Long Hours — Short Distance

A proof printed over a proof. My favorite prints are often the ones that never make it into my books.

I feel I have been moving at a snail's pace lately, so there is a snail in my latest book. If I were a mollusk, this would be me. The book is so fresh that the ink is still wet on the cover and not a copy yet bound. But by this time tomorrow I hope for both book and box to be done.

Mother, more Time

I am having so much fun playing with my stencils. Here, the 28 around checkerboard is overlaid with an Islamic style cosmic mandala of 12 around. Because they share a divisor for four, some interesting alignments happen.

Here's the checkerboard in silver, Islamic mandala in gold, and a star pattern, fives and sixes, on top in black. The stars and the mandala patterns meet up nicely in places due to their common divisor of six.

I am trying to work out a design for a thirty day month. I thought I could use sixes and fives, and bring in the twelve for the twelve months of the year, but I think the 28 grid may have to go. So I am working out other ideas and colors.

More in a few days, hopefully success!

Six Days Left

The last print is finished for Mother Time. Of course I still have the cover and title page, and four more pieces of text to set in type and print. I have 6 days now to deliver the book, and can't believe I am stopping to post, but my feet and body and mind get tired. Plus, I thought maybe I could work on the cover design. Ha!

Here is the text for the image above: Besides the obvious doubling of thirty, sixty has its own measure in the moon and correspondences to Earth. 6 x 6 x 60 = 2,160 = the moon’s diameter in miles. In the ancient Hindu system of measure, there are 21,600 breaths per day to equal ten times the moon’s diameter. The mean distance between the earth and moon is 60 x 60 x 60 = 216,000 miles. We can only wonder that the ancient Sumerians chose this base 60 system to measure by, thereby keeping in perspective their relationship to the moon, the sun and the planets. We still use this system today to measure time.

Funny to read this again and think about my 6 days left!

Last night I had a dream about the cups that chain down from our gutters. During our Thanksgiving cold snap everything had frozen up. I took a picture of them then, and for some reason dreamed of them all frozen up again last night. Maybe I was cold. Below freezing temperatures, but no snow, are in the forecast again.

Billy just came home from a geometry night with a friend. Yippee, that means my work day is over now!

Early to Bed, Early to Rise

Lately Billy and I have felt healthy, wealthy, and wise during the work week, going to bed early and getting up before light. But the weekends have been quite the reverse. We've been staying up partying and printing till too long after midnight. (Bill doing more of the partying and me more of the printing.)

We went to an amazingly over the top party over the weekend and had a late night drive home from Seattle that was intense. Many of those inches of rain were on the freeway as I hydro-planed our way home in just under 2 hours. Few cars were passing me, but when they did, their rooster tails of water were blinding and lasting so long I was worried I would hit something or someone.

The weekend was a flood of rain, literally. We had over 5 1/2 inches in 48 hours. When we got home the ground between the house and my studio was flooded, and in the morning Bill was out digging a trench to drain the water down the driveway, something we did the last el nina winter.

The night before the party I was up till 1 am, printing printing printing. I am honing in on some designs to illustrate Mother Time.



Check out this link - http://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/bookart
I am excited to see my Revealing History of Women's Underwear in a show at the Sallie Bingham Center at Duke University.

I am hanging in there, but need to get to work now.

Mother Time

"Every twenty-eight days the moon moves through all twelve signs of the zodiac to return to the same place in relation to the stars. Due to this lunar cycle, twenty-eight day months have divided the year in many cultures and still do in various Hindu, Islamic, and Hebrew traditions. Women’s menstrual cycles average twenty-eight days and have been symbolically related to the moon’s cycle throughout history. Interestingly, human gestation, the time it takes for a fetus to develop in the womb, averages 280 days. No wonder that the moon is often feminized and in many native cultures is called 'Mother' or 'Grandmother.'"

This is an excerpt from my new book edition project called Mother Time. I am working on 3 projects at once, all towards various deadlines. All the holidays are working ones for me! Billy has been a big help, cutting stencils and some linoleum for me, and cleaning the press in between as usual. I don't know what I would do without him. Shweta was also in the studio with me this weekend, helping me with excellent color suggestions and making multiple serious offers to organize and clean my studio. I could use some of that!

We were all pretty tired after having a lot of grandkids playing and climbing all over us, cooking, dish washing, and eating lots of pie. (It was all good.) We all had such a very good time. (The pies were 4: apple, cherry, pumpkin, and coconut cream. The grandchildren were 4, adult children were 4, Grandparents were 2, and the dirty dishes were endless.) There was even a snowball fight!

But we were tired the next day and Bill still worked so hard on a stencil for me to use for the print up top. Unfortunately, he cut a 42 pointed star instead of a 28, and we had to start all over again! I know I'll use it eventually, so it's nice to have it in the back file.

By the way, this printing style is done with stencils. The printing technique I learned from Kathy Kuehn, but designing and cutting stencils to make them I figured out on my own. I love it!

"Is That A Pistil In Your Pocket

or are you just happy to see me?"

I was dying to use this variation on the famous Mae West quote in my book, Erotica Botanica, back when I had other ideas of what my book was to be.

These are some of the flower prints for the pop-up version of Erotica Botanica.

I am working pretty hard, and can't really focus on blog posting these days. But I thought it would be nice to at least post a proof of some flowers and some real flowers that are thick into their "reproductive behavior." I love euphemisms.







This orchid cactus is not native to here and lives indoors. I don't think it has a friend to help it out.


Bill is at the kitchen table trying to rescue me from my latest registration "challenge." I think I should go help him now.

Erotica Botanica

Enter the sensual Erotica Botanica through an unfolding caress of its leaf shaped pages. Delicate flowers with enticing organs float up from the folds above a bed of leaves and seed pods. Erotic verse, written by flowers and pollinators, inspires the viewer to contemplate the sexual desire of plants.

Well, here it is. The current version of Sex In The Garden renamed as Erotica Botanica. I am so tired. I have been working night and day. And this is just a first proof copy, there is still so much more to do. This version with the pop-ups will be the deluxe. The trade version will not have the colorful flowers and the poems will be inside the folds.

Billy has helped me with the poetry, which has been really fun. He surprised both of us.

I am so glad I took a week of retreat and had so much time in nature. It really helped me to deepen into this project and some great ideas came out of that time to be incorporated; some of it poetry, and some of it visual design.

I think I have cut the large leafy image (folded into four pages) at least four times already. I had to cut at least five different flowers, maybe more, to get just one that I like. There are four flowers total. The book has gone through so many different designs. There have been four totally different concept designs, some taken almost to print. And since starting with this leafy cut out design there have been about 6 different directions I have gone with it. I have never worked and reworked a book so much. I have a tall stack of models and reject prints.

My apologies for being absent so long, and for not posting more of the process. I have not stopped for hardly a thing since my retreat. Bill's eldest son visited with his family of four this last weekend (soon to be five) and that was my only respite. Though a house full of grandchildren is hardly a rest!

Today I sent the images in for a show, hoping I'll be selected. Today was the deadline, but I made it in time! It has been a delight to feel so inspired by this book. I struggled for a while, searching for the right expression in book form, but once I settled into this one, I enjoyed all the explorations of design.

Thanks to my friends who have been so encouraging and supportive while I mostly ignored them until I needed their advice!