Much of the studio time this winter was spent working on the engravings for The Bicycle Diaries. Casting of the type in now nearly complete, and I will begin printing engravings soon. As for The River, I had two productive spurts of work on the dummy: one just after returning home from the East Coast in October, and another in the dead of winter. I have decided to treat the fish specimen prints like Benjamin Fawcett and others have done in the past–placed in the land/water scape from which they came.
While cutting the short head it occurred to me that each scale is unique–within the over-aching symmetry of the pattern there exists constant variation. Though the surface of the water seems a grand abstraction, there is really nothing abstract about it: the physics involved must be absolute. I am interested in how these two ideas might relate to each other in the composition. I haven’t tackled the problem yet of how to do this.
I have been looking to a Dutch book of birds from (I think) the mid-nineteenth century as a typographical model for the river book.
Winter has come, and gone, since my last post. It was a long and busy season. In March the Lund Volunteer Fire Department (along with Pepin), conducted water rescue training. I am in the gumby suit being tethered so that I can be retrieved.
Yesterday the taps were removed from the maple trees. I had been going into the woods, almost daily, since mid-January laying new sap lines. This year 850 gallons of sap was hauled to Plum City for processing. The syrup will soon be available from the “special” page of the website store. Really. Label type was printed letterpress on the Heidelberg, along with the 3-color wood engraving.