Winning entry in the sweet category: Nick’s Pecan Pie- Best Debut!

and Alex’s ham and cheese pie took the Savory category. Who needs air conditioning when you have pie?

—
QMAD, Queens Media Arts Development
www.qmad.org

In progress.

I’m an aunt! Surprise!

And I’m in this. (opening Wednesday) With a video! Surprise!

I’m working on limited edition pie propaganda this week, to commemorate the upcoming pie-bake-off-and-staff-going-away-party. Did you know they used to bake dwarves into pies?

Save the Date!

Please join me in saying good-bye to beloved Center for Book Arts staff members Corinna Zeltsman and Nick Crawford, who each have decided to flee to more fertile lands this summer!

On Sunday June 27^th I would like to host a Going Away Pie Bake-Off at my house in Brooklyn. Come say hello, goodbye, we’ll miss you dearly, enjoy some homemade pie goodness, along with complimentary beverages and ice cream, and vote for your favorite pie. Ribbons for prizes! Democracy in action! Free pie-related printed ephemera for all who attend!

Bakers, please contribute a pie! You can win prizes and glory!

Friends, please come and eat pie and say goodbye to Corinna and Nick!

Corinna and Nick, don’t leave! We’ll miss you!

Sunday, June 27^th, 4pm to ??? .

Hey Bakers! Embrace your competitive streak! If you’re interested in entering the bake-off let me know via email. You know you want to!

Lots of photos from a big show of letterpress work out in Denver:

http://designartartdesign.com/enter/?p=414

I printed a broadside this weekend.

And ate too much salt, and baked a pie. It’s hot and my cats are shedding like gangbusters. It’s summer!

*Also, Katie Degentesh (author of the above) and Willie Perdomo are reading at the Center for Book Arts on Wed. June 2nd. Free broadsides if you come!

Broadside printing in progress, first run.

Two things:

1. I finally saw the Whitney Biennial last night. Kate Gilmore reminds me of Feminist Hulk. I watched her piece with a baby who thought it was the funniest thing ever! Her mother was nervous because she wasn’t sure if her baby was supposed to be laughing or not.

2. I ran 13.1 miles this morning! Slowly. With other people. At mile 12 we passed a nice young woman who waved politely at two guys behind me. When we had passed her one of them turned to the other and asked, what, don’t we at least get a woo-hoo? Where’s the cheering?

I’m working on a broadside for poet Katie Degentesh, who’s reading on June 2 at the Center.

This is what she says about the poems she sent in for us to choose from:

This poem is from a forthcoming book-length project that has a working title
of Reasons to Have Sex. The poems’ titles are selections from the 238
answers listed in the “YSEX? Why Have Sex?” questionnaire, a scientific
document compiled by researchers after polling over 2,000 respondents on
their motivation for having sexual intercourse.

The poems themselves were then formed from internet search results, with
each search based on and containing phrases or words from the questions used for titles.

Since children can be said to be the reason all animals are equipped to have
sex, the poems themselves were further limited in that only search results
that were presented on the internet as children’s writing were used in the poems.

To be continued.

On Monday and Tuesday I moderated a panel called the Chapbook as Art Object, as part of the 2010 Festival of the Chapbook, at the CUNY Grad Center. The title of the panel was not my choice, and one of the questions I asked the panelists- (Jeremy Thompson, Autotypographer, and Roni Gross, proprietor, Zitouna press) was what they thought about it. My boss came up with the title, and I talked with Jeremy briefly about how I just don’t think that that artists themselves are all that interested in the object, in the end, even if they’re really invested in actually making objects, but that arts administrators are really really invested in the object, and that’s often what they are most comfortable interacting with.

Anyway, I did think that the title came right into the heart of this uncomfortable issue that often comes up with books, book arts, artists books, and the various communities that concern themselves with these things, which we talked about in terms of economics and price point on the first day, which inevitable became uncomfortable at the end, and in terms of distribution the second. What I liked about the discussion was the diversity of viewpoint; I get frustrated with conversations about books that talk about one approach/viewpoint, as if it’s the only option, or only rational/moral option. There’s so much of polemic around the distribution model and pricing of artists books which leads people into making rash statements about how books should always be cheap, or that handmade books are always precious, or that stapled xerox things are always less valuable, or letterpress is always beautiful.

Which is a load of rubbish, and I’m much more interested in finding out what someone who’s really interested in cheap, accessible, ephemeral modes of production has to say to someone who works with their hands, making limited-edition, finely printed work. Lots of things, actually, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Isn’t it much more interesting to find out how different people with different ideas can agree on things? That’s what I was hoping would happen, and it did, which was a relief.

And I think, in the same way, that it’s possible to make a handmade object that is part of a project that has many parts, an event that it commemorates  in some way, which is ephemeral, and all the documentation of the event, which people can see if they weren’t there, and  the images of the book that was made, and the images of the book in progress of being made, and perhaps a trade edition of the handmade limited edition that’s at a lower price point, and a video of materials relating to the original book and the event that’s freely available to anyone who’s interested,  in which case then I think arguing about the morality of pricing that handmade object as a handmade book art object (i.e, expensive for a book, but cheap for art) becomes sort of irrelevant. Doesn’t it?