"work will lead to more work, and you’ll figure things out for yourself through doing that work"
musings on getting energy from doing things, a Layout Department update, lots of quotes, links, stuff to look at
This newsletter contains: a little essay about getting energy from doing things. Layout Department news! A bit about Seattle art book events this weekend. A TON of links of things to look at and read, and so many quotes.
Wow, doing things (vs thinking of doing them, wanting to do them, but not doing them)… is great for creative energy!
I recently realized that taking an allergy medicine a doctor had recommended (Zyrtec) for a few months was making me feel quite anxious and brain-foggy, racing heartbeat, insomnia, and a few other things. (Searching on Reddit, it seems like this happens to some percentage of people.) I was really dragging there for a while but couldn’t quite figure out why. I stopped taking the medicine and I’m feeling a lot more myself, and I’ve been doing things.
Finishing up all the detailed edits to the next All Well pattern that I’d struggled to focus on for weeks. Making some cute branding and working on the color scheme for Layout Department. Organizing my studio and plotting a re-organize of the printshop. Doing the first workouts with the barbell: learning the deadlift, bench press, squat, overhead press and row. Adam and I have made progress on house projects — getting art hung up, which changes the way rooms feel so much, and seed blocking and potting up our starts. Baking cake and sourdough. Working in the sketchbook and collaging more, and testing out some art supplies I just thrifted:
I still have health things to work with, but already, the contrast of being able to do more of the creative work and household/cooking/logistical work I want to do is giving me so much more energy.
The noticeable increase in energy is making me think of how this 2023 essay by Mandy Brown, Energy Makes Time:
It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.
I’m using art here, because in my experience, most people have something shaped like that in their lives—some thing that when neglected siphons time and energy away but when attended to delivers it in droves. But you can substitute art for whatever activity or habit leaves you more energized, gives you that time back: puzzle night with your BFFs, organizing your colleagues, working a shift at the community garden, baking cookies for the block party, going to the woods, touching grass and all that.
…and Kottke’s comments on it, re: getting into the flow state of creative work, “I had indeed been putting off doing this kind of work because I didn’t have the time and energy, but once I was able to make space for it in my day, it became clear that it was an essential thing that I need to do so that I can create time for everything else.”
I’m also thinking about that Nancy Rubins quote:
The only advice I could give any artist is just to make the work, and work will lead to more work, and you’ll figure things out for yourself through doing that work.
It’s always interesting with the ebbs and flows of chronic illness related stuff to see how much that work-making process is energizing and cyclical. And how there’s some minimum bar that my artist-self needs.
We’ve still been having tons of fun making the Layout Department app. There’s a new Pages view where you can see all your pages/spreads (separate from the imposed-onto-sheets view) and resize the pages, and add trim marks and bleed.
You can edit sizes with the text areas, and also click the little dot drag handles on the document itself to resize the PDF, trim, and bleed with your mouse.Something about the interactivity of dragging to resize makes me extremely thrilled, like wow, this is a real app! (This is the first big feature for the paid license — free version has the pages view too, but more limited options for resizing.)
There is so much I want to write about related to Layout Department, that’s not quite a fit for the documentation, but also seems like it would be too much (volume-wise) for the ANEMONE newsletter. I want to share some studio process and the creative process of the app design/build itself. And more generally, I’ve been wanting to write so much more on book design and printing your own books, as a regular person / artist at a small to medium scale. I am, as always, so fascinated by the artistic and financial and logistical choices you get to make, when you make your own books / zines / booklets. Similar topics to Notes on Artist Publishing and Taking Care of Yourself as an Artist Publisher, but even more practical too.
Here’s what I’m thinking:
Deep dives into book and zine design choices: trim size and page size, choosing the paper to print on, and which printer to use, and bleed and creep and layout software, and more
Tutorials on how to use Layout Department to help make your book and zine projects (beyond the documentation) — with photos and examples of specific projects
Interviews with artist publishers about their own book layout and imposition processes (reply and let me know if you’d like me to interview you!)
