Open Studio - May 1

Join us in person or in spirit on May 1st 6-10 pm as we open our studio to celebrate three new letterpress editions.

the Forest Drive, which was completed earlier this year is a collection of poems by Sophia Kidd, Jackson Wheeler, Desiree Morales, Brynn Saito and John Charles Shippey interspersed with typographic images created by Cameron Leggett and printer's blocks of yore.

Windfall which is currently being sewn is an edition of poems by Erin M. Bertram, the winner of our First Lettre Sauvage Poetry Contest. The poems are marvelous and the cover art is a hand-carved wood cut by John Charles Shippey. We are currently folding, collating, sewing by hand. See me dragging a piece of bone over a folded sheet.

The beautiful broadside of Kim Andrews' poem "As in Nowhere, No-One" features an interesting take on the "sandragraph" print process. Genevieve had a geometric concept that I rendered using scraps of waste polymer stuck to a clean linoleum block. Kim was the braodside winner of our poetry contest.

May 1 marks the deadline for entering the Second Lettre Sauvage Poetry Contest. Hopefully a few entries will be hand-delivered. We're looking forward to all the poetry in store for us.

Our open studio parties are opportunities to show our work, demonstrate our presses and provide a backdrop for creative friends. In the past, our backyard has been transformed into a theater, our living room into a disco and our basement into an experimental noise happening. The photo below of our tarp/screen taken by John Nichols of the local gallery conjures memorable parties past.

Visit to Horn Press

Another beacon of book arts in Southern California, the Horn Press at UCLA, has been revived by Johanna Drucker in the School of Information Studies. We had the pleasure of visiting the press with members of the Southern California chapter of the American Printing History Association (APHA). In a little room on the fourth floor of the Broad Arts Center, one lovely old Vandercook SP15 sits in front of a window flanked by cases of type that fill the rest of the small space.

The press room is like a tiny berry bursting with the energy and brilliance of Johanna Drucker and her dedicated students. Johanna and her press just moved in last summer. They're energized and open to new ideas. Students have been crowding into the little press room creating exquisite corpse poems based on randomly selected themes. This is something we've enjoyed here at Lettre Sauvage along with the question and answer game in which half the printers set a questions and the other half answers to be randomly paired. Both of these are long-standing surrealist practices.


The image above is an amazing metal die- an uncatalogued item from the collection of the founder, Andrew Harlis Horn. This is clearly about an animal and a man caught in a primal relationship. The sheep (or goat) seems to see the man, while the man walks with his staff, his hood too low to watch the mountains and see the sheep. The water and air are impossibly one. Both figures -man and beast- absolutely dwarf civilization in a most romantic way.

Book Arts Gypsy Wagon

I am inspired by Peter and Donna Thomas, who are traveling the country on a book arts tour in a gypsy wagon they built together. I've heard of dream vacations, but this really appeals to my love of cohesion since it combines so many facets of their lives as they'll be working, living, touring, making friends and sharing this treasure they built together. Read about their journey. There's still time to catch them along the way.

Windfall Cover

The newly completed cover of Windfall has been the object of much musing. After spending so long with the poems, it's satisfying to see this book come together in a cover that, to me, really covers it. The cuts in the wood seem like little portraits of inexplicable sensations and the reference to a landscape with its struggles and flows is a fitting companion to the poems.

Windfall, the collection of poems by Erin Bertram, won first prize in our first poetry contest. The woodblock print is the work of another entrant, John Charles Shippey.

We first became acquainted with Mr. Shippey when he sent an unusual entry to our contest. The large manila envelope was full of fragrant old papers of faded typewriter and hand lettering. A drawing of the construction plans for a wooden deck and a shopping list added to the appeal of the refreshing, almost hallucinatory quality of the poems. Little notes about life, art and time filled the margins. There was also a conspicuous absence: the entry fee.

Cameron and I savored the perusal of the package over wine with a house guest named Chance. The next day I hauled out my favorite typewriter and answered John's letter assuring him that we would undoubtedly work together soon. It turned out that he was a friend of regular Sauvage contributor, Sophia Kidd. In her company we made a trip to neighboring Ventura to meet John. To our delight, he loaded us up with exquisite woodblocks and played guitar with us at his beautiful apartment one of the most cohesive residences I've visited. Shown below is the wood-working bench in the corner of the kitchen. In the other room were a bed and typewriter.

This is hopefully only the first of many collaborations with this beautiful soul and a cover that will live well wrapped around Windfall, words as sharp and subtle. The book will be bound and available in April 2010.

How to Make a Valentine.

Lettre Sauvage was featured in video on the website of our hometown paper the Ventura County Star.

Tegan was kind enough to come by and help out with the demonstration.

