Beowulf!

Seen the trailer for Neil Gaiman's version of Beowulf? No? See it now . . .

More Books -- Help McSweeney's

McSweeney's needs help, so they've put all their books (and t-shirts, too) on sale. You know you need a t-shirt with squid on. Who doesn't? I do. Also, a book with a Neil Gaiman story in. Plus magazines (I have a couple issues of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern--good stories, fabulous design, and really way too thick and hardcoverish to be a mere "magazine"), lots of other books, strange stationery and more. Go, buy if you can, browse if you can't.

Oh, The Books

While looking online for a copy of Islamic Bindings and Bookmaking, which sells for absurd prices on ABE, I came across the David Brown/Oxbow Books website. Oh, so many books I would love to have in my library. They distribute for a lot of academic publishers, so they have a fantastic selection of books on illuminated manuscripts, swords, textiles, archaeology, and all sorts of other wonderful technical and fascinating things. Alas, the book I wanted is long out of print, but I found lots of other books to want. Perhaps it's time to get together the materials to revise my old sword papers and write those other sword articles I've been thinking about, and put them together into a book I can "publish" through Lulu. Hmmm . . .

Type Specimens

Yesterday my wood type class installed our group projects in various places around NSCAD. Two of the groups (including mine) installed in windows off the Granville Mall/courtyard--one in the Seeds building and one in the building right next door if you're looking for it. The third group put theirs in the display case in the Duke building elevator.

I'm not normally enthusiastic about group projects, but this one was fun. The main idea for the project was mine, and I kind of felt like maybe I was too much of a control freak, but everyone kept agreeing with me . . .


(Apologies for the shadows; click photos to embiggen.) It didn't turn out quite as fabulous as I'd imagined--we had problems getting the letters to hang right, and I would have liked the book to be propped up a bit, and the backdrop is obviously a white bedsheet--but considering the time constraints and the somewhat ambitious nature of the project, I think it came out pretty well.

Here's the project from the adjacent window:


And one of the elevator:


After the installation, we walked around and did a critique, then went back to the classroom and had food. We were sort of calling it our "opening," even though our class were the only people there, so I wore my tailcoat and pinned a leftover blue N to my lapel. It was fun.

Here are a couple of closeups of my group's project.


It's hard to see, but the letters in the books are loose, and pinned in like butterfly specimens. When I made the book, I had intended to do a quick case binding that wouldn't do much other than look good in the window, but I ended up staying up late one night making a nice solid proper binding with the tapes laced into the boards, and a hollow back, and everything. It's the biggest book I've ever made, and even though the pages are only cartridge paper, it'll make a fine sketchbook (or, I'm thinking, a book for practicing calligraphy in). Assuming the rest of my group lets me keep it.


All of the letters we used were printed on a Vandercook proofing press from old wood type, then carefully cut out. (If anyone ever has a surplus of money they don't know what to do with, I'd like a Vandercook, please.)


I think ours was the only piece of the three with a title. Oh, and I didn't put my name first because I'm an egotist; my group members insisted.

Blog News

Right, so my archives disappeared from the sidebar a while back, which I figured was probably due to my blog using an older template. Therefore, I decided to finally upgrade to a new template. Alas, the choices are slim, and the one that was in similar colours to my old template wasn't one I especially liked. I actually really like this new one, except it's the very same one that Ryan (of Halifax) and Deva both chose for theirs.

And speaking of Ryan's and Deva's blogs, I bugged them until they gave in and started them, though Ryan hasn't yet posted all his interesting responses to various "proofs" for the existence of god, and other odds and ends I keep telling him would be good blog posts. You'll find his blog here (also in the sidebar). Deva's blog is full of all the interesting and wonderful things she has been exploring through her reading lately. I wanted her to blog about them so I could vicariously experience the research she's doing. Yay! Read her blog here (or click in sidebar).

Sometimes we have involved conversations about stuff like this too, so reading Deva's and Ryan's blogs is a bit like eavesdropping through the window of our apartment.

The Wilds of Nova Scotia. With Books!

