Oliver Sacks is on the landline, curly cord phone, plaid short sleeve button down shirt unbuttoned a bit. In the background, a big yellow sign that says NO! The caption: “I tacked up a sign in my house on City Island reminding myself to say no to invitations so I could preserve writing time.” (The page is from Oliver Sacks' book On The Move, shared by Austin Kleon in 5 things that work for me when I’m on a deadline.)
I’ve been feeling in “NO!” mode too. Adam and I have spent the last two months figuring out where and how to live next, as we shift back into more “regular life” after our 2,000+ mile PCT hike and long travel sabbatical. It says “Your day is clear” on the calendar most days. No meetings, nothing at any particular time. Looking out at life ahead too: Compared to a usual summer, we don’t have big plans. Not tabling with artist publications. Not applying to fairs or festivals. (Ok, besides Short Run in November, which has applications open until July 31 — small press friends, it’s awesome!) Not organizing events, or even working towards any publications with launches on the horizon. Not even the usual newsletter-ing energy?! And everything in the context of many-bad-things-happening (also NO!), and keeping-on taking action towards building positive futures.
At first I felt a little weird about finding myself in NO!-times. But then I realized that figuring out where to live — especially since we’ve been considering making a big shift — is a massive creative project of it’s own. That’s needed most of my attention, so be it!
This month Adam and I launched the new version of Spectrolite that we were working on all winter. PDF mode is the big thing that’s new. It makes color separation on PDFs a lot faster, and you can choose different colors and styles for the text/vector elements vs the image elements, which is useful for all sorts of reasons. I’m so happy (and SO impressed with how good at math and writing code Adam is… this was not easy)! And shout out to Bear Bear, Lucky Risograph, Taxonomy Press, Pocket Press, Inga Bookshop, Issue Press, Living Room Press, saylem m celeste, Pamflett, Bergen Art Book Fair and other riso pals for all the help with testing this one. Hooray for long-lived projects. This is something we’ve wanted to do since we started making the app in 2020, and now it exists!
I’ll write another newsletter about it later for more ideas on how to use it.
Also: That will be the first post of a new section of the newsletter that features more in depth posts about using Spectrolite! If you don’t use Spectrolite… you can turn those emails off with the toggle on this page.
In our liminal time of figuring-out-where-to-live, I’ve been working on things you can do without a studio with all the equipment and machines and tools. Writing in notebooks: lots of morning pages. Amy and I have been slowly working towards the next All Well patterns – a kids version of our classic Box Top, and kids play pants + shorts. I’ve been missing the hands-on sewing and sampling, but there’s lots to do on the computer. I’m writing bits and pieces of many things, dipping in and out of projects. Quite a few drafts of future newsletters moving along in parallel, brain too scattered to sit down to finish any of them quite yet, but (mostly pleasantly, sometimes chaotic feeling-ly) jumping around making progress. We hosted some dear artist friends for a few days of residency and time together. Tending an altar, adding seed pods and flowers to the shelf of natural wonders, baking loaves of sourdough bread. Returning to cooking.
Noticing that energy of being on the precipice of a very prolific bit of time. Noticing the “shoulds” and giving myself space to figure things out: spending a lot of time recharging after the big travels, resting and reading books and taking walks.
I made a bookmark for the Book’o’Mark publication by Pseudo Press, which just launched at Miss Read in Berlin. It’s a book made entirely of bookmarks, all of which are perforated to tear out and use! I’m extremely delighted by the concept and can’t wait for our contributor copies to make their way through international post so I can savor them all. What a perfect use of paper and ink.
Making the design for the book mark was also a funny reminder of the comparative difficulty of making something without the usual tools, setup, etc. The bookmark is 23 x 6 cm, and I’m designing digitally – but I still need to know: how big is that in real life? And of course I want make some initial sketches to scale on paper. But I didn’t have a ruler to figure it out, and so then I needed to wait a few days to borrow one from a friend. The process made me reflect on the years before a print studio and dedicated sewing space: Taking it easier on my past self. So many expectations of being able to execute big visions right off the bat, without the tools and skills and setup and experience.
