Many, many tiny flowers

One more SPX down, many more to go. At least, that's how I always feel when we get home. I treat it as my yearly deadline and anticipate it so much I should feel relieved and celebratory. But by the second day I'm just planning for next year and I come home more brain-busy than when I left.
After exhibiting for four years (non-consecutively), I have some substantial work and am actually making comics. My table spread this year was a little too printmakerly for my tastes. I don't really want to be The Letterpresser, I just want to make awesome stories in awesome packages. I can never not bind my own books now. The long-stapler will gather dust (but will be kept because hello, simple machines are cool), and I'm going to keep resisting Big Box paper choices no matter how much using the perfect shade of pink costs me in pocket, planning, and papercutting. My goals for next year: three new strong stories, drawn and bound simply, but designed well. I'm going to have to do a lot of drawing to get there, which is good for the blog!


Ian drew a great recap-strip of our trip. You should read it here.

The book I debuted last week was Pretty Flowered Paper, a new single sheet & pressure print book (my third.) I've been collecting my mismemories for the last year, which are things that I remember that couldn't have happened. I made the first one into a quilt, but I'm crazy about them so I'm going to keep exploring this. I have a super ridiculous memory, so these mismemories crop up. So far they have been things from when I was so small (6 and under) and my understanding of what happened didn't line up with reality. There are also some really early dreams that I took for truths. The only bummer is that my memory is so good, some things I thought must be mistakes from when I was tiny were weird things that actually happened. I have to call my mother to check. But, I don't toss those stories out, I just file them away for different projects.


This mismemory is about a hidden note in a gift. The gift had flowered paper on the back of it, and the only visual in the story is the pattern. So I made a pressure plate by cutting out many, many tiny flowers. Each one is about the size of a coin. I'm really good at this now.

I glued them all down and printed this pressure print in slightly varying shades of green.

Finally, I set the lead type and printed it at Katie Baldwin's, making use of her newly acquired 11 pt. Garamond.

I really love this. It's a very quiet book, nice after drawing a book of two girls yelling at each other. I've grown tired of printing small editions of handmade books, and then having to reprint, so there are TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY. Once I fold them all, that is. Available on Etsy.