Miss Your Forms From the Trace of Fairyism

This was a sign seen at the Beijing Airport, according to Steven Skaggs, who has a piece in the latest edition of Letter Arts Review. (The sign presumably was a little more clear in Chinese.) Although it’s hard to tell exactly what it means to Chinese travellers returning to the big city, for Skaggs, it’s a call to reject the superficial and pretty in Western calligraphy. The exuberant happy colors. The flourishes and hands that bear no relation to the content. The effete. Trite sentiment. Calligraphy as commodity.

Having been following the sudden intensification of the political landscape in the US, I can’t say I’m finding this call to darkness all that unappealing. I am moved by powerful art, which calligraphy can be, when it’s not concerning itself with writing out Desiderata or “I am not there, I do not sleep.” I wish I had the time and the skill to devote myself to a massive piece that would somehow make some kind of difference in this campaign. Because, no offense to 8-year-old girls, fairyism isn’t going to cut it. This needs to be more of the kind of thing I spend my time doing… I was pleased to see Skaggs including, in his searing call to authenticity, a request that people write their own stuff, not just quote the now hackneyed voices of others.

Optique

A course description which came in a flyer today has me intrigued:

Halloween Optique. An optique is a wondrous, seemingly flat object that expands to reveal layer upon layer of scenes containing little surprises. Inspired by two antiques in his collection that date to the 1700s, [the instructor] has built optiques that have made their way into very prestigious collections. In this class, he’ll show you how to create a Halloween version.

I’m not intrigued enough to take the course, which is being taught at this Berkeley chichi writing and crafts store called Castle in the Air (their website is all Flash-based, about what you’d expect from this place), but would someday like to see one of these artifacts. Searching on the term brings up lots of links to antiquarian print dealers. Here’s a fuller description from one of these:

Vues d’optiques were hand-colored etchings and engravings intended to be viewed through a convex lens. The devices, known variously as zograscopes, optiques, optical machines and peepshows, were an optical entertainment of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The form emerged in 1740, and engravings were published mainly in London, Paris and Augsburg for roughly the next 100 years, until better stereoscopic technology supplanted it. Vues d’optiques were rendered in high-key color and dramatic linear perspective, which enhanced the illusion of three-dimensionality when viewed through the lens. According to the Getty Research Institute, street performers would set up viewing boxes with a series of prints giving a pictorial tour of famous landmarks, dramatic events and foreign lands. Some vues d’optique also had parts of the scenes cut out and the openings backed with translucent papers so that when the print was backlit, it appeared as an illuminated night scene. They most commonly depicted landmarks in large European cities or the Holy Land.

A Bit More About Books and Binding

A bit more about the bookbinding course we took yesterday… Dominic Riley’s workshop is in the Lake District, not too far from where William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived for a while. Dominic was asked by the Wordsworth Trust to restore some of his notebooks. Wordsworth was editor of the local paper and had access to all kinds of machinery for binding, but after taking them apart, it was clear that the notebooks had been made at home: they were rough-cut, had no formal backing, and didn’t need a press. They were super-sturdy, though: they open flat and can take a lot of pounding in the constant drizzle. The Ideal Sketchbook.

Who knows if these books were made by Dorothy on their kitchen table? Dominic suspects they were: in his words, “Wordsworth didn’t seem to do much.” He and Dorothy walked, though. (The results of one of these walks was a poem called the Leech Gatherer, about which Seamus Heaney has much to say, and which has put me in a slightly more charitable frame of mind toward the Lake District Luminary, but I’m still betting he wasn’t sewing signatures on tapes at the kitchen table.)

Running between the I-80 traffic and the wedding I found in the bottom of a drawer the first sewn book I ever made, sometime in the early 1990s in Cambridge, Mass. I took it with us to the wedding and used it to record blessings offered, at the request of the now newlyweds. I filled it. I can’t imagine a better use for this book…

Take Me Out To The Wedding

Back just now from Karen and Chris’s wedding, a wonderful event ending a long day — Pica’s birthday — which we celebrated by going to San Francisco to take a course at the San Francisco Center for the Book on making the ideal sketchbook (patterned after a creation of Dorothy Wordsworth) taught by master bookbinder Dominic Riley. The drive back from SF took longer than usual because we got stuck in traffic from the Giants’ game but that was in keeping with there turning out to be a baseball motif in the wedding, the ceremony ending with a chorus of “Take me out to the ballgame”.

