Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Allure of the Handmade

My grandfather was a newspaper man: he set type at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer throughout the 50's and 60's. He was sort of a jack-of-all-trades graphic designer, back when it involved cut and paste technology, french curves, and those translucent green visors that somehow went out of fashion.


Being in the letterpress room at Community Print reminds me of him. It's amazing. There's drawers and drawers of old type.. lots of different fonts and sizes, and beautiful engraved picture plates. And anyone can use it! I'm going to take their Intro to Letterpress workshop soon.


Things are looking like they should upstairs in my studio. My desk is already a mess, littered with candles, pens, tape, z-bar wrappers, brushes, a painting of Rosebud.. I'm feeling settled and ready to work.


I love this stage, at the very beginning when everything's just eyeballs with no eyes, and tissue paper drawings. Before I go overboard and fill up every space. I can't seem to help myself; I've never been able to be a minimalist, though i always wish I could. It seems to go against the very essence of my being.