bottle of white?

brass monkeys

Found on a bookbinding supplies website, in their listing of brass lettering fonts:



So what is 'normal' these days?

remembering to breathe

I just fully appreciated why cats drop everything when they hit a patch of sun... I'm standing at my work table casing in a book, and the morning sun came out from behind a cloud and hit the back of my neck... aaaahhhh!


-- Post From My iPhone

warmly received

My studio warming was lovely, and very much like a wedding day: I dressed up, said a few formal words, passed on the baton for someone else to say a few formal words, and then spent the rest of the afternoon meeting & greeting until there was no-one left to talk to, while behind me a team of gorgeous people worked hard to make the event run smoothly.

If you have the time (about 15 mins), the patience and/or the bandwidth, and mostly the inclination, the speechy bits are recorded here (big thanks to Rikk!). I don't expect you to check it out, because it's a big file. I take up the first two or three minutes, and then Paul Eggert takes over.

Essentially, I thanked people for coming, mentioned that I'd had a wobbly moment that morning about whether a formal launch of the space was a pretentious idea, and that Zoe had steadied me with a wonderful spiel about how little ritual we have left in our lives and that we need to celebrate important moments, especially when we'd worked hard towards them, etc. Then I mentioned that I'd just finished refurbishing the Vandercook, and that I'd been worried that it would make a lot of noise and disturb my studio neighbour... so I turned on the press and the audience sighed along with me. It purrs like a kitten, so on the spot I dubbed it Kitty (much later on I joked with some stayers that I could call it Pussy, so that the spirit of Betty Slocombe could live on... but I think it will stay Kitty). Then I passed things on to Paul and stood back.



Professor Paul Eggert used to be my university lecturer, and he introduced me to letterpress. Then he became my boss for a whole lot of freelance and highly technical work laying out a series of scholarly editions of Austlit. Along the way he's shown me some amazing books and introduced me to some excellent people. He's been very supportive and collects everything I print. He spoke about all of this and more, and exhorted everyone to buy my books, especially the Nan McDonald volume, which he kindly said was going to be very highly regarded in the future. He said wonderful things while I stood and blushed, and didn't know where to look, because there were a lot of lovely people in the room, and they were all looking at me.

There were colleagues, old friends, new friends, family friends, bloggers, lurkers, interested members of the community (including a lovely lady who serves me in the bank, who took an interest in me when she first processed my weird business name -- thanks for coming, Susan!) and highly regarded members of the printing and writing community. Rosemary Dobson graced the studio, as did master printer Alan Loney and his partner, who came all the way from Melbourne to attend. It was fantastic, and I know there were a whole swathe of people that I didn't get to talk to -- especially students from the art school, who waved from a distance. I guess I'll talk to them during the week. At the end of his speech Paul got everyone to raise their glasses to the press, and we did.

Alan Loney didn't just attend, bearing a gift of his favorite ampersand sort, but he also gave me an impromptu lesson in how to dampen paper for letterpress printing (as opposed to printmaking printing), something I've never come to grips with, and we'd been talking about when we met up a few weeks ago in Brisbane. And then he bequeathed me the sponge, specially cut for the purpose, and which I will treasure.

For most of the afternoon there seemed to be two groups of activity: standing around in the space outside the studio (I cleaned it beautifully) eating and drinking and general partying, and walking around the studio itself, looking at all the things I'd arranged on the walls and on the workspaces. Wonderful Dale from the Sturt Craft School in Mittagong (yes I will mount the Winter School photos soon) came along, bearing the gorgeous little Gillian Broinowski piece I'd bought a few weeks ago when I was hanging around the Sturt shop. It will sit in my studio to remind me to think hard about familiar objects.



Zoe did so well with the catering. She's a top cook, and provided delicious and very warming things. Best Beloved dealt with the alcohol, and I think a pretty good time was had by all. I wasn't the star of the afternoon, my lovely studio was.





I know that it will never be this clean again (I messed it up this afternoon, of course), so I really enjoyed it yesterday.


Oh, I have to go to bed, it's taken hours to sort and upload the photos, and I have a printing class tomorrow. There's more photos in my flickr album, and there's a live-blogged account of our post-party party last night, where we were all so relieved it went well that we drank way too much and got friendly with some lovely Bhutanese neighbours.