pinboards (for remembering things exist, and visual planning)
PLUS: layout department (windows!), new old collator, sewing, links, recs, pickles...
I make little cards for just about any idea, and pin them up on a board. It could be a drawing of a garment I want to sew, a sketch of a book/zine cover I might want to publish. A phrase, or a squiggle of ink, a pairing of colors, or really any little snippet of desire. I move things around on the boards, group them, stack them, arrange them by theme or order them by time. I simply look at them to remind myself they exist, too. (If you’re an “out of sight, out of mind” and “if I can’t see it it doesn’t exist” person as well, highly recommend trying out a pinboard to see if you like it.)
After we moved to the mountains, in the midst of all the big changes and furniture arranging, it took me many months to put them up again. I could really feel their absence. My brain just felt more sluggish, with one of my long-time external systems missing. Finally, I finished the project of covering some thrifted cork boards with cotton drop cloth fabric, and getting them up on the walls of my studio/office. (Somehow the white/cream background helps me visually, versus the cork.)
It’s perhaps totally over the top, but I currently have three pinboards in my office/studio, split into topic areas. 1. general creative practice 2. sewing (personal and All Well), and 3. inspiration and collage bits. (And there’s a fourth board in the printshop with all the riso projects, haha.)
Here’s a (blurry) glimpse at the personal project board last week. Lots of fragments of ideas there, a Long Calendar with big things blocked off, many project ideas.
The “inspiration” board is mostly found objects: An image of a moss-covered snapping turtle cut out of a magazine, an enamel pin from my mom that says “BE REALISTIC DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE”, a polaroid of a lake, foam mesh that once protected a pear, a dried leaf, a necklace, scraps of fabric, a zine, some art prints, a business card, drawings from Chaos Pictionary, a Georgia O’Keeffe postcard...
The sewing board currently has the facings patterns for a tank top (more below), a cardboard kumihimo loom with 8” of cording sticking out of it, a ziplock bag containing the grease-stained pastry bag I brought back from Copenhagen a year ago that I want to use as a pattern reference (gross? I prefer dedicated to my craft!). There are a bunch of little drawings of things I want to sew… window seat cushion covers, Clyde Trench and Vest, Helene Jeans, Andy Trousers, Bel Skirt, ironing board cover, kindle cover, cover for electronics cords, bolster pillow cover…
In parallel with all this work on paper (pinboards, plus morning pages, bullet journal, sketchbooks, notebooks) I’ve been enjoying having structured weekly/monthly notes in Obsidian. I’m using templates and the Periodic Notes plugin to fill in checklists and pre-fill stuff I want to do, review, or think about repeatedly.
Collator: Thanks to Robin Sloan, who found it on an auction and gave us the heads up, we added a used 10-bin collator to the printshop! With it, collating will take about 1/10th the amount of time, and much less repetitive motion — imagine me picking up sheets of paper for 10 hours, versus me moving stacks of paper into bins and keeping an eye on the machine for 1 hour. (This is an idealized world with no jams or feed errors, of course.)
I’m already thinking of how we can make bigger editions, and potentially run remote residencies where we print for other artists again. And we’d been holding off on doing the reprints of our out-of-stock publications until we got a collator… I’m excited!
Layout Department: Adam and I have been working on many things in Layout Department, our new app for making print layouts for books and zines. And now you can use it on Windows!
We are also offering the option to upgrade to a paid license, which adds even more features, plus the warm feeling of supporting independent, artist-made software. :) I’m excited about playing with all the new fun and weird layouts we refer to as hot dogs, long dogs, and alligators. Like look at this 4x2 layout, perfect for some long comic strips…
And just look at the cute icons for the creep direction!! (Also, we added a “both” option for adjusting the creep, which Spectrolite didn’t have before. More here.)
Spectrolite: has new and improved halftones! More tones of grey, less compression in the darkest and lightest areas of an image, and it’s faster, to boot. Thanks to Martin of Risofort for the inspiration!
And from Layout Department, you can click a button to send imposed books/zines directly over Spectrolite — and Spectrolite knows how to handle the printer’s marks that you make in Layout Department for color separation.
Also…. if you are wondering, does this Windows stuff move us one step closer to Spectrolite for Windows? It does! With the big caveat that it’s closer but still not something we’re actively working on, so no promises on if/when. Even though Layout Department is getting très officiel with a paid version, we are keeping Spectrolite as a fun art project that we make available for free — and part of it being fun for us means not making long term schedules or commitments about timing/features. (Here’s the form to be notified if we make a non-Mac version of Spectrolite or other ANEMONE apps!)
Recently I converted a thrifted t-shirt into a boxy cropped tank top; making armhole facings from fabric left over when I cut off the sleeves and bottom of the shirt. Wore it to yoga this week and it felt great.
I also wrote about sewing custom covers for my electric heating pads, another hack-y project that’s been very satisfying to use.
SOUTHEAST RISO CATALOG: Dyanne Horgan of Ripe Ink Press in Atlanta is organizing a Southeast USA regional catalog (a companion to the West Coast and Midwest versions). → Submit yourself or other riso-related things you think are cool.
ART BOOK FAIRS DOT COM: New website rounding up fairs and fests worldwide, plus a weekly newsletter that includes reminders of application dates. Thanks, Space Type!
SOME LINKS: I don’t want to be influenced by this unholy robotic patois. / The Pit / Lynda Barry on Sagittarian Matters podcast / It seems counterintuitive, but a small tree, planted well, will outgrow and outlive the large tree poorly transplanted.
PICKLES: The Times Literary Supplement interviewed Ursula K. Le Guin in 2017, asking… If you could make a change to anything you’ve written over the years, what would it be? The response:
In The Dispossessed, I would mention the communal pickle barrels at street corners in the big towns, restocked by whoever in the community has made or kept more pickles than they need. I knew about the free pickles all along, but never could fit them into the book.
I’ve been enjoying cooking from the book The Japanese Art of Pickling and Fermenting by Yoko Nakazawa — beautiful photos, great cartoony illustrations of step by step for cutting and pickling, and very very good pickles. For a taste, this Guardian interview features three recipes from the book, including yuzu daikon amazu zuke which I loved. (And the pink radish pickles in the article were great too, and super easy — just cut the radishes in quarters, add 2-3% of sugar by weight, and a bit of vinegar, and refrigerate 3 days.) My next pickles to make: plum syrup (the “100 days later” heading made me think of SpongeBob) from frozen plums Adam gleaned last summer. And Alex’s mom’s onion-radish soy pickles, and which I think about at least once a week. Finally, I will be able to make my own stash.
Peace, communal pickles, and sending care —
Amelia