Rivers and flowers and strawberries
And lots of links. Plus where to find our zines this summer.
Hello from ANEMONE, hello from me, Amelia. (Adam says hi too!)
Adam and I spent a lot of June outside: kayaking on the Twisp, Methow, and John Day Rivers, some very refreshing swimming in the Rogue, camping with family and friends. We spent a few days in Portland, where we got to see a bunch of risograph people at Secret Room, IPRC, and Outlet. I discovered Chirri & Chirra at Floating World, and got another book design book1 at Powell’s, and the book The Long Loaf at Nationale.
We picked strawberries at Sauvie Island and made the ones we didn’t eat right away into compote. We saw some strawberry stickers around town; Cielle told us they were by Jeremy Pettis, who once drew her portrait as a strawberry. Portland has a much better sticker scene than Seattle.
We just finished printing and binding Mundane Fantasy Issue 03. Swing by Volunteer park on Sunday July 17th 2-5pm to grab a copy at the issue release picnic, with melons and pickles!
Or you can order Issue 03 from our website and add any other zines you want. And if you want to come pick up at the park, you do not have to pay shipping. Just put the code IRL in, and I’ll bring your zines along that day!
Some of our zines (but not us) will be at Fantagraphics Hot Off the Press this Saturday: friends Tom and Jayme are bringing a selection of local small press publications to the Seattle Art Book Fair table. That’s July 9th, 5-9pm in Georgetown.
Open Editions is hosting a small press shop at Seattle Art Fair, and some of our zines will be there too, from July 21-24th.
I’m starting to work on pulling together a photo-based booklet for Photographic Center Northwest photo book and zine fair on July 24th — mark your calendar, it’s noon to 5pm on Capitol Hill (by where Cafe Presse used to be) and it’s free. We’ll be there at a table!
Also, Seattle friends: Elliott Bay has a big restock of most our zines out, and Left Bank has the Climate Emergency Reading Recs and Getting Started with Making Electronic Music. If you want to go by and have a look through!
If you want zines and aren’t in Seattle — summer shipping days for the online shop are: July 7, 15, 25 — shop.anemone.studio
I’ve spent a very large amount of time on the computer looking at words about sewing: Since we turned everything in at the beginning of January, Amy and I have been doing many week-or-two-long editing rounds on the All Well book, How to Sew Clothes. Edits to the manuscript, then back to the publisher, then back to us for the next part. (Corporate publishing works very linearly, essentially the waterfall methodology of product management.) We’re almost through the rounds of layout reviews, of all 208 pages in PDF with the text and photos and diagrams together.
The book comes out in early 2023, which is so far away but you can preorder it already if you want; here are some links to find it at Elliott Bay Books and Amazon. (Or if you ask your local bookstore they should now be able to get it for you.)
We reorganized the studio, and Adam put the free (frat boy trash pile) table legs on the free (neighbors moving out) tabletop, so now there’s a new standing height work table. It’s a lot easier to work with the 106-electric staplers, guillotine cutter, and light box. Trying out keeping the mini table (also from the neighbor move-out, pleasingly handmade) underneath, to pull out to be more space for swapping risograph drums, staging paper, or whatever else.
Adam took inventory and did some cool things with making a publication database in Airtable. And we we printed another round of copies Sensitive and Bike Rambles around Seattle because we ran out of those.
Also, we launched the Spectrolite How-To section with lots of tutorials on risograph printmaking and book/zine making.
Links
I’m processing the most recent flurry of extremely bad supreme court rulings, so here are a few links to things I’ve read about them. “Rather than responding to the right’s endless litany of moral panics, which sap attention and energy from the central problems facing many trans people, we need affirmative visions of a better future.”
And in better news, mostly, here are some more links to things you might like:
Artist interview with Yewon Kwon
An infinite-feeling scroll of art-photos by Dina Kelberman
Elizabeth Case’s notes on our Climate Emergency Reading Recs zine collaboration, her new climate science course’s garden-like website/syllabus, and personal organization systems
From No Bad Memories: Printmaking as Play and Mimeoprinting investigations into using risograph stencil paper and thermal label printers for screenprint-like printmaking
The Price of Slow Fashion by Grace Rother
I’m in the middle of this long-ish article: Against Conglomeration: Nonprofit Publishing and American Literature After 1980
I’ve decided it’s time to rewatch Uncertain and Prospect movies. Maybe you’d like them too. (If you watch Prospect, don’t watch the trailer — just go in without many/any visuals if you can.)
In Washington the website sayyescovidhometest.org lets you order up to 8 free tests per household, per month. It’s extremely easy and they (so far) arrive really quickly.
Write back and say hi, tell us what you’re up to, (if you want),
-Amelia
P.S. — Sending extra care your way.
Now I have the following titles on book design: Book Design by Douglas Martin, The Design of Books by Adrian Wilson, On Book Design by Richard Hendel, and Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann. They are all good, but also very reflective of who gets to publish books about book design. (Part of the same problem of who gets to publish books in general.)