Yesterday, Deva and I had planned to go to Frenchy's, a secondhand place I've heard much about since moving here but never visited (I should clarify, Frenchy's is actually a chain, not a single store). We thought we might also make a quick stop at Value Village and perhaps Chapters, and then grab some groceries on the way home. After visiting the Frenchy's in Sackville, where I got a gorgeous velvet scarf for $1.50 and a couple of tops for work, we got back on the road and the conversation turned, as it often does when Deva and I are in the same place, to books. Somehow Wolfville (home of Acadia University) also came up, and I mentioned a bookstore I'd seen in the phone book that looked intriguing. Deva thought it might be a shop she remembered, and so we decided, what the hell, and drove out to Wolfville (in a car borrowed from Judy, Deva's mom).

Said bookstore, The Odd Book, turned out to be as wonderful as I'd hoped (though the "books about books" section was a bit of a disappointment). They had a lot of obscure old stuff for reasonable prices (plus a few things I though were priced a little on the high side). When we pried ourselves away from the books, we each had a substantial stack and had decided that semi-regular trips to book shop might be a good idea. Here's what I ended up with:

• Edwin Mulhouse by Stephen Millhauser -- fiction by the fellow who wrote the short story that the movie The Illusionist was based on (fine movie, too)
• Martin Dressler by Stephen Millhauser -- yeah, same guy; I've been devouring his short stories, and so decided to tackle his novels
• The End of Faith by Sam Harris -- one to add to my atheist library; it was on my list of things to look for specifically
• The Great Houdini by Williams and Epstein -- for my research on the history of magic that will eventually result in a novel
• Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World by Jeremiah Curtin -- for the fairy library; I'm not sure if I used this one in my thesis--if not, I should have
• On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin -- finally my own copy; I've been reading Darwin's Ghost by Steve Jones, which is sort of an updated version
• Issues in Science and Religion by Ian G. Barbour
• The Death of Adam: Evolution and its impact on Western thought by John C. Greene

So, lots of fabulous things to read.

And I have much more to write about, such as Sue's visit, my birthday (plus thanks to gift-givers), and my thoughts on the two new blogs listed to the left (Deva's and Ryan's, for which I am sort of responsible), and the change in appearance of this very blog.

Rare Typo

The class I've been taking for the past week and will be taking for two more weeks is called Rare Typographic Mixed Media Printing. I didn't really know what to expect from it except that we'd be using the wood type in the Dawson Printshop (anything to play with type, I thought, and the Dawson room is quickly become the home of my heart at NSCAD). Anyway, despite the intensity of the three week, four-days-a-week format, I'm having a blast. I've just finished up project one this weekend. We were put in groups of three to set up a galley of type (and despite my usual aversion to group projects, I had fun). Our project was then to each use the same galley to make our own individual prints. I've ended up with two editions of three prints made from various bits of paper assembled into a sort of collage (or something), plus an accordion book (also in an edition of three). I'll try to get some pics up, as these brief descriptions don't really say much.

Tomorrow I've got to do a mock up for part of our project two--a group project to somehow use type to express contrast in an installation that makes use of three-dimensional space. More on that when I see if my ideas will work.

So that, besides work at the VRC and online stuff at About PSP, is what I've been doing on a regular basis.

Damn, Now I Need to Go to Disneyland Again

Pirates. Nintendo DS. Free downloads. Sigh.

RIP Lloyd Alexander

Yesterday.

Erm . . . Yeah

I suspect there may be a few people out there wondering why I haven't been blogging. There is a good reason. Sort of.

Last semester was the proverbial semester from hell, except that most of my courses were actually really good. What was hellish was constantly having way too many things to do and not enough time to get them done, let alone get them done to the standards I wanted them to reach. The reason for this hellish semester? I had the usual course load of 15 credits plus my job. The problem was that one course (typography) was a 3-credit course that should have been worth 6 credits, and another (intro printmaking) was a 6-credit course that should have been worth 9. This was only partly alleviated by also having an art history (craft and design history) -- art history courses usually only involve reading things and showing up for class (this one did have a short paper, too, though). My other class was basic colour photo, which I really would have like to have more time for, as it kind of became a refuge from my other classes.

