Camp Stories, Illustrated

This past January I lost my adorable, fearless mother, Gladiola Flowers, at the age of 85. She had an unflappable and enthusiastic spirit for life. At the age of 83, she chose to legally change her name from the former Gladys (Rasmussen) Robinson, as she wanted to become a perennial. She defied death several times and spent sixteen long years in a nursing home, living a rich, full life after Multiple Sclerosis had left her a near quadriplegic. Thirty years earlier, she took up drawing as a means of expression and of reconciling the profound loss of her mobility. She drew beautiful macro studies from nature mostly—gathering flowers, ferns and leaves as her subjects. But it was a series of unusual charcoal drawings she produced during that same time which I find most remarkable. With little training, she worked diligently over the course of one month to complete a set of thirty-two drawings from happy childhood memories living in the Northwest during the Hard Times of the 1930s. She kept a daily journal about this personal work, which is in a style best described as naïve "outsider folk art". Finding this journal recently, was like buried treasure. With her wry wit and love of family, she wrote to flush out the details and recollections of her 8 year-old self. After reading it, I was reminded how exhausting, yet therapeutic it was for her, and how overjoyed she was to take the task on thirty years ago.

     Because of the local history her drawings represented, I first approached Jane Carlin, the Special Collections librarian at the University of Puget Sound Collins Library in Tacoma, with the idea of exhibiting my mother's work. Jane happily jumped on board, and encouraged me to include some of my own artwork in the exhibition. Though I admit I was a little reluctant to do so—over time, I came to think of it as an opportunity. Since I relish all of her colorful stories, I decided it would be fun to explore some new work, and add my own interpretations of them.

During Summer months, Glad's family of seven lived in a rustic one bedroom cabin they lovingly referred to as "Camp". It was built by my grandfather, Frank Rasmussen, and his brother Axcel in 1910, and located at Sunrise Beach, just Northwest of Tacoma, Washington, on the waters of Puget Sound. It had no plumbing or electricity, but a view of Mt. Rainier from the outhouse, and an artesian spring for fresh water and bathing. My grandmother was a true pioneer, and would bake bread in a wood-fired oven, sew quilts for the beds from old blankets, and can Summer fruits and vegetables, while my grandfather worked as a carpenter building houses and commuting by a small passenger boat. They faired better than most during the Depression, as they had fresh fish from the bay, and fresh milk, cheese and vegetables purchased from neighbors with cows and gardens. The five kids would swim and play on the beach all day, or hike in the woods all Summer long. Nearly every Sunday they shared their bounty with up to thirty friends and neighbors at a long table on their front porch. In this image above, Gladiola is the devil girl in the middle, being scolded by her devoutly Baptist father during the meal blessing, while my poor grandmother is hard at work in the kitchen.

The Garness Place where the kids would buy vegetables and fresh flowers for mom. 

A bird's eye view of the beach and homes. Their "Camp" house was on far right. 

Glady fishing with her father and pup, Spunky, with toy boat in tow. She later added the smiley face on herself, and a cigarette in her father's mouth. He never actually smoked.

Gladiola at age 84, wearing her faux feather boa and red hat.

My mothers' "Camp Stories" has been a gift in so many indescribable ways. There were few family photos of this time, as this was beyond means; only the one photo above of my mother at age 4. I know I will be unable to complete all of my planned work before this exhibition opens, but those I do, I will share once the show opens. I expect to continue with more work in later months, as there is a wealth of material I would like to explore in different media and print processes. I'm delighted to be doing more creative work once again, and looking forward to where it brings me next. 
     My poster above provides more details of the exhibition which opens on November 6th, or you can visit the UPS events calendar. I will be giving a talk about the exhibit on Saturday, November 16th at 2pm in the Collins Library, room 020. All are welcomed!

Second Lives

On a recent Portland, Oregon visit, I dropped in to visit The Ampersand Gallery on Alberta Street. Owner, Myles Haselhorst always has something on the walls and shelves to hold my interest. This time he was preparing for an exhibition of new photographs by Los Angeles artist, Tarrah Krajnak. Coinciding with this exhibit was the release of South Sound, a monograph of Krajnak's new work, designed and published by Ampersand in an edition of 100. A deluxe edition of 15 includes a signed 11x14 inch pigment print from Krajnak's new series of images.
     South Sound originated after a Winter spent living and working at a small cabin built in 1954 on Puget Sound in Washington State. The cabin became a repository of decade-old books, record albums, and shoeboxes full of nameless photographs left behind by one family over the course of sixty long Summers. While thumbing through some of the old books one evening, Krajnak picked up a copy of Jung's last major work on juxtapositions and psychic opposites, Mysterium Coniunctionis, and instinctively combined it with one of the indelible found photos taken in Africa of a smiling priest and a woman in a green dress. This simple act of juxtaposition suggested further combinations to explore. Krajnak's inventive storytelling leaves us to our imagination in the best possible way. It doesn't explain, but reframes, and makes us wonder.

