reflections on the reading room and community altar
plus some digital-publication-making studio process
An announcement! The digital version of Notes on Artist Publishing is available, with three formats: e-reader (epub), PDF, and print-at-home PDF.
As a thanks for being here, use HELLO-NOTES for 20% off, through Monday 5/27 at 9AM pacific.
Some reflections on co-organizing and installing the Climate Emergency Reading Room & Community Altar at Seattle Art Book Fair, and some photos.
Adam, our project collaborator Alex Barsky and I kept saying to each other “People are reading in the reading room!” Visitors brought leaves, flowers, rocks, photos and other objects to the altar, filled out wishes for our collective future, read the publications, had conversations with friends and strangers, and found connections with exhibitors at the fair.
It felt very exciting to see people interacting with the installation after all the building and printing and organizing and work in the weeks before. I love that moment of event/installation organizing, where suddenly something that was just an idea and maybe some drawings and todo lists becomes a real-life thing that people are experiencing and enjoying. Thank you so much if you were a part of it.
Alex’s Chaekgeori 2 screen behind the altar was really one of the most monumental uses of riso printing I’ve seen. A masterpiece!
Alex wrote:
“A Chaekgeori is a Korean still-life painting style depicting bookshelves filled with literature, educational and artist materials, and various objects associated with knowledge and aesthetics. Chaekgeori were popular during the late Joseon Dynasty, reflecting a culture that valued and appreciated artists and scholars. I was initially drawn to Chaekgeori because I identify with the values they depict and I want to celebrate them. I've been using the format of Chaekgeori to consider what is important to me and the community that I'm a part of. Chaekgeori 2 is a way for me to express gratitude to the earth and dream about a collective future where humans live in harmony with nature.”
And Crescent Calimpong made a beautiful textile piece for the altar, A generative act / A project of connection around the dye pot, writing:
To me natural dyeing is a connection to place, a way of slowing down, of observing and tuning into the seasons. It is the antithesis to fast fashion and a throwaway culture. An acknowledgment that things take time to make, that quality is valued, and care should be given to those that create the things we wear and use. Naturally dyeing, for me, when done with community is a generative act of hope, a pathway towards something different, a window into something old that needs acknowledging and more discovery.
It felt like a lot of conversations were happening, a lot of reading was happening! People filled out cards with the prompt “share your wishes for our collective future” to place on the altar.
The publications had bookmarks paper-clipped in with information on the title, author, publisher. Many of of the publications were made by exhibitors, and those had the table numbers written down where people could find the publisher within the fair. Anecdotally (from the SABF volunteers who sat the reading room, and publishers we talked to) it sounded like the bookmarks worked! People browsing the reading room found publishers to talk to and publications to go buy in the fair at large.
The ANEMONE and Zine Hug tables at the fair were right in front of the stage, so we could tend the altar and spend time in the reading room, and that gave us a good view of the action. The stage at Washington Hall is pretty small, as far as stages go: there were five to ten people up there reading, most of the time. Our guess is that maybe 1,000 of the 2,800 fair visitors came through the stage.
I’m looking forward to installing the climate reading room and community altar again in different forms and formats in the future. (And Elizabeth Case is interested in organizing installations in Europe.) But first, time for some rest and hiking this summer!
We made a new page to start listing our publications on the ANEMONE website. So far it looks quite rudimentary, but you gotta start somewhere, and we’ve been needing something more sturdy, archival, and detailed than just an online shop. I really feel the urge to do a design pass on our various websites (and Spectrolite) with some fun fonts and layouts and color palettes, and mess around with coding. But it’s not the right time!
We set up Gumroad and made the digital version of Notes on Artist Publishing available, with three digital formats: e-reader (epub), PDF, and print-at-home PDF. I figured out how to use Calibre to add images and metadata to the epub file. We also started planning some reprinting for the fall. Since we have been traveling this past year, we have run out of print of a lot of favorites, like Sensitive, Bike Rambles Around Seattle, and Riso Pacific Northwest. I think we’ll make some more publications available in digital form too, especially the out of print ones.
Adam and I are aiming to take the summer mostly off the computer, while we do more PCT hiking. Our plan is to try to hike the sections we skipped last summer due to snow or smoke/fire closures, and they include some of the most beautiful areas on the trail — I’m really excited. I have been daydreaming of a comic centered around the lives of pika, and think I might start drawing that as we hike in the alpine environments in the Sierra and the Cascades. I’m also going to be collecting more flower photos, for my in-process PCT Flower Journal that I started last summer. I’m hoping for more lichen related things from Adam, and there also might be something in the works involving cairns… and something else about California rivers. We’ll see!
Also, I’ll be at SF Art Book Fair in July, at least on Saturday. (Just to visit, not tabling!) If anyone wants to meet up at the fair and say hey, send me an email!
Just two riso / publishing related links: the Knust documentary is online, and Robert Baxter’s new newsletter is wonderful.
-Amelia (+ Adam says hello too!)
🌈