printing & binding

I keep complaining about being overworked and then neglecting to show you what I'm working on. Some of this is because I rarely think about using the camera in the thick of it, and some of it is sheer couldn't-be-arsedness. But that's not the attitude to have as a blogger, is it? My bad. So here is a sample of the things I've done today.

PRINTING



I'm editioning an artist book by GW Bot. That is, she's done all the prints, and I'm printing the text. This is a delightful job that should really have been done at the end of last year, but thanks to my dodgy insides I had to postpone a lot of work, and I'm spending about the first third of this year catching up.

There are a few problems to work around on a daily basis; I've printed all the easy pages, and now I'm having to be resourceful with Bot's creative registration (which means that her prints aren't always in the same place on every sheet). There's one page where she has lots of lines running along the page, and I have to get the letters in between the lines...



but the lines aren't always at the same height or aren't always the same thickness. And because she's printed it first, I don't get many chances to make mistakes, or the edition will get smaller.

So I've developed a system where I print onto an onionskin paper (tougher than tissue but translucent enough to be handy) and use it to check my positioning. It's probably an age-old trick, but I'm pretty happy to have fallen upon it by myself.



I should finish printing three copies of the entire book by the end of the weekend if I'm lucky, and then I will bind them next week so that Bot can take the books to London with her. She wants a cased-in binding (ie, a hardback) of Tapa paper laminated onto bookcloth, which will be fiddly but beautiful. I'll do the other 16 copies while she's away, at a more leisurely pace. I'll show you more later as I get on to it.


BINDING

I'm being a bookbinding student at night this year, because I just couldn't seem to fit it into my days, and I love it too much to relinquish it. Plus I see it as professional development. Tonight I've been learning how to sew a book into cords, or cords into a book, I'm not sure of the right terminology. You saw holes in the spine and insert jute or hemp cords, and sew them in, instead of using tapes.

I've never been comfortable with a saw; it takes a sure and light hand to do both the to-ing and fro-ing. I can usually only do the fro-ing. I can work with power tools happily, because they're all point and click, but never having been a boy, I've never had the mystery of saws explained to me. I asked a fellow traveller tonight, and he gave me a brilliant tutorial, which probably saved my thumb. He showed me the right way to guide with your fingers and I only lost a little bit of nail when the saw slipped. So here are my dodgy keyholes:



The one on the right is the best one (the lines at either end are my kettlestitch stations, and don't count). The other two were decidedly lame, but the cords still fitted into them ok:



It's a lovely sight, a spine binding progressing beautifully. The thread locks the cord into the keyholes, and you don't wrap the thread around the cords in this version. Every few sections, you need to hammer down the spine to compress it, and tweak the cords the increase the tension. You don't pull the cords from both ends, or you may pull one out. Which is just what I did, a good way into the sewing, and I almost cried.

But. I am a resourceful person, and no stranger to problem-solving, and with the help of Neale, my fabulous teacher, we plugged the hole to our satisfaction:



That's as far as I got tonight, apart from rounding and backing the shoulders of the book with a hammer (it's a brutal business). Next week we'll add some endpapers and case it in (put a hard cover on it).

I'd like to think that's all I've been doing, but I'm also working on two catalogues, a scholarly journal and a cover for an upcoming novel that is so good that I can't stop reading and thinking about it. I'm also teaching a mini-workshop on sunday as part of the NGA's Print Symposium.

You can see why I really enjoyed just drifting around Melbourne, can't you?

Remember to breathe

Phew, another tuesday already. I've only just made this one, with 20 minutes to go. I've been burning the midnight oil every night, so maybe this should be called Remember to Sleep.

I thought I'd share a couple of odd photos from Melbourne. I didn't take many photos while I was there; I kept forgetting to get the camera out, because I was so busy looking and thinking and smiling. And the photos I did take are awful. I think I'm developing a hand tremor.



Anyhoo, these are from the very lovely and quirky exhibition by Gracia + Louise, in a little gallery in Flinders Lane which is just a row of old mailboxes in a building foyer.



I loved the little details in their work, and also the decorations on the walls around the boxes (a permanent feature, of course!). Gotta love those old buildings.

It's a collaborative production, like all Gracia + Louise enterprises, featuring original drawings and collage.



The exhibition is called If we stand very still, no one will notice, and it's on at Mailbox 141 (141-143 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Mon/Fri 7am-7pm Sat 12-6pm) until 20th of April, 2007.

My itunes just told me that Awake is the New Sleep, but I think that's piffle. I'm off to get me some of that old-fashioned sleep.

Infernal Disco

My house is reverberating with disco beats at the moment (and I just want to issue this general apology to my neighbours) as Bumblebee continues his musical education, this time through the glitterballed halls of the 1970s.

