EVERYONE IS HAPPY WHEN THE TYPE GOES HOME

Found this on my desk this morning, a note from one of our apprentices letting me know that she put her type away. & we all win.

THE REBIRTH OF TRUTH

"Madness" writes 19th century German philosopher Heinrich Shleschmann Zuute, in his groundbreaking literary manifesto Zuberflagen, "has deprived the common man of his common dream in a common world surrounded by commoners. Only through the purge of a spiritual lobe can we release yet another suture in the tapestry of a mortal plane." My work at the press aims to realize this goal through a direct attack on the human psyche.

Above you may witness the object in which my methods have come to fruition. I have descended to the still widely unknown of this institution of higher learning; and by utilizing the medium of letterpress printing, I have crawled back. Spreading these brief glimpses throughout a reality that many of you exist in each painful day. A piece must have a frame, however subtle, otherwise the artism of reality can "flood the fluvial cellar of the mind, reducing civilization and nature to a state of desperation." *

*Heinrich Shleschmann Zutte, Zuberflagen

Below, you can see the pure form of philosophy. In order to obtain such genius, one must first strip away all inner sight, then strip away the schema of the self, the unself, and, of course, the bookself. The vision below is where truth lies in an ultimate form. The image of a lyrical poet, similar to a modern day bard, hovering over simple, centered, soulful syllables from my intellectual expeditions, is the most reliable form.

With this form as a template I am able to deconstruct and reconstruct this prose vector pattern however I desire, while still remaining efficient and true to the moral and philosophical standards the categorical imperative has set for us.

"BEHOLD! THE BIRTH OF A NEW GOD. REASON HAS WROUGHT IT AND FAITH HAS BIRTHED IT"* Now you have seen the beauty and symmetry of my grand design. As all the stark prose is four vectors in length, I am able to exchange any four vector length piece of prose out for another, thus rendering my design fluid. The design is only three simple runs, a number and simplicity laced with imagery of the tiger lily, oft referenced in manuals of human beauty. 

*Heinrich Shleschmann Zutte, Gods, Humans, Horse.

Watch out, School born of the Rockies. The truth has been unleashed, and no amount of blind ignorance may stop a vassal as potent as the work of tireless hands. The truth is around you, it simply waits to be seen. 

Already a new project, which will be created with my hands, is underway. This larger work will follow the harrowing journey of a Brazilian outlaw on his trip to Hell, and the death of the devil shortly after he arrives. The broadside will assault the senses with heavy handed beauty and loose baggage. 

-Evan

The truth was being forged by a man who was listening to Will Smith. 

This man would recommend the song "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" in particular. It has that peppy bounce that kidz crave.

OUR NEW MASCOT

BOOK & BOOK STRUCTURE (2)

The first printing project that we did in our Block 7 Book & Book Structure class was a collaborative book involving every student in the class. It covered all of the basics of letterpress printing: page imposition, hand typesetting, locking up & registration, and printing text and images. And of course it had some chance operations driving the whole thing.

To begin, the students were asked to bring in a quote having to do with chance. We shared these quotes as a group and talked about the different aspects of chance that they brought up.

We also gathered a bunch of old image plates that we have at The Press, both random stuff that’s been collected over the years and plates used in older Press publications.

And then the class, using a system loosely devised by Robin and elaborated by them, performed a variety of chance operations in order to determine which quotes and images would be printed on which folios, the position of those elements on the individual pages, and the colors of the images (the text, it was decided, would be black so that it could be printed over the images if need be).

By far our favorite chance procedure was the use of plastic of jumping frogs. You can never go wrong with jumping frogs.

[A brief aside: The textbook for the class was Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type: A Critical guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, 2nd Edition,  (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). You can see its brightly colored cover in the images above. It’s a great book, and it also has a great companion website.]

After the placement of everything was determined, everyone set their type and then we began printing in teams. Printing lasted two classes. The final step was for each student to take two copies of each folio and to make two books, one by simply arranging the pages as they were, and the other by adding new content of their choice. The variety of results in the books that they added to was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, we don’t have any images of those….

ARCHEAOLOGY OF THE PRESS (1)

Yesterday Lucy and I were looking for some brown ink to use in a printing demo for some high school students in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Summer Seminar, which is hosted here at CC. I remembered that we had a big can of brown ink on the shelf (we were trying to avoid mixing colors).



But when we opened it up there was quite a surprise inside. Not quite jumping snakes, but I think as close as ink can chemically get to those.



More updates as excavations continue….