Apologies for the shameful lack of blogging as of late. I’m finishing up various things, and starting various other things, and rushing around and such, as one does in fall. Having spent a sweltering summer without air conditioning I am really appreciating fall this year. Leaves! Sweaters! Squash-based dessert items!

SO, to sum up: this happened:

Which is the summer Brain Washing From Phone Towers publication Milky Seas. All about the wonders of bioluminescent bacteria. 100 copies in silkscreen and letterpress went out recently, if you received a copy I hope you enjoyed it. They glow in the dark!

I learned to silkscreen this summer, which is still exciting and new. I’ve been doing so at the friendly and convenient Shoestring Press on Classon Ave in Crown Heights. They are lovely people. I have been messing around with various patterns and colors, trying to get a handle on what to do next :

I am, miraculously, almost completely done with binding bird books. The deluxe editions of the Field Guide to Extinct Birds are now available:

which include a set of hand colored additional bird prints for your enjoyment and informative benefit.

And finally, I am looking forward to starting the fall pamphlet this year. I can’t tell you what it’s about, but I can tell you that it involves FIRE.

And that’s my whirlwind report from the last two months. I’ll make more of an effort to keep up in the future.

Just in time for Labor Day, I’m in the last throes of a new summer pamphlet: Milky Seas, an investigation of the unseen and the luminescent.

I’ll be setting the type and printing some of last images this week, and these should be in the mail to subscribers by the end of the month. Tip for subscribers: read this one under strong light, then turn off the lights and read again.

I’m not sweating today. It was the first day of class at Pratt. There’s a scant number of days left in August. I’m fairly certain this means one thing: fall is around the corner.

Which I am thoroughly relieved to hear. There’s two things coming up in September that I’m excited about that I’d like to mention:

ONE: I’m teaching a workshop next month in Connecticut. Come one, come all! It’s called Experimental Letterpress Posters. It’s happening over three Sundays starting September 27th, and it’s at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk. Register Here. We’ll be using wood type and pressure printing techniques in as many different combinations as we can fit. Spontaneity, atmosphere, layering of textures and imagery, check.

TWO: I squeaked into the upcoming Renegade Craft Fair here in Brooklyn. Come say hello while I sling prints, zines, and assorted printed materials September 12 and 13 at the Brooklyn Expo Center in Greenpoint. That might as well be tomorrow! I better get ready….

I made a brief return to Governor’s Island this month, for LMCC and Creative Capital’s Artists Summer Institute, which takes a motley group of assorted artists, performers, writers, musicians, and inundates them with information on finances, strategic planning, marketing, communicating, and otherwise how to work more professionally. I’ve been to a variety of professional development workshops in a past life as an arts administrator, but this was far and away the best, and only partly to do with the fact that I was there to professionally develop myself, and not a malfunctioning institution. Mostly this was due to the really high quality of the program: great speakers giving actual useful information; interesting presentations; useful feedback; interesting fellow participants who were are truly supportive and excited to be there.

And did I mention it was free? Free as a bird, the whole shebang. I entered a lottery to get in, and for the first time in my life I won. Me! And it was perfect timing. They sent us off after five days with a mountain of new skills, homework, workbooks, and a new social circle to bounce ideas off of. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

And so now you’ll be happy to know that I’m set to take on the world. Huzzah!

But what am I making, you ask? Enough with this business talk. I have started printing a summer zine, the details of which will remain a secret for the moment. I can tell you that there will be fish, and other living things, and glowing things, and text, and actual pages, that you turn. I think it will turn out nice, fingers crossed. Pictures soon. In the meantime, I am anxiously awaiting the day when I will finally stop sweating. Hope you are all staying cool.

Went to NYPL on Friday as a post-birthday treat with the glorious Roni Gross, Jessica Lagunas, and Asuka Ohsawa. We saw several great books, but the star of the day was undoubtedly Romano Hanni’s Typo Bilder Buch, which we were all immediately smitten with.

Amazing, right?

It’s summer, which means a lot of sitting in front of fans, thinking about moving, and thirty minute rain. My cat Jasper needs a thunder buddy. (You can find him under my bed, if you’re interested). I’m not running so much this summer, due to a lack of desire and a sore hamstring. I am making less pie. I am learning new things.

I printed this yesterday: Silkscreen, not letterpress. I need to practice a bit.

I visited the Giglio, looked at the small horses, and wondered why a four foot rasta banana needs to exist.

I’ve made new friends.

Bookbinding and such continues apace. I’m figuring out the deluxe edition. I’m planning new things. I’m sure I’ll have more to report come the fall. In the meantime, here’s to moving on.

