Capsule Design Festival

This Sunday, October 19, we'll be at Capsule Design Festival in San Francisco in the lovely Hayes Valley area. There will be about 160 designers, artists and musicians for us to hang out with in the park while grooving to DJs. Our booth is #29. We'll have new journals and t-shirts along with our books, broadsides and cards.

Capsule is a collective of selected designers including clothing, furniture, jewelry, studio art and paper goods. We're excited to be among the few stationery vendors. We recognized Lizard Press on the line up-- we met at Bazaar Bizarre in SF last winter. We really like their style and craftsmanship.

San Francisco, your city lights beckon us...

The Rich & The Poor

Our friend Frank Boross from Eye-Yi-Yi Digital Video and Toxic Coyote Press just worked on a music video The Rich & The Poor by Carl Morehouse, former mayor of my home town, Ventura, California. The sweet sound of a voice standing up for the basic dignity of people, for the possibility of peace and justice…

Everything Frank is involved with is top-notch. I wish he had a site with a gallery of his graphic design and printing that I could refer to. I can refer you to a very different project, a book he did with the comedy writer Sean Maher.

Sean is someone I met in the early 90s when he was starting to do stand-up at Ventura clubs I was too young to go to. His insightful spoofs of some of the most popular mental crutches are hilarious. Here are a couple of one-liners from his cards:

“If at first you don't succeed,
pout and mope around.”

“Human rights should be
reserved for the elite.”

My commentary on humor may be a little obtuse. Thoughts seem to be stacked on one another as if some would fall off the pile if they were no longer supported by the deeper ones at the foundation. I think that good humor brings thoughts out that most people don’t know how to handle. Ideas that might otherwise be depressing, cold, or frustrating are suddenly funny.

Obviously, Sean does this “pulling out the dirty thoughts” thing. But he seems to get at some of those deeper elements to really shake up the mind. Check it out. Am I romanticizing this guy’s talent because I lounged in his bachelor pad as a psychedelic 16 year old? No, he’s really funny.

Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival

If you happen to be in Santa Barbara this weekend, please join Lettre Sauvage at our Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival booth where we'll be presenting our Editions and giving live printing demonstrations with our table-top Chandler and Price.

The program starts tomorrow (Friday) and we'll be there all day on Saturday. There will be a number of wonderful poets, workshops, panel discussions, and other goodies downtown, in and around the public library and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Bill Rector poetry reading

USC's Visions and Voices series presents Praxis and Poetry, with poet and physician Bill Rector reading a selection of his poems on Wednesday, September 10th. The event is free and will take place at 4:30 PM in Doheny Library, Intellectual Commons Room 233.

For this event, Lettre Sauvage printed a very limited edition broadside of Rector's poem, "Exponent of the Horizontal." We'll be selling some at the reading, and copies will be made available for sale on the Lettre Sauvage website soon.

Hope to see you there!

Yma's art sale

Yma has been hosting an art sale this weekend in the front yard of the Lettre Sauvage studio. She is selling drawings of various sizes, and has also taken this opportunity to sell some toys and housewares. When I arrived to print this weekend, she greeted me at the car and convinced me to buy some of the work.

Yma's artwork has long been an inspiration for us at the studio. She's learned about printing from her parents and creates strikingly original work. We've also included some of her poems in the zine, brick. There are times when words seem to just spill out of her with tremendous poetic force. Just last week she said to us, "What do you know? Pomegranates can be secrets."

I'm particularly fond of this drawing. It demonstrates an unusual amount of restraint and shows how Yma is aware of the borders of the paper. The color choices, alternating between strong and soft tones, work so well with the smudging and blurring that are otherwise occurring in the piece.

When I asked Yma to sign her piece, she was at first confused and insisted that I sign it, since I would be the work's owner. I am impressed with her willingness to let go of her objects, to release them into the world without names or titles or figurative reference to cling to. It is a good lesson for artists of any age.

Green, city, beautiful poets

Greener & Greener

Lettre Sauvage has been added to GreenMaven.com, the premier
search engine for websites with social and environmental values.
We’re already learning about how to run our studio more
responsibly from other sites we found in their directory!

Check it out.

City Lights

The long wooden stairway lined with shelves and framed broad-
sides leads to the most exquisite seat in town: the simple
wooden chair under the small window where one can sit flanked
by floor to ceiling shelves of poetry. Upstairs at City Lights
is one of my most beloved reading spots. 