It’s so much easier with a proper collection of tools and setup: Rulers, yes. Paint, ink, markers, post its, tape, glue, sketchbooks, scrap paper. My big computer screen lets me think completely differently than when I’m on a laptop. Using the iPad is so much faster for sketching than pencil sketch → pen and ink → camera photo → crop and edit, which is the process we used for the booklet we made for Bergen Art Book Fair while we were traveling. I also really appreciate having space+time to keep projects out in place, instead of being on the dining table or an all purpose desk, and packed away after each work session. (Especially relevant for the sewing machine; even pre-studio space, once I started leaving it out in the living room instead of putting it away in the closet after each session, I sewed so much more.)
I’m looking forward to setting the studio up again, getting our things out of storage, making house again. It’s such a creative thing too, to be getting life in order after a move: unpacking and arranging, figuring out the flow of where things go, figuring out what projects to tackle and when, learning a new place, meeting new people. We’re out of print of many of our most popular publications, so there will be lots of reprinting to start with, for working out the setup and organization of the print studio. And I’m excited to make new books and prints. And so excited to sew again! And carve wooden spoons, and marble fabric and paper, and, and, and.
Via Subtle Maneuvers: instead of saying "I have to do X today," I say "it would be nice to have X today." So instead of "I have to do laundry today," I think "It would be nice to have fresh clean clothes today." It turns mundane, dreadful, and/or unavoidable demands of life into pleasant perks l'm more motivated to obtain.
Looking
There are lots of good danger stairs at Frida and Diego’s studio. This slideshow montage House: After Five Years of Living of vignettes of Ray and Charles Eames’ case study home. 10 low budget home upgrades with a big visual payoff. Some good process shots further down the page for Ingo Maurer’s Floatation lamp.
Some ANEMONE work is included in Bainbridge Island Museum of Art’s summer exhibition, Back to Nature, which runs through September 21st. Riding the ferry to Bainbridge is a classic Seattle summer thing; $10.25 round trip & BIMA has free admission.
Swan Meadow’s god bless the Pansies!
Reading
Visiting Lauria and Johanna at Pseudo Press + Colorama in Berlin in March was glorious! Since then I have been greatly enjoying the Pseudo Newsletter which is just brilliant. (If you get the Book’o’Mark, I highly recommend adding the entire set of the print versions of the newsletters to your order too. Also, heads up that shipping shows just Germany options until you put in your address.)
Currently reading several books on paleontology and geology, lots of cookbooks, lots of non-fiction. Last summer I really got a lot from reading Less is More by Jason Hickel. The Raven’s series on what would degrowth look like in practice has me excited to follow that book up with Kohei Saito’s Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto. And this Lux Magazine review has me excited to read What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis by Malcolm Harris.
Also re: climate, did you know that fossil fuel billionaires are bankrolling the anti-trans movement? An independent analysis of 45 right-wing groups advocating against trans rights found that 80% have received donations from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. Vivian Taylor, a climate policy expert who co-authored the analysis, said the fossil fuel industry has a real interest in funding panic over transgender people: It distracts the public from "the very real and ongoing risks that climate change creates.”
Eating
Last month we had a nine person dumpling extravaganza at Dough Zone with friends in town after Seattle Art Book Fair. It was the first time I’d been in a while, and it rekindled my desire to eat Persian cucumbers spiral cut with sweet and sour chili at home. I think that somewhere between this Din Tai Fung sucumber salad copycat and Kat Lieu's Easy Asian Cucumber Salad Recipe might do it to try making a version.
Other recipes on my mind: Trying to recreate the BCD brand of quick Sundubu at home with just a packet of soft tofu and this Korean Sundubu Paste. And this french lentil salad looks excellent.
More later. Sending care,
Amelia
P.S. — Serious question: does anyone have a recommendation for a place to buy cowboy boots? When I moved to Seattle, I left my thrift store tooled-black-leather-and-snakeskin tonkin’ boots in Nashville (where they belonged) but I’ve come to realize that I need a pair in my life again.