More Bookmarks

I was in the mood to do some printing last night so I finished off the paper scraps I had from my last bookmark printing spree and made 2 new bookmarks to add to the series.

point of departure bookmarks

Because bookmarks are really there to remind you of where you left off.

hello. bookmark

Don't you think your book should welcome you back?

First Venture Into Mail Art

my second 'official' piece of mail art

On Wednesday I went to my first Correspondence Co-op meeting. This is a new group for mail artists and mail enthusiasts. The monthly meetings are filled with tasty treats, chatter and discussion of all things snail mail related. 

some mail art supplies brought to the meeting (not mine)

Growing up, I was always the nerd that loved writing to people and having pen pals, though it always seemed my pen pals were not quite as enthusiastic as I was and eventually we fell out of touch. I've always loved receiving mail but I never really gave it much thought until the book release for Good Mail Day was held at my job. The authors, Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Wheeler, are delightful people and the book is chock full information about what mail art is and great ideas to get you started making your own. 

some more mail art supplies at the meeting (also not mine)

I was ecstatic when Jennie said I could join the co-op. I love making things and having an outlet for my art. This is art I can make and immediately send out into the world. It can be thought out or quick and random. The possibilities seem limitless and, given that I'm a person who is interested in so many things, this is wonderful. 

two postcards made at the meeting by Annie Yu

Everyone at the meeting was nice and willing to share stories and information as well as supplies. Given that I only knew one or two people, I was rather timid and didn't do any making myself but instead photographed others' work and supplies (images above). Once I got home, I was so excited I began creating myself and this morning I sent out my second postcard (I'll be making more as soon as I find some time and some more addresses). Images of my first two pieces are below.

My first piece:

back    front

My second piece

Through the Looking Glass chessboard postcard

Fallen Apples

For the past few years, I've had an obsession with taking pictures of nature on the ground-- flowers in the cracks on side walks, items that wash up on the beach, etc. While I was at my husband's grandmother's house last summer I made a series of photographs of apples that had fallen from a tree in the yard. I just completed a small book of those images titled Fallen Apples. 

The covers are letterpress printed and the book is hand bound. The images are archival pigment prints on Moab Entrada. The images from the book are below.

Pages 1 and 2

Pages 3 and 4

Pages 5 and 6

Pages 7 and 8

Pages 9 and 10

Pages 11 and 12

Pages 13 and 14

Page 15

Letterpressed Bookmarks

Last night I grabbed a stack of paper out of my scrap paper box, cut it down to a decent bookmark size, raided the ornaments and wood type drawers at the San Francisco Center for the Book and set to work on a table top platen press. After 5 hours of printing I had made several hundred bookmarks; here are the results:

Androgynous bookmarks. I started with these fun, double sided bookmarks. They were inspired by boy/girl, his/hers earrings my sister-in-law made me a couple of winters ago.

Literal Bookmarks:

Next I decided to deconstruct the meaning of a bookmark. It's really just an object that holds your place in a book and reminds you of the page you were last reading. Bookmarks with pretty pictures or quotes distract you from actually reading a book. So I made these bookmarks with nothing extravagant. They're meant to mark your place in a book and then set aside so you can get to the task at hand: reading a book. 

All bookmarks are editioned on several colors of paper.

Books. Especially books at Green Apple Books

I have always been obsessed with books. I'm not really sure why. Regular paper books, artists' books, even digital books intrigue me. There is something so amazing about the written word, about the infinite number of ways words can be arranged. I have been in a reading slump ever since falling in love with Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and haven't found any other book that has been quite as good since, so, when I met up with a friend who mentioned she wanted to go on a book shopping spree and said she had never been to Green Apple Books, I jumped at the chance to help her. 

In case you have never been, or don't live in San Francisco, Green Apple is the type of bookstore that is described in stories: creaky wooden floors and crowded shelves overflowing with books. Being the book addicts that we are, my friend and I helped ourselves to a pile of books, went upstairs, sat on the floor and began the difficult task of choosing the books to buy with our limited budgets. 

I came home with:

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby. This is a collection of the first 14 months of Hornby's monthly column for The Believer. Hornby seems like a man addicted to book buying and reading and I got this partially to find someone to relate to and partially to make myself feel better about my own addiction. 

I loved The Professor and the Madman, a book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, and somehow Know-It-All, a book about a man trying to read every Encyclopedia Britannica, sounded like it would be amusing.

You're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover but this cover was just calling to me. From what could be gathered from the dust jacket, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a story told through words and photos (apparently all actual, found photos). As someone with a BFA in Photography and a story lover, I couldn't pass it up.

My side of the bed