Thanks to Anthony Plascencia for the production.

sliding titles

Another gem: the cover of Lloyd C. Douglas's 1929 novel Magnificent Obsession, which was later adapted for two films. For an intro to cinema course, I recently assigned the 1954 Douglas Sirk version as part of a study on "surgical melodrama" (the other film was Kim Ki-Duk's Time, from 2006). I think the steep incline of the letters in this title design points to how quickly things can come undone in that sharp-edged subgenre. It's like a door half-open, words spilling out before the story's even begun.

ornaments

I recently discovered, via a Google image search for the frontispiece on a rare edition of Borges' Library of Babel (I love the fortuitous linkages that can happen while searching for things online, like a Surrealist party game), the smart and delightful feuilleton blog. There I found some of the loveliest ornaments I've ever seen on the cover of a 1945 edition of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In addition to the repetition of the motif, the uneven delicacy of the ornament offers a sense of a hand-picked bouquet carefully arranged around an afternoon table, or an archaic stringed instrument that produces a thin reedy lilt. As John Coulthart notes, the backwards-swinging "y" is especially enchanting, and is so cleverly employed for this story of wayward time and its consequences.

Community Studio

Lettre Sauvage offers training in letterpress printing, book design, simple binding and rents the studio for $10 an hour to trained printers. We're no longer scheduling group workshops since it's been more convenient for everyone to make appointments and pursue individual interests. You can check out our workshops page for examples of things to make while you learn the ropes.

Our Community Studio program has been a way for us to meet romantic, detail oriented people and share our love of letterpress. A few of our guests are Faith and Kathryn of Creative Shift Design, Jennifer from Ambrosia Creative who posted cool photos of our studio, and David and Serg of Hertz-lion.

The photo above is of the lovely Faith with her hand on the steel lever of the C&P. Tours are free. Come on down.

APIS

Named upon reading the following lines in Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn:
“Now for the aluminum wings with which to fly to that far-off place, the bright country where Apis, the father of fornication, dwells.”

APIS is a journal of art, literature and essays presented as an offering to the erotic --sensual, hyper-real, striking, mystical, awful, gripping-- realities that collect our minds and senses in seeming unison, with orgasm and true love as prime metaphors.

An all letterpressed, hand-bound limited edition of 123 to be released in 2009. Write to info@lettresauvage.com for more information.

Submissions are still being accepted.

To date, contributors include:
Poetry & Prose: Lorinda Ann Neumann, Sophia Kidd, Gina Covarrubias,
Art & Photography: Dame Darcy, John Nichols (from the collection), Ken Volok, Doug Anderson

Editor's Note:

I enjoy working on an erotic collection because it keeps my mind on essentials. Much of my time is spent doing work that exists in a sort of spiritual mid-range: helping people along with their projects, keeping the house clean, using a calendar and online banking. These are the guts of life that must run smoothly. And, when I turn my attention toward the erotic, the tuning of the senses, the waking of the heart, I see that my other work plays an important supporting role as clean, bright foil for ecstasy.

That we might enjoy a ride on the surplus of our labors. That our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our souls, our books, might come to fullness. And, of course, that somebody at sunrise will be distraught with love!

The making of the publication is just getting started. Evaluating submissions, editing, designing the book are coming along. Raising the money is loathsome. And yet, I know that the work will emerge from this mess totally pure.

And in closing, I was delighted to find that the Advanced Papyrological Information System goes by the acronym APIS!

Yma at Work

Yma Ray is the youngest worker at the press. Her jobs include mixing ink, making monoprints, counting envelopes and cutting scrap paper into even smaller stacks of pieces on the guillotine.

There comes a time when real work is a welcome break from all the games, songs and activities we so carefully plan out to practice simple things like counting and spelling. Checking items off a list or counting envelopes and paper are jobs Yma enjoys and she likes knowing that she's really helping.

I read about including children in work in the book Better Late than Early by Raymond Moore. Here's a brief excerpt from the Moore Foundation site:

Work. Constructive, skill-building, entrepreneurial work builds children's self-confidence, creativity, and self-control, and does it more quickly. It is the most dramatic and consistent cure for behavior and personality problems. If you give children authority to manage your home to the extent that they can accept responsibility, they mature rapidly and naturally. Make them officers in your home industries. There is no more certain key to happy home education-or other schooling-regardless of institutional level. We've seen no one fail, rebel, or burn out.

Begin small. Start your children to work when they start to walk. Add freedom as they accept responsibility. No cash allowances! Let them earn their way, helping you make or grow and sell cookies, muffins, bread, wooden toys, vegetables, or service lawns, baby-sit, etc. By 6 or 8, many can run businesses. See Minding Your Own Business (MYOB) for more than 400 cottage industries. Do comparison shopping: apples/oranges, Grapenuts/Sugar Pops, etc. (nutrition, frugality, and math lessons). Let your kids use your checking account to pay your bills. The bank corrects their "math papers."

And also, for a stark look at creepy child labor, check out the photography of Lewis Hine.