Hi, friends of ANEMONE! First, I have two recommendations:
Get a subscription to The Talking Mirror, a mail advice column by artist Katie Mae Hafner of Chatterbox Press. It’s $28+shipping for six months of pamphlets of essay and writing and question answering, really one of the best publications going at the moment, in my opinion. Subscriptions are open through March 30th (soon!!), I’d say you don’t want to miss it.
Mundane Fantasy is open for submissions of narrative, poetry or art comics, and if you make comics, please consider submitting! I’m helping with the risograph printing again, and for this third issue we’re aiming to double the pagecount to 64 pages. (And find copies of issue 2 at Elliott Bay in Seattle, or Silver Sprocket in SF.)
We’re currently working on a zine where I interviewed Luke Wolcott and Shoshanna Regatta about getting started making electronic music. Here’s a picture of a test print of the cover. It’s “half legal” sized, and the interior is going to be printed on several reams of old paper rescued from a barn in Idaho by our friends Taxonomy Press. Goldenrod, baby!
We also just dropped of restocks of ANEMONE zines at Elliot Bay and Left Bank Books. A reprint of Bike Rambles around Seattle is in the planning stages, but for now, if you need some ramble recommendations, all the last copies are at those bookstores!
Spectrolite can do Posterizing now!
We’ve been working on documentation site for Spectrolite, trying to convey all the things you can do with it, and lots of information about making prints and zines and booklets in general too. Documentation is the final big project before we put the project “to bed” for the summer. (Obviously there are FAR too many mountains to climb in the summer than is humanly possible so we aim not do computer projects then. Better too save that type of fun for the rainy dark times of year.)
Anyways, I resorted to making scaled mockups for the drawings of the different formats of the different sizes of paper you can use to print different booklets, with different orientations (portrait vs landscape) and different binding sides (short or long). So I think it’s going to be good. Or at least something!
Adam and I gave two 2-hour Spectrolite tutorial workshops this month, to a group of artists at Pamflett in Bergen, Norway and Aalto University MFA students in Finland. Everyone was quite cool, it’s fun to see how people want to use things and get to meet other riso printers. I’m starting to think that it’s getting to be time for organizing another Bookluck—the weather’s getting nicer.
I’ve been reading Clade by James Bradley, and The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh, and The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, all at once. The climate crisis is unraveling so quickly. The days are getting longer and I’m already anticipating the heat and smoke that’s coming this summer. I’m trying to catch my mind up to what’s already happened, and what that means for what will happen, what to do. I know the world is changed, but it’s hard to see the actual world we live in now. Reading helps. Last week I revisited the short story A Full Life, which I think about often, and read Robin Sloan’s Elyse Flayme and the final flood, both in MIT Technology Review.
Thinking a lot more about what does the world we actually live in mean, in terms of new possibilities, new ways to live, how to actually make change happen. Related-ish: Does anyone have any solarpunk short story/blog post/fanfic/book recommendations? I’m getting interested in publishing some sort of anthology zine or series of climate writing that focus on positive futures and taking action to get there. Or at least just want to read a lot more of that.
I spent some time coding on my personal website (ameliagreenhall.com). I’ve been tending it in various iterations since 2011, and under different names since registering my first .com in 1998. There’s really something satisfying about having a place to do what I want with online, to tinker with coding and design, to invest in. I can publish silly things like top of mind notes. And check-ins on impractical labor.
Ok, that’s it for now. If you use Spectrolite, go check out Posterizing. It’s really fun (I think!) and you can find it under the STYLE dropdown.
Hope you’re finding new energy and thinking big thoughts.
More later,
Amelia
P.S.—The bread has been extra happy since last month, when I reunited the two sourdough lineages, separated generations and millenia, eons in bacteria-yeast time. The dough smells a little different, the crumb is springy. (And without getting too far into it because I don’t want to spoil anything, I have started playing the leaven music sometimes. They like Mineral Wool.)
Anyways: Seattle people, if you want some starter (or want to trade starter samples!), let me know.
P.P.S.—Write back and say hi if you want!