Tarrah Krajnak's South Sound work resonated with me on many levels. For most of my youth, I lived on the Southern Puget Sound, and may have crossed paths with some of the people in these photos. I also love storytelling—even the kind we make up in our own minds. Most impressive however, are the large pigment prints in exquisite detail. These can be purchased separately in three sizes. For more information on the prints or the book, visit here. Or if you happen to be in Seattle this coming weekend, it is a good reason to drop by the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair and see this work first hand at The Ampersand Gallery's booth. There will be close to 90 dealers attending the Book Fair this year which will be held both days at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall.

A Return Engagement for Mr. Kite

So the young John Lennon was a fan of early Victorian circus and theater posters. He also found inspiration in an original 1843 poster staged by 19th century showman Pablo Fanque and his Circus Royale, featuring the renowned acrobat William Kite (aka, Mr. Kite). As the story goes...Lennon bought the original poster from an antique dealer, and hung it in his living room. While writing music for the Sgt. Pepper album one day, he and McCartney found inspiration for the song lyrics of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite literally staring them in the face. McCartney performed this song on The Colbert Report a few months back.  
      In honor of the Beatles 50th anniversary last year, London designer and long-time Beatles fan, Peter Dean called upon wood engraving artist Andy English and letterpress printer Graham Bignell of New North Press in Shoreditch, London to help him recreate the original 1843 poster which now belongs to Sean Lennon. With a little help from his friends, they printed an edition of 1,967 posters for the year of the song's release on the Sgt. Pepper album. Unframed prints can be purchased here. John Lennon would have been 73 years-old today. 

Image source: Live Auctioneers 

Tickets to Nowhere

Old tickets aren't always just yesterday's trash. The value can be a visual record of their design, or perhaps a record of a significant event, time or place. Expired tickets are usually discarded once they are used, so they are one of the most ephemeral of paper items. In fact I recently found the 1942 Stanford vs. Santa Clara Football game ticket below in a recycling bin, along with several others of the same era. I love these two tickets featured above and below, as they are great examples of overprinting text onto illustrations, and they are a typographic record of time. Although there is no date on the Dubuque Railway ticket, I would place it mid-to-late-19th century, based upon the fontstyles of the first two lines of text. The slab serif on the first line is a bit unusual, particularly because of the great contrast between the thick and thin strokes on the S, and the weight on all of the letters' horizontal strokes as well. The "5" on the second line looks like a tuscan style letter, popular in wood type fonts in the mid-19th century, but this small size had to have been printed with metal type.

This more recent ticket for a 1969 performance of "Hair" at the Aquarius Theater in LA was given to me recently by my neighbor. It may not necessarily be as visually interesting, but I rather like it with all the Futura cap letters, various weights and sizes, and the oddly random alignment. It was also just like every other ticket around at the time. (I'd file it under "theatrical typography" ;)

This particular ticket actually does take me somewhere. It takes me back to the 30th National Square Dance Convention I attended 33 years ago. I wasn't there to dance, but dropped by as a spectator, with my camera. I hadn't squared danced since I did the hokey pokey on roller skates at the local "Skateland" roller rink when I was a kid. No, I just came to watch from the stadium bleachers, as a group of 28,000 twirling (NOT twerking;) square dancers set a world record for the largest number to dance to one caller. It was a wonder to behold. To see these adorable couples—some as old as 80+ years—in their his-and-her matching ensembles parading into the stadium against a wall covered with anarchy symbols and "The Clash" graffiti, was every bit worth the $1 admission. (Sadly, my 35mm slides of that day have never been digitized, or I would include some here.) I guess I saved this ticket all these years as a happy reminder, but I never noticed until today, the scowling faces of the two dancers. 
     All of the tickets above are from my personal collection, but the random variety below are recent unearthed eBay finds, all costing more than their original admission fee. Many more can be found there.

Most commercial tickets today are printed digitally, which don't hold the same fascination. Roll tickets with consecutive numbers are an exception, and are still available. One name which frequently pops up in the world of specialized ticket printing is the Globe Ticket Company. In fact, you can see their name printed at the bottom of a few of these amusement park tickets and the earlier "Hair" ticket. The story of the Globe Ticket Company goes back to 1868, when 12 year-old Walter Hering found a $5 bill on a Philadelphia street and used it to purchase a small printing press. He took in small print jobs for calling cards, and soon outgrew the small room in his house. Years later, his business expanded to printing large ticket orders for theater companies in New York and Philadelphia. In 1900, he built a larger facility, the Globe Ticket Company Building, at the site of his birthplace in Philadelphia. In 1984 this was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for preservation. I guess Walter printed his own ticket to fame and fortune. All for a $5 investment in a printing press.    

