Suminagashi looks all topographic

Here's a box that commemorates the creation of a park on Flathead Lake.



Even though the grain didn't run in the right direction for my purposes, and the ink ran when the paper was pasted, I enjoyed working with blueprints as cover and liner paper for the box and the book that fits inside it. (I used Japanese suminagashi paper for elsewhere.)

Volunteer Park will be dedicated Sept. 9, 2010, in Lakeside, Montana: hurrah!

Here's how it looked just a couple of months before.

Some summer so far

One of the best reasons to attend Scripps College is the chance to go to camp, an all-class invitation to return to Claremont, teach and learn from other alumnae, or just hang at the pool. It's like going back to college—the friends! the stories and laughs! the late-night shenanigans!— only there's no homework and very few rules.

My freshman-year roommate and I taught a workshop at the Scripps Press, where we learned typography a couple of decades ago and set type designed by Mister Goudy himself. Mind you, the institution, almost as old as the college itself, has moved up some notches in the school's estimation, as evidenced by the increasing number of Vandercooks at students' disposal as well as the larger environs in a proper art building instead of the tiny space tucked off the library. The kids these days even have air-conditioning, especially welcome on our days of 100 degrees.

My computer's in the shop so I'm posting this at the neighborhood bank and will post pictures when I get my lifeline back.

In the meantime, come see me at Em Space while I run gallery hours from noon to 4 p.m. tomorrow (that's Sunday, July 25). The easiest way to get there is to drive south on Water past OMSI, take a left at the first stop sign, then go straight (yes "straight") at the next. Ivon is the second street and if you turn left there's usually some parking on the block in front of the studio. If not, try the west side of the street.

The clamshell boxes keep coming

I dug out some of the older, untested papers in my collection for this round of clamshells. You never know: Sometimes moderno papers with raised patterns such as the above and the red-and-black lacquerlike one that comes later in this post pose too great a risk; you wonder how the paper and its texture will ride over corners and bind to bookboard.

Turns out, no problem! Like the stiff Rohhalbleinen cloth, these papers took paste like it was massage oil and complied with the whole process. Now I wish I had more.


I gave this box at a recent wedding deep in the Oregon Cascades. Congratulations Miles and Maia!




The client liked this box so much, he asked for another.


Here it is. It's 13 by 11 inches and 4 inches deep, about the biggest I can make without too much anxiety. Any larger and it's a mad rush to put it all together before the paste dries.