It's my fault; when he was about four I decided that I'd had enough of the Wiggles and George & Monica, and made him a mixed CD of songs from my eclectic CD collection that I thought he'd like. I put two disco numbers on it: Disco Duck (I've blocked out the maker of this awful tune), and Happy Radio (by Edwin Starr), both of which I thought would be 'crossover tunes' from small people's music to big people's music. Actually, they were the bottom of the barrel; I used much better music as well -- 'Love Cats' by the Cure, and 'Starman' by David Bowie were two of the others. Songs with stories or themes that would appeal to avid little ears. It worked, and over the years I've been making him various mixed CDs. Some of it has been a pretty funny journey. (Like when he fell in love with Ben Fold's 'Song for the Dumped' and begged me to put it on one of his CDs and played it endlessly; I had to explain that it wasn't very suitable for the schoolyard.)

So when Bumblebee started exploring my CDs by himself recently, he pulled out the disco compilation album and fell upon those two tracks with great nostalgia, and then started playing the rest of the album. Over and over. And over. Then he noticed that I had at least three other compilations,* and has been playing those. Now he's fallen in love with the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, and is practicing his falsetto and running up and down the corridor in his undies, trying to scare me, a-la The Goodies.

Actually, I've been taking this opportunity to talk to Bumblebee about all sorts of things... the vapidness of disco v's the grittiness of punk; the notion of one-hit-wonders; the fact that people in movies are actors who jump from movie to movie, and aren't out there wandering around the universe somewhere in character (unless you're William Shatner). He knows this last fact in theory, but still exclaims in wonder when he discovers that John Travolta is not only on the cover of Saturday Night Fever, but is also Danny from Grease, one of his favorite movies. I don't think he's really come to terms with the fact that Ewan McGregor isn't Obi-Wan Kenobi, even though he's seen him in lots of other movies. He pulled my arm excitedly during Miss Potter to tell me that Obi-Wan had appeared again...

Despite the disco bit, which Best Beloved and I are getting pretty tired of, we're absolutely loving Bumblebee at the moment, in terms of development. Almost ten seems to be a fantastic age; no instinctive rebellion, few tanties, just soaking things up like a sponge and starting to really process stuff as an individual, and happily taking on a lot more responsibility. It's still ok to talk to parents, and they still think you've got something to tell them. I reckon I've got a window of two to three years, and then he'll think know other people are cooler than us. So even if it's discussions about disco, I'll partake. You never know where it might lead. The other day somehow we got onto the structure of the Australian government, just meandering through popular culture.

And I'm working on some distraction therapy for the disco fever... I'm pulling out lots of (early to mid) David Bowie. I can live with that on repeat. For a while, anyway.




* OK, I'll 'fess up: I love a bit of disco when I'm really low on energy, especially printing into the night. But that doesn't happen very often. The reason I bought the bloody CDs in the first place is because I used to have a breakfast radio show with a friend on the Canberra Community Radio Station (2XX) about ten or so years ago, and I used to play a disco track every week at 8.45. This was before it was cool to do so, of course. I never get my timing right.

One love, one nose, let's get together and feel alright

Dateline: 25 March, 1967.

My 21-year-old parents get married and merge noses. It was the last of their body bits to be cojoined, and although you can't see it here, my lovely mother is up the duff. My grandfather gave them 12 months.



Forty years later, the Colonel and Lady Duck are still very happy, thank you very much, and still like trying to merge noses: the redbrick look on Colonel Duck somewhat spoils the illusion, but not the loveliness.



And this time I am behind the camera, not inside the womb. So guess how old I turn this year? Heh. But this is not about me, this is about them, and how wonderful they are. They have been to hell and back in some ways, and still hold hands. They are a wonderful advertisement for having your babies young, and believing in each other. They can niggle, and nag, and get on each other's nerves, but there's never any question about walking out the door in frustration. You just don't do that when you're best friends. It's a hard act to follow, but I'm trying.

So late yesterday we choofed down to their prickle farm and spent today catering for a crowd of friends and family who popped in from 10am onwards to bask in forty years of love; we made pizza after pizza and sliced up all the gorgeous cakes made by Lady Duck and her friends, and served tea and coffee and later oodles of booze. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for the whole day, and no doubt the party is still going as I type. As it should. Forty years of happy marriage is a rarity these days, and they deserve every accolade they get.

Party hard, dudes, and may you be together for many more years to come...

Running off the plane and into the fray

A really quick post to let you know a few things:

1. I'm home! Hooray. I will post about Melbourne some more when I can find some time, 'cause I've hit the ground running.

2. Don't forget that the Book Studio has it's own blog, and it's running again after a Xmas holiday hiatus.

3. A very astute ANU art school student has started a blog to keep students in touch and hopefully get them motivated about what is happening. I guess this is the next best thing to a union... all hail to her and I hope it works. Pass it on!

Many thanks to everyone in Melbourne who was hospitable, especially the good people at the State Library of Victoria. It was a terrific trip, and I'm very very inspired and motivated.

Back soon, I hope... I did remember to breathe yesterday, just didn't get a chance to blog it. Here's a mental picture: I took a lovely big deep breath of clean Canberra air, and then walked back into this stale, musty, damp art school. Hard to illustrate that, really.

