Some-things

Hello all. Just got back from New York, well let’s make that 2 weeks ago. Holidays seem to delay all forward progress. Regressing into old family bickering habits tend to take over that “holiday spirit.” Or is that the spirit? See below:

New York became one of those whirlwind tours. My friend calls me and an afternoon conversation becomes a trip to the big city. We made it in late around 6 am with tensions rising. GPS is truly misleading. Like cheating on a test. You are fairly confident in your ability to cheat/listen to the screen, but not so confident in the other person’s ability to take their own test/or the GPS have correct coordinates.

The next night we made our way out to Brooklyn to the Vanishing Point where we witnessed the alive and well DIY culture in the Eye and Ear Festival. It served as a benefit show for the Brooklyn based “Show Paper.”

“NY Eye & Ear is a 2 day record fair and all-ages music festival celebrating NYC homegrown DIY recording labels and bands. This is NYC’s only record fair devoted exclusively to NY record labels.”

There I met the wonderful Sto who co-runs Cinders Gallery, a beautiful gallery in Williamsburg, where they sell all sorts of handmade and independent goodies. Along with excellent up for the current show. Other highlights at the festival was discovering The Journal of Popular Noise, an extremely interesting series of 7″ in a fold-out magazine form. It’s simple, mathematical, and precise, the music might be anything but.  A few highlights of the show on Saturday were: La Otracina, Necking, AAAPE, and Spectre Folk.

One of the days? I went to meet with Amy Mees and Mark Wagner at X-ing Design/Books.

“X-ing Design is a little design house with innovative solutions for any budget. In addition to our work-for-hire X-ing Design put it’s talents to task as X-ing Books, publishing literature in exciting and nifty formats”

Doesn’t that sound nice. It was! They were really wonderful and helped quote me a bunch of different prices on printing. We discussed layout and book design and came up with a stitch that I am 90% sure will be the design for “Some-things #1.”  The stitch is dubbed the “Double Pamphlet Stitch.”  It gives the book the illusion of a spine, two full bleed 11 x 17′s, and an odd tab through the middle of the book which can be used when attaching the CD and DVD. It gives the book a unique style, but placing the electronic media smack dab in the middle, as opposed to the front or back. I’m particularly interested in this because my intention with “Some-things” was not to make complimentary or companion pieces of the CD and DVD, but place them on an equal level. (Hopefully, I’ll get to a small tutorial on how to make this stitch later on.)

Here are some wonderful resources for bookmaking I’d like to share:

1. Booklyn - Booklyn’s mission is to promote artist books as an art form and an educational resource, to provide the general public and educational institutions with services and programming involving contemporary artist books, and to assist artists in exhibiting, distributing and publishing artist books.

2. Gaylord – Library supplies. They have everything. Order a free catalog and just browsing will give you dozens of cool ideas.

3. Talas – Professional Archival, Bookbinding, Conservation and Restoration supplies.

4. Staples – A big superstore. You know it.

Ok, that’s good for now. Until I feel like doing this again.