Hope A 6/14/16 Hope A 6/14/16

EXQUISITE SUBSET

About a year and half ago, a friend talked me into attending a conference of papermakers. Sometimes I am not confident in my skills and identity and so around papermakers I tend to identify as a printmaker and vice versa. I once declared myself an enthusiast of mail art, because I love postcards but I didn't realize there is a community of people who participate in mail art and though in some ways it has influenced what I do, it is not the most accurate description.

I digress.

At this conference I met other papermaker-printmakers and we started a critique group, a salon if you will. We met, ate food, shared what we were working on. A new member joined as one left, and then another new member to make 4. We decided on the name subset as a reference to the overlap of our abilities and interests (including an interest in Venn diagrams). We applied for residencies and had shows on our own and then decided to get a show together.

We started with the idea of showing our individual work maybe linking them together by theme, like an exquisite corpse. Then we had the idea to try a few collaborative pieces. For one meeting,w e each brought something we had started but couldn't finish, blank paper, abandoned prints, half-finished books. We lay them on the table and then watch chose a few pieces to try to work on. We brought them back to the next meeting, lay them on the table again with additional unfinished pieces and chose again. Over 2 months we met about 5 times to exchange work and in this way created a body of weird paper works that somehow worked together, a bit of a pleasant surprise as we hung the show hours before the opening.

As we began this project, we also played the parlor game exquisite corpse, each starting a drawing, folding it over so only a few lines were visible , then passing it around to the next person to add to it. I made letterpress prints of the finished drawing and spent nights before the show opening hand coloring them with water color paint and a gold pen.

Of course I made a postcard that fit in this theme.

Keep Writing number 87, exquisite corpse. I can't wait to see what is sent back to me.

EXQUISITE works by subset is open at EM Wolfman Books in downtown Oakland through the end of June.

Hope A 7/27/15 Hope A 7/27/15

To Get A Letter...

Table for writing, chair for reading and smiling

A few examples of past postcards. "Framed"

Thank you thank you everyone who helped with this show: Misha who helped with the set-up, Andy who attempted to alleviate many worries and bought me dinner and created a soundtrack fro writing letters, , Alyssa who offered to help with the dismantling so I don't have to walk the folding tables home 20 blocks. And especially Justin Carder, owner of EM Wolfman's, who not only curates an incredibly good small bookstore, but also supports local writers, poets and artists, makes connections and retains enthusiasm. Saturdays here were lovely, writing letters, showing around the people who had come from the city (San Francisco) because they read about it in the paper, listening to readers as part of the BEAST crawl, eating cupcakes. It was a good month.

If you are still waiting for a reason to subscribe, do it now and save $5 until August 3rd, the sad day the show comes down.