Anyway, I got my grades in the mail yesterday. Not as good as I hoped for one class, better than I feared for another, so I suppose it balances out. My GPA has now dropped below 4, though. Sigh. Here's what I ended up with:

• AHIS2120 Craft and Design History 1750-1850 -- A+


• CMDS2500 Typography -- B+


• PHOT2600 Basic Colour Photography -- A


• PRTM2000 Introduction to Printmaking -- A-

For comparison's sake, the lowest mark I've had since starting at NSCAD is B+, which is what I ended up with in both of my Foundation drawing classes. And now typography. Sigh.

Anyway. My reasons for not blogging since the semester ended . . . about a month ago are not so good. Mostly I had simply got out of the habit. And also bringing everything up to date just seemed too monumental a task.

My summer will be a little more relaxed. I got a very part time job at the Visual Resources Collection (the facility formerly known as the slide library) at school, where I spend my time filing slides, remounting slides, checking in and out slides and videos, and other library-ish tasks. My boss and the other assistants are great people, so it should not be an unpleasant employment experience. I'll keep the job into the fall, as well, unless my course load becomes as crazy as last semester. This does not seem likely, as due to an error in the online timetable, I apparently signed up for a course that doesn't exist, and may have to drop another due to not being able to take the prerequisite in the summer (cancellations of summer courses mean not being able to get student loan, which means not being able to take summer courses, except for one that I am paying for by getting a job at the VRC, which requires me to be taking a summer class to qualify). Anyway. Summer will consist of 10-15 hours a week of work at the VRC, something like that many hours or more working for About PSP, plus three weeks of 4-days-a-week, 4-hours a day class from the end of May to late June. Also lots of bookmaking. I've already been to Joe's studio a couple of times to ask advice and use tools and generally hang around being bookish.

Also, Sue and Selena are coming to town in just over a week, so I'll be hanging out with them as much as I can.

And, it'll be my birthday soon. Aaah! 35. Yep. Older than I look. Heh.

New Manuscript

Or, well, actually a really old manuscript: 8th century, in fact. It's very exciting, though they (not unexpectedly) fail to say anything about the structure of the book. The illuminations and calligraphy, naturally, steal the show. I guess it's hard to make structure exciting to the general public.

Grauh

I am back in NS, and still tying to catch up with the time zone. Will blog more when I do.

On My Way

Way too early tomorrow morning I shall be on a plane, en route to BC. I will, no doubt, strongly resemble a zombie when I arrive.

More Wishes

Wel, I went and updated my Amazon.ca wishlist (it's linked over there on the left somewhere). There were a few things -- a couple books and some PSP games -- that I'd forgotten to remove. And I've added a few things, but I keep forgetting things I thought of during the week and haven't added. Sigh.

Anyway, a few more things to add to the wish list below . . .

Practical Things

• knife sharpening apparatus -- for keeping my leather paring and bookmaking knives sharp, now that I spent a couple of hours in my teacher's studio getting them sharp. I'll need medium and fine ceramic stones (Spyderco makes nice ones that should be easy to find, or there's these ones from Lee Valley), and probably a coarse Diamond stone eventually, in case things get really messed up (here's the Lee Valley page on Diamond sharpening things -- the 6" is plenty big). Because the knives are flat on one side, kitchen knife sharpening apparatus are not generally good. Oh, yeah, and a strop. The most important thing is a strop and the grit that goes on it (once again, Lee Valley to the rescue).
  

Fun Things

• Inu Yasha season three box set DVDs. I already have the first two seasons and all the movies.
  
• The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana by Jess Nevins. MonkeyBrain Books, 2005 (official web site is here). I'm actually collecting rather a lot of Victorian fiction (especially science fiction), fiction set in Victorian times, nonfiction about Victorian times, and nonfiction about the history of magic, as reference for a novel that's been growing in my head for some time now, and is going to need to be started soon. I hope. To that end, movie versions of Victorian sf are also welcome. Jules Verne, especially. Even old black and whites. Maybe especially old black and whites. And The Illusionist and The Prestige, whenever they come out on DVD.
  

