In a Time of Plague, Visit Innsmouth

Random bits of studio news...

Book score! More than a year ago I asked if anyone out there had a copy of Peter Burnhill's Type Spaces that needed a new home, with no joy. A couple of times I thought a copy might have appeared on Abe, but each time I was suspicious, and sure enough the listings were just blood-sucking drop shippers. When a copy appeared in March I didn't get too excited, but Half Moon Books, in New York, proved to be decent & honest. I've never paid so much for a (slightly) dog-eared paperback (their price was very fair, and well below the ridiculous numbers the drop shippers post), and I'm very pleased to have it. It's interesting that such a specific book became so hard to find within a decade of publication - UBC keeps its copy in special collections! The publisher, Hyphen Press, made a free PDF version of the book available, but I wanted the printed thing. It's a book that requires close and repeated reading.  

Speaking of Aldus, printing Griffo grinds along. I was supposed to be stuck in the studio all spring with it anyway so I didn't expect lockdown to affect progress, but it has had an energy-sapping effect. If that's the worst thing I can complain about, I'm doing pretty well. A page with details for this project has been added to the HM site. Issue prices, and the final details for different states, will be posted later in the summer. 

A few other new pages have been added to the Books section of the HM site. Copies of Will Rueter's Books Are My Utopia are being shipped out this month. While getting those out of her studio, Claudia is simultaneously binding a special Lovecraft project for HM, something that ties up a few loose ends that have been hanging around the studio. 

HM's usual booksellers are all in limbo until the economy gets back to something like normal, so these books will be available for purchase directly from HM (with a 10% discount to the issue price for orders received in May, 2020).

Be well, stay 2 meters apart, support your favorite booksellers.

New Works from Shinsuke Minegishi

Longtime HM friend & collaborator Shinsuke Minegishi has a solo show of new works opening in Tokyo next week, for any of you who will be in the area. His work continues to explore themes of clash and isolation through combinations of printmaking techniques in large formats. The piece below, title "fragility-technology" (2013, edition of 3) is a typical example, combining silkscreen, woodcut and linocut. The juxtaposed images of cooling towers is brilliant.

The show's opening will include a poetry reading by Shin's mother, Ryoko Minegishi. She has had several collections of her poetry published in Japan, all featuring one of more of Shin's original wood engravings. Their collaborations (look under "Book Works" on Shin's site) go back to the first samples of his work I ever saw - the ones that made me want to work with him - the suite "My God," completed while Shin was still a student at Emily Carr (where he's now an instructor), featuring her poem in the original Japanese and English translation. (Alas, the text was printed by silkscreen, but that's why he & I needed to meet up & start working together.)

The new show, titled "Resurrection," is being held at the Striped House Gallery, which is a very kool looking place.

Shinsuke Minegishi Solos, Fisher Denies Death

Lots of bookish exhibitions happening. First, HM friend & longtime collaborator Shinsuke Minegishi is having his first solo show, at the Burnaby Art Gallery. It covers the full spectrum of his printmaking, with the books he's done with HM featured prominently. The gallery is publishing a catalogue for the show; we'll have some details about that after the opening (a week today: Thursday 30 May). Shin will also be giving a talk on the following Saturday afternoon. We'll try to get a summary or recording of that available.

To help mark & celebrate the show, we printed a broadside (approx. 9 x 12 inches) using the frontis engraving Shin made for Barbara Hodgson's Good & Evil in the Garden (published 10 years ago!). We managed to yield about 20 or 25 decent copies, all of which are being given to Shin to distribute as he desires. Requests for a copy will be passed along for consideration.

Being pretty lazy, we set the press up to print the text and the block at the same time. Inking the type & block all together wouldn't work: the block needs more ink than the type, plus that mass of stuff down the middle throws everything off balance. So we built a forme that, when locked up, allowed just enough play to slide the block away from the type, so it could be inked separately.
 

Meanwhile, over in the middle of the country, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library has organized an exhibition titled A Death Greatly Exaggerated: Canada's Thriving Small & Fine Press. Kind of an apples & oranges pairing (pearing?) in that title, but it certainly will provide a broad spectrum of books. HM's in it, but don't know exactly which titles.

The image above was grabbed from the library's site. The file name includes "rueter_tunnel." Don't think we've ever seen one of his tunnel books. The exhibition was curated by John Shoesmith, Outreach Librarian. There's a catalogue.