Throbbing but smashing time

Still in Melbourne. My head hurts, which is probably a combination of walking around for days with an increasingly weighty backpack pulling my neck out, not enough water and too many things to remember, like names and witty lines and interesting sights. BRAIN OVERLOAD! I shall have to break this post into small manageable chunks just to cope. I'm in the same internet cafe as last time (I like to bond with places like this), waiting until 7 when I meet the SLV staff and colleagues for a slap-up nosh at a trendy inner-city restaurant.

BLOGMEET

Goodness, what a lot of people showed last night! I managed to sneak in and look around before many of them noticed I was there, but I think in the end I also managed to talk to everyone. Do I dare try and list them? I might forget people... but I'll try: Will Type for Food Tim, After Grog Blog, the inhabitants of Sills Bend (well, not Baz), Brownie, Lord Sedgwick (HEH), Jahteh (who has already blogged about it), Jelly, Genevieve, Barista, Nabakov, and many more... and I'm sorry if you're not listed here, I haven't forgotten your names, but my head hurts and I need to finish this post fast. You were all fun and the pub was loud and my ears are still ringing, even after we went to the best-named noodle restaurant in the universe -- the Kum Den. [erk!] I will have to write more about this later when my brain calms down.

EXHIBITION HO!

Today was the big day at the State Library of Victoria. The exhibition looks fantastic; it's amazing to see all that noise and angst and hilarity condensed down into something so quiet and graceful.

The day's events seemed very successful, especially the bit where we got to see -- and touch -- some of the SLV's own collection. There were talks that ruffled feathers, statements that smoothed them, and lovely catering (v important!).

There was no mention anywhere that the Book Studio still exists as an entity, and I realised that very few people outside blogosphere know that. So I've resolved to get things moving again, not for my profile (god, I don't need anything else on my plate) but for the sake of the artists who are working there now, and to attract some new interest in using the space. So watch this space, or rather, the Bookstud blog space.

I also met Val today, and a few other zine and book people (hello Eloise!)... it's been a really social trip so far, and great for networking. I'm feeling far more 'connected' than I usually do!

OK, enough. I'm sorry, it's a wee bit whingy, but I'm sure I'll feel a bit more together next time I see this place -- or when I get home, whichever comes first!

Gazing at Melbourne

I'm typing from some internet cafe in the centre of Melbourne, feet throbbing from having walked around and around and around and frigging AROUND. All good fun, of course, and being from the BookStud I get to wander into galleries and art supply places and introduce myself and get friendly treatment. And I love the public transport here. Canberra public transport -- well, it shouldn't even be called PUBLIC, becuase there's nothing public about it -- sucks big ones. I love being able to jump on and off trams to get to and fro and not having to wait long for trains. In fact I'm sitting here because my next point of call is over to Chez Sills Bend (II), where Miss Lucy Tartan is shortly getting home from work and preparing to meet me at the station. HOORAY!

Yesterday I got off the plane and had to wait in a huuuugge looooooong line for a taxi, because as GoAwayPlease wrote in my comments a few days ago, Tullamarine is mad, thanks to the Grand Pricks. Still, I managed to get one and still arrive at Fluffy's house by 11am, which I'm sure was an estimate she'd scoffed at when I'd sent it too her.

Fluffy is lovely, of course she is. And so is Jelly, who was taking a studybreak when I arrived. Their house is in a classic Melbourne streetscape, and there was a smell of ripe figs in the air as I got out of the taxi, from Fluffy's fruit-laden tree, a nice smell that if I ever smell it again, will evoke Melbourne.

We went to the NGV and saw a great little exhibition called Picture to Print, which displays original drawings, paintings and even prints next to their steel-engraved reproductions.

There were lots of things to admire, and even to hoot over, and we did lots of hooting, but I think my favorite was the Knowing Goat, who is in this image by Boucher:



The Knowing Goat doesn't reproduce well here; it's right down the front, looking out. If you get a chance to see it for yourself, check out the eyes. That goat has seen things. Maybe saucy things. It wants to tell you all about them but that stupid frame is in the way. The fact that the knowing eyes haven't been lost between picture and print just shows that they're an integral part of that picture; there's a lot of writing about The Gaze in art, whether it be male or female, looking out or looking in, but what about when it's an animal gaze? Any discussion in the comments is most welcome!

After Fluffy dropped me at my luxurious quarters (I'm not kidding, I'm using a friend's Hawthorn flat, and it's very comfortable), I sorted out my gear then hopped a train back into town and wallowed in such great places as Sticky Comics, down below Flinders St Station, and all the great little shops in the laneways around there. I'm not much of a shopper, but it's nice to have the time to look. I bought a stack of zines, but that's about it. Today I've been hanging around Fitzroy, looking at prints and feeling up paper samples. Such fun.

I could do with a little less heat, though, Melbourne. We're promised a change tonight, and it would be most welcome. Bring on some miserable weather! Go on, I dare you. Oh -- and RRR is teh bomb. I've been listening to it ever since Fluffy's car radio showed me where it is on the dial.

Stay tuned.