Congratulations, Chris and Karen!

Discovery of Local Sketchbloggers!

I ran into Pete Scully at lunch. We sketched together a while ago during one of the sketchcrawls, and he said he’d recently started a website. (He produced a card, a must for bloggers; I think we’ve run out.) It’s astonishingly good. He mentioned he’d participated in the How to Save the World sketchbook project, and he also mentioned Blue Bicicletta.

It is a huge deal to discover that people are sketching daily and blogging about it not five miles from where I type this. I feel some of the initial excitement such as finding Brazilian Davis-based blogger Fernanda some five years ago. She now has another blog, as I do.

Sketching to Save the World

I signed up for the Sketchbook Project and received, some months ago, a tiny Moleskine notebook with 64 pages to fill on how to save the world. The paper’s fantastic for ink, but I didn’t want to do ink, I wanted to add watercolor, and it was a mess. A MESS. The paper shrivelled up and I lost my enthusiasm for the project.

Then I received the most fantastic paper in the mail: Arches Text Wove. I had ordered a bunch of it for calligraphy — it has a soft tooth and holds a line really well — but I decided to gut the Moleskine and switch in a small accordion-fold text-wove instead. I did this a week ago and got the thing finished and in the mail by the second, extended deadline. Hundreds of these sketchbooks are going to be on display in Atlanta as of August 22. Wish I could go and see them all, but oh well.

Speaking of Saving the World, Ron and Joe have started a fantastic project. Hope it’s wildly successful, guys!!

Out Geary Street

I took the day off and went on a expedition to San Francisco today, heading down by train and then taking the 38 Geary bus to the Outer Richmond district whereupon I walked up to the Legion of Honor museum. I don’t think I’ve been to that art museum in 35 years or so. And they gave me two dollars off admission since I took the bus.

The main exhibition was a show of four women impressionists: Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Bracquemond, and Mary Cassatt. I particularly liked Morisot’s work. Also at the museum was a small show of Israeli antiquities, including a couple of Dead Sea Scroll fragments and some 5000 year old pottery.

It’s a very pleasant trip to make, an outing to San Francisco for a one-day vacation. I should do it more often.

Fly, Julia, Soar

Her name was Julia. I remembered. I doubt this will be the last tribute I make to her, either.

Letter to a Former Classmate with Down's Syndrome

We sit on chairs
two feet tall, you and I:
pencils in hand
the dust of Castille
sloshed round by
Maria’s swift mop—
Tracing books ready.

Patterns. Sir Alfred’s.

They are lines to worlds
galaxies
words
and, you and I,
we trace them.

My line wobbles but
I clench my fist round
my pencil and,
readysetgo, follow the lines.

Your almond eyes
wander, yet focused, and your
staff
follows unscripted calls,
out of order, explores,
it’s Breaking the
Rules.

A new dance.

Be kind, Teacher said.
Your name is now lost.
But if I could return,
dear friend, and be not
just kind
but
learn
from your uncharted brain
hows and whys of
breaking the rules:
fortysomething years on,

the universe
might hold just a little
more sense.

Confessions of an Art Supply Junkie

We’ve been keeping a fairly close eye on what we’ve been spending in 2008 in an effort to understand where all the money goes, what should (and can) be changed, and what we really need to live on. No full answers to those questions yet, but Numenius compiled a breakdown the other night.

What I spend on art materials is daunting. Do they get used right away? No. Most of them are filling nooks and crannies and the books are stacked by the bed and it’s all a bit frightening.

Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark has a wonderful post today on the art of economizing on art materials. First step, for me, is to organize what I have, see what I still want, and find a good home for stuff I don’t. And, proud of myself, I didn’t go into an art store in Berkeley over the weekend. This is another easy thing to do: avoid the temptation in the first place…