Say it Loud ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

If ever there was a most affable character, it is the exclamation mark! It's no mere line, dot or square, as it can be shapely, ultra-fat, and expressive, all at the same time. Used sparingly, it can make a party out of a dull sentence, and put a period to shame. Yet, when paired with large cap letters in repetition, it can be UTTERLY ANNOYING!!! None-the-less, it is worth celebrating this bold mark, which I neglected to do last week on National Punctuation Day (September 24th) when it escaped my notice! So today, I showcase some random appearances of this simple glyph. 

Just above is a Paul Rand cover design for Great Issues in American History, Vol. 2. Source: Scott Lindberg/Flickr

Opposite is Anton Chekhov's novel, The Exclamation Mark, which was first published in 1886. Good Reads gives it a "four star"!

All four of the album covers above are from Seattle's own Jive Time Records, Project Thirty-three, an incredibly rich and well-catalogued archive of modernist album cover designs. The Admiral Stereo cover is dated 1960; The Hitmakers, 1967; Percussion Exotique, 1960; Grady Martin and the Slewfoot Five, 1964. 

This 1964 cover on the Blue Note record label, with a flury of fat face italic exclamation marks, hits all the right notes! It was designed by Reid Miles (1927-1993), the inventive designer who showed us all what jazz looked like. Miles left Esquire magazine in 1956 to work at Blue Note where his career stretched over another decade and four hundred-plus cover designs. Despite his disinterest in jazz, his lean and expressive designs influenced a generation of music fans and designers alike. You can find a comprehensive archive of his cover designs here, a great interview with his former photo assistant, Wayne Adams at New Ish, and a nice write-up on Miles and his work over at Retinart, which is where I also found this brilliant Hi-Fi video below. Originally produced as a promotion for the upcoming concert season at the Bellavista Social Pub in Siena, Italy—this video brings Reid Miles type-laden covers to life—wear, tear and all!!!

The Art of the Japanese Stencil

Stencils have long intrigued me as they are one of the oldest and simplest methods of making multiples of images. At the hands of a skilled artist, they can also be one of the most challenging and beautiful.
     This lovely mid-century sample book of designer's stencil patterns recently stopped me in my tracks. It is printed on Japanese paper in a method called katagami, and is one of six books (all sold, mind you), from the Boston Book Company. I felt they all warranted display for reasons that should be apparent. With Japanese stab bindings, the six albums contain nearly 600 full-page designs in all. The catalogs are from Kamiya Kichinosuke of Matsuya (the company name).
     Katagami, is the term for the Japanese paper stencil used to make elaborate patterns for printing on a variety of substrates. Although stencilling can be a relatively simple printing process, this technique took skilled craftsmen years to master. The history of katagami can be traced back to the samurai warrior's armor in the 8th century, but it wasn't until the 17th century when the practice of printing the patterns on kimono fabrics began to flourish in Japan. In short, the stencils are made from a thin sheet of mulberry paper treated with persimmon juice to give it strength and water resistance. The sheets are then hung in a closed room and smoked for several days in order to harden the persimmon coating. For more detail, the Cooper Hewitt Museum produced this text for an exhibit on katagami in 1979, and recently demonstrated the process here.  

 

My discovery of the Japanese katagami books at the Boston Book Company led me on a trail to another curious book about the process. The Book of Delightful and Strange Designs was written and printed in three languages in 1893 by Andrew White Tuer (1838-1900), a London stationer and printer from his Leadenhall Press, one of the most innovative of the Victorian era. Tuer writes with a wry wit and keen interest about the Japanese stencil process from the vantage point of a novice, often deferring to "the Gentle Reader" in his comments. He does draw a few interesting comparisons and insights to lithographic printing when describing the registration process. 

Tuer's book is a very quick and fun read and includes 100 katagami examples. One of my new favorite sites, Codex99 also wrote a great analysis with footnotes on this same book (which I discovered only after finding the Internet Archive version.)
     As another fun sidenote, I learned that Andrew Tuer and his printing partner Abraham Field, were responsible for publishing the influential Printer's International Specimen Exchange from 1880 to 1898. This annual subscription for the "technical education of the working printer" taught a whole new generation of printers around the world about printing and design at the time. The images below are from a Specimen Exchange set which British Letterpress kindly shared on Flickr.