Genevieve has been in San Francisco for a couple weeks. She took
our latest publications to City Lights where they enjoyed a very
warm reception. We’re so thrilled to have our work in their store
and on their website.

Santa Barbara Summer Poetry Workshop

I visited the workshop to talk about my experiences publishing
collaboratively with poets. I couldn’t help but borrow the term
“the third mind” coined by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs to
describe that realm of shared thought and creation where
collaborative work is produced. I think the group shared my
enthusiasm about

“a praxis of two subjectivities that metamorphose into one”
-George Gerard Lemaire

While at the workshop I had the pleasure of hearing some
impressive work,
fresh from the notebooks of participants. 

I also sat in on their discussion time and learned more about the
monthly poetry journal, Sage Trail (cover above).  I had picked
one up at a Santa Barbara Poetry Series reading, and was honestly
surprised by how strong the writing was – not to sound jaded or
anything- but there are so many bland journals out there. This is
not one of them. And, this gem is only $15 for a year’s subscription
or free online.

Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

This is a broadside of the poem, Midwife of Fallujah, by Weam Namou that we created as part of the broadside suite, Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. The suite, formed to express solidarity with Iraqui literary culture is named for the famous Mutanabbi Street booksellers' district that was bombed during the current war. The work is now part of the permanent collection at the Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts. The Florida Atlantic University libraries recently digitized the entire collection for online viewing. We feel honored to be part of this project and are eager to finally view the work of fellow printers.

Collections and individual broadsides are available for purchase to benefit World Medical Relief. We sold out of our copies and raised $135. Inquire for further details.

NEGATIVE SKY Book Release Party Tonight

Tonight we're hosting a book release party for Genevieve Yue's NEGATIVE SKY, a hard-bound collection of eight poems and essays based on a set of photographs found in a Taos, New Mexico novelty shop. The book was hand-sewn and printed by Lettre Sauvage Editions.

All are welcome! The gathering will be at the Lettre Sauvage studio, from 7-10 PM. We'll hear electronic tonalities by Opal Gann and watch 16mm films in the backyard movie theater, including Merkin's THE PAIN OF GOATS and other surprises. There will be wine, fire, and friendship.

NEGATIVE SKY is also available for purchase.

Steamed

This card never fails to bring a giggle to the recipient- especially if they suspect their cute behind was the inspiration.

Originally conceived as a Valentine greeting from Keith to Ron, “Steamed” is a limited edition of 80 and will never be printed again since the antique printing block was only in our possession for a few short hours. Cam paired it with Kaufmann and Engraver's Bold typefaces to place it in a 1920s idiom when steam (aahh) was still used as a source of power.

Give this card as a subtle hint to the one you admire or to remind your domestic other that way back you were just stealing a hopeful glance…maybe wishing you were at the bath house!

This card is available for purchase at Etsy.

Stationery Show Friends

I wanted to put up more on some of the great designers, printers, and shop owners we met at the Stationery Show. One of the highlights were the very warm and friendly people at Night Owl Paper Goods, whose cosy booth featured a set of exquisitely thin wooden notecards. The colors were all warm and had a great 70s feel.

One of the new stores that will be featuring our Lettre Sauvage wedding book is Convier Design, a boutique shop located in Redmond, Washington - our first northwest location! They were very friendly and knowledgeable, and we were so pleased that they were willing to share so much of their expertise with us. We trust we're in very good hands with them. 

We were also visited by Maginating, a new letterpress company close to home in Los Angeles. They had great bold patterns and colors, and we were especially impressed by their lovely blue burlap booth. 

The owner of Pretty Bitter had a wonderful story about receiving his booth space as a Christmas gift and coming up with a stationery company in time for the show. The result was an energetic and witty line of greeting cards. We especially like the awkwardly verbose "Sentimental Journeys" which playfully demonstrate how attempting to say it all never really gets the job done.

Finally we were thrilled to be visited by Urban Mercantile, a home accessories store that we'll definitely be visiting (and shopping at) the next time we're in San Francisco. We were excited to have a positive response from the owner, but moreover it was great to get constructive feedback based on shoppers' tastes and other letterpress offerings out there. Look out for our stationery and new matchbook sets at the store!