Some Don't Know Some Some or 4AD

One of HM's favorite people (a bookseller, no surprise) wrote this week after reading the brief foreword in our latest, Types/Paper/Print. Dear Soul was politely wondering if "some some" - used in the foreword with reference to a quantity of typefaces included in the sampling - was a printer's term he had not previously encountered, or maybe not?

We cannot be responsible for other people's lack of knowledge. Given his own regional locutions, he should have immediately recognized it for being contextually similar to the plural "all you all." The term that appears in the T/P/P foreword is part of a lexicology familiar to printers as far back as Gutenberg, all of them having included some variant of it in something they printed at one time or another. Our correspondent really was a wonderful friend & supporter for the longest time; too bad we'll no longer be at home for his future calls or notes.

More significantly, major gaps in our own knowledge were serendipitously filled this week, and will make valued  contributions to the printing of upcoming books. The English music label 4AD may be the single most important influence on HM, both graphically (at least in terms of providing inspiration) and curatorially - the concept of  wildly diverse output united only by the tastes & interests of the people presenting it. If you liked what you'd heard from the label, you'd probably like whatever else you found from the label. And its in-house design team, 23 Envelope, our eyes to type in design.

The vinyl was purged long ago (good riddance) but over the years, whenever a 4AD CD was found, it was added to the collection. Imagine the happy surprise to find not one but two new (to us) items this week, both of which have proven sublime listening, the glacial wall-of-sound fog that fills a room and lets your mind wander while your body repeats a series of tasks (i.e. prints with a handpress). Swallow was an iffy candidate, as the credits listed singing (not something we generally want to hear), but that singing was built into the musical wall, mortar in the bricks. The Hope Blister was blissfully vocal free, and bonus - it was a new incarnation for Ivo (Mr 4AD) Watts and the team behind This Mortal Coil (iconic, but less frequently heard at HM due to the predominance of vocals in the tracks). Both of the new discs are sonic representations of HM's aspirations, & highly recommended.

Met with Shinsuke Minegishi this week, got into detailed planning for his retrospective book. Prints & engraved blocks all over his apartment floor for a few hours. Ideas bubbling. Publication about a year from now...

Mr Milroy's Gate to a Wonder World

That's the title that Shinsuke Minegishi gave to the new wood engraving he made as a frontis for Types/Paper/Print. We'd suggested something that riffed on the form of a handpress, and he was particularly taken with the honeycomb pattern on the Ostrander Seymour's platen. Voila. Very cool. And a teasing precis to the retrospective of his printmaking that HM will be publishing.

The block (image approx. 2 x 4 inches) was printed by Shin on gampi. It will be mounted on a printed sheet, bracketed between the title and his name, facing the book's title page. Shin will sign below the print in each of the  ten deluxe copies.

Printing of the text pages was completed last weekend, and copies have been collated. We may have enough extras printed on the Arches and handmade to sneak a few into some of the regular edition (i.e. replacing the Guarro sheets).

Claudia Cohen will be binding the deluxe copies in April, so those copies should be shipping in early May. The regular copies will start coming out of the HM studio by the end of March. Meanwhile, a four-page prospectus of upcoming projects (including T/P/P) was being printed this week by David Clifford at Black Stone Press. Copies will be included with orders for the new book, and there will also be a general mailing.

Shinsuke Minegishi Exhibition

A show of new works by past & future HM collaborator Shinsuke Minegishi has opened in Vancouver. The show is called "Transfer and Transformation," a title intended to be reflective of printmaking, the process, and of the artist.  Transfer refers to printmaking; a mirror image is transferred from a matrix onto another surface. Transformation refers to the stages of printmaking but also to the artist who evolves and changes with every new project.

The show is being held at Art Beatus Gallery, which was founded in Hong Kong in 1992. With the addition of the  Vancouver gallery in 1996, Art Beatus became the first gallery of its kind operating simultaneously on both sides of the Pacific. Art Beatus represents and promotes International modern and contemporary art with a unique focus on contemporary Chinese art. Shin's exhibition runs through December. 

HM's next project with Shin (it's been five years!) is planned for the fall of 2011, when we will publish a retrospective collection of wood engravings spanning the first 15 years of his career, with a new essay by him about printmaking.