If you’re planning on going to Bushwick next weekend, come say hello to me, slinging my pamphlets at Saturday: Lavinia Roberts invited me to hang out and distribute letterpress-based information that day, in the company of some of her fantastical masks, and the amazing zines of two other publishers, GAMBA Zine and Basement Babes. I think it’s pretty lovely of her to have invited me.  Here’s the details:

Bushwick Open Studios Weekend
Saturday, June 6th, 2015
12:00 to 3:00

A Personification: Masked/Unmaked is an exhibition of masks exploring transformation, identity, and our relationship to nature. The work will be displayed for the month of June at Fairweather Bushwick.

274 Wyckoff Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
http://fairweatherbushwick.com/

Live Music and Special Drinks will be offered at the Opening!

More information here. You can learn more about Lavinia and her masks here: http://laviniaroberts.com

In no apparent order:

Tugboats, and other ships that sail.

Signs, and other words in public.

Greenhouses.

Mammals.

Dogs.

Bacteria.

Spring is here my friends. I had a fantastic time at my first Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair. Books were ogled, read, flipped through, manhandled. People liked my field guide. I talked about myself without too much difficulty.  It was a good day. The Field Guide to Extinct Birds, standard edition, is officially available, by the way. Five whole copies are bound, with more on the way. Contact me if you are interested in having a copy.

I spoke about the WONDER and the JOY of Letterpress at the Strand last Thursday. Thank you to Jessica C. White and Kseniya Thomas, the founders and leading light of the Ladies of Letterpress for inviting me to join them, along with the lovely Gina Houseman of Papersheep Design on a panel in honor of the publication of their new book:

WHICH IS AMAZING and you should all get a copy now. Really.

But the best thing about spring is undoubtedly New Spring Informational Pamphlets:

The Spring 2015 Brain Washing From Phone Towers Informational Pamphlet is done, and copies are going out in the mail to subscribers, strangers, and friends right now as we speak. You should be receiving your copy shortly, if you haven’t already. The Spring edition concerns the history of cryptography, and asks the following questions: How do we solve the problem of communication at a distance? What is the best way to communicate secrets? Has the government always been reading our messages? What kinds of things do we substitute in place of language in order to keep things private? And other related issues, in easily portable paper form. I promise no one will eavesdrop on you while you read it.

I’ll be at the Brooklyn Zine Fest this Saturday, April 25th at the Brooklyn Historical Society in Brooklyn Heights, with pamphlets in hand and subscription forms at the ready, as well as a few other small-scale productions. Come say hello!

Bird books are being bound, new pamphlets are in the making, and the snow is melting, leaving lovely little piles of formerly frozen trash everywhere. I can run without breaking something. Things are looking up.

Exciting events are in the making. Here’s the spine of one of the books I’ll be taking with me to the Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair. Isn’t it straight? On April 11th the Field Guide to Extinct Birds will be making its public debut; I have not yet reached the panic stage. The fair will be held here: St. Vincent Ferrer parochial school on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 65th Street, from 8am to 4pm on Saturday, April 11. I’ll be there alongside friends like Barbara Henry, Nancy Loeber, Ana Cordeiro, and many others.

I’ve been binding in the generous studios of Small Editions, right on the waterfront. You should visit them when you have a moment, I think it will be lovely there this spring. Corina Reynolds and Kimberly McClure make wonderful books for artists and have a small gallery in their studio.

I’ve been looking forward to the Brooklyn Zine Fest this year; Saturday, April 25th & Sunday, April 26th, 2015 at Brooklyn Historical Society in Brooklyn Heights. I’ll be there Saturday only, with pamphlets in hand. The zine fest-ers have also organized a zine library at the Brooklyn Museum this year; come browse the pop-up zine library in the entrance pavilion at the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday, March 26th from 7pm to 9:30pm. The library is happening in conjunction with the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time, and is part of their one-night Art off the Wall party, featuring a DJ, bar, extended gallery hours, and other special events. Chitra did some fantastic Hindu mythological-comic book-type zines at one point, just before she was a resident at ye-olde Center for Book Arts. 

AND the new pamphlets are officially on press. More information soon. Now go outside!

I HAVE FINISHED PRINTING MY NEW BOOK. Folks, I can’t believe it.

I have set and distributed and set and distributed more times than I can count, but here’s the last run:

Which means only one thing: time to start binding. Here’s some signatures pressing, in the improvised studio otherwise known as a shelf in my extra room:

I’m sure it will work just fine. Once everything is folded and collated, it will be time for some spine lining. I plan on using a cast iron pan as a weight. Wish me luck!

Everything is coated in ice, I haven’t run regularly for weeks, there’s always more snow in the forecast, and I have a serious issue with that groundhog.

And why haven’t I been blogging? Too busy furiously setting type. And distributing. And setting. And distributing. Repeat. Repeat again.

The end is nigh. More soon.