Reviews and recs for book/zine layout and design books
It’s stuff I’m already writing about here, but I want to go super deep and write MORE, and I know not everyone is necessarily into that level of detail. So we’ve decided split the ANEMONE newsletter content into two parts and start sending everything that’s book design/layout and Layout Department related via a new URL.
Besides helping me with editorial clarity, a big benefit of splitting the content into parts is that you’ll be able to unsubscribe from just the layouts content if you’re finding it too much / you aren’t interested in that. :)
The first Layout Department newsletter arrives on Thursday, and if you’re subscribed here you’ll automatically get it, or if you use an RSS reader you can add this feed link.
So excited for Seattle Art Book Fair this weekend, May 9–10, 11am-5pm both Saturday and Sunday! Lots of great programming and exhibitors! (I think if you read this newsletter, you’d especially like the talk by our friend Rachel Hays of Taxonomy Press on nourishing a publishing ecosystem, that’s 2:30pm on Sunday.) Also, there’s a pre-party in Pioneer Square Friday May 8; RSVP here. All events are free.
Adam and I are not tabling (currently in the midst of taking a year off from events) and we’re really excited about just getting to go walking around and buying books and saying hey to people. You can find some of our work at the show In Circulation: An Exhibit on Artist Publishing in Seattle at Columbia City Gallery, which is open Wednesday - Sunday, 11am - 7pm. (A handful of our books will be there, and some art prints that aren’t available online.)
LOOK: Nightblooming / Cavernous body / banchan plates with images of 호랑이 horangi and haetae from historic Korean paintings / Angela Kirkwood (riso animation) / Chattahoochie / evaporating paint leftovers to keep them from going into the wastewater or septic system / a chart with fun ideas for condiments / Overall, the slime mold enjoyed this mushroom
READ: In praise of stairs + danger playgrounds \ Nothing is ever going back to normal \ It’s just that some projects open a portal. What kind of artist just sits in front of the portal instead of walking through? \ Reading about composting t-shirts to make microbe tie-dye like prints led me onto this “top ten compost piles” roundup
QUOTES: I keep thinking of Zohran Mamdani and Trevor Noah talking and Mamdani saying:
And as Democrats, we’re constructing an ever lowering ceiling of possibility. You know, and we are robbing ourselves of ambition and imagination, and we’re telling people that their choice is between settling or sacrifice. And neither of these are enough. You have to have an affirmative vision of how life can be better than this, because this life already is suffocating people.
And this detail from How South Korea plans to use the Iran crisis to spur a renewables revolution:
In Guyang-ri, a farming village of 70 households about 90 minutes south-east of Seoul, people gather for communal free lunches six days a week. The meals are funded by the village’s one-megawatt solar installation, which generates roughly 10m won ($6,800) in net profit each month. “Residents eat lunch together every day, so we see each other’s faces, talk together,” says Jeon Joo-young, the village chief. “Bonds and solidarity between residents become much stronger. Life becomes more enjoyable.” The shift has been dramatic. Before the solar project launched in 2022, the village of about 130 people had no restaurant, no easy way to move around, and little communal infrastructure. Now solar revenue pays for meals, a village “happiness bus” for elderly people, a table-tennis facility and cultural activities.
Imagine doing good and useful things like communal infrastructure with energy, instead of the grift they’re trying to do with data centers for AI (the actual financials of which don’t look even remotely like a viable business; read Ed Zitron and Blood in the Machine for the nerdy details), or endless wars. Or imagine living in Australia, which plans to start offering residents at least 3 hours of free solar power a day this year.
Always returning to Ursula K le Guin:
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable – but then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
I like artist publishing (and building tools to help make things easier for other artist publishers) because it’s fun, and also because it’s part of imagining and communicating about and collectively building a better world. What affirmative visions of how life can be better are you working on?
Sending care, thanks for reading,
Amelia (& Adam)
P.S. — In case you missed it: Spectrolite for Windows!