That's all I can think of right now. I think there was more, but it's gone now.

Holiday Wishes and Travel

I figure it's probably about time I made my holiday wish list, in case, you know, people don't know what to get me. Of course, no one has to get me anything. I'm quite happy just having you all around in the world. These things here listed are not in any particular order, by the way.

Practical Things

Of course, in my world, most practical things are also fun, so don't worry about getting me something practical when you want me to have fun. These ideas are both.

• art supplies -- I'm most focussed on book-making and printmaking right now (I have Intro Printmaking next semester), so things like paper, printing ink, bookbinding odds and ends, or gift certificates to art supply stores (Opus and Island Blue both have mail order, and of course there's Talas, but I don't know which if any of these do gift certificates) would be lovely.
  
• books -- Specifically books on bookbinding and books on books. I'll try to add all the relevant ones to my Library Thing list so people can see what I've already got. And I'll try to get my wishlists updated, too, so people can see which ones are at the top of my list. Or there's always the gift certificate route. Amazon (either .ca or .com), Chapters, Powells -- they're all fine (Powells has more used/antiquarian).
  
• light meter -- So I can figure out exposures for photography. I need something that has incident metering, but I think most of them do both incident and reflective these days. The ones we use at school are the Sekonic FlashMate or similar. I certainly don't need anything more complicated.
  
• PlayStation 3 -- Yeah, okay, no one's going to get me one. I'd be surprised if anyone can even find one any time soon. But I'd like the 60GB version just in case someone has too much money lying around. And it's in the Practical list because I can use it for work as well as play (on account of it can interact with the PSP).
  

Purely Fun Things

• books -- Yeah, books are fun. Niko likes books.
  
• Nintendo Wii (the console formerly known as the Revolution) -- that's pronounced "wee" if you were wondering, and yes there have been many jokes. I want to play Legend of Zelda in the worst way. And the Wii is backwards compatible, so I could play GameCube games, too. Alternatively, a GameCube would be cool, and cheaper, but won't play the newest Nintendo games.
  
• games -- EB Games certificates are good, or Futureshop, or you can get me the box set of all three Devil May Cry games. Or, if someone gets me a Wii or a PS3, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (or LoZ: Windwaker, which is GameCube, but Wii is backwards compatible) for Wii or Genji II for PS3. Also the Legend of Zelda game for DS if it comes out by xmas.
  
• DVDs -- I still don't have any Angel past season one, or any Farscape besides a few odd discs from season one. I'd really, really like the new Doctor Whos, though. The ones with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor or David Tennant as the tenth Doctor (though the old ones are cool, too). Those classic versions of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and Dracula with Bela Lugosi are tempting, too.
  

I'm sure there are other things which I have forgotten. Maybe even important things. So I will update this list if I think of anything else. Plus, there are always those cool unexpected things that I hadn't thought of but which are perfect. There always seem to be lots of those.

Oh yeah, and travel. I'll be arriving in the Nanaimo airport on December 13th after an obcenely long cross-country flying marathon, and will be leaving from the same airport on December 31st 29th. So if you're on Southern Vancouver Island, I might see you over the hols.

Bookish

In a recent conversation with my roommates, Deva asked, "If you were a superhero, who would you be, and what would your superpower be?" (Yes, we have conversations like this all the time, though it's usually Ryan who asks this sort of question.) My answer? "I think I'd have to be The Bookworm." A superpower was more difficult, but we settled on knowledge, or the ability to find out anything.

So yeah, our apartment is starting to look even more bookish than ever. As if my and Deva's shelves full of books (mine neatly ordered, though rather over-full, and Deva's haphazard and sometimes spilling over at the edges) didn't make it obvious enough that Book People live here, there are now -- crowding the computers and printers and scanners out of their dominance of one third of the living room -- an assortment of book-making apparatus. The first was an unassuming marble cutting board for paring leather on, that simply looked like it got lost en route to the kitchen. Then came the sewing frame and finishing press I ordered from England. Neither is very large on its own, but together they take up a fair bit of room, and I haven't actually decided where they'll live permanently yet. Then this morning the parcel guy brough a big box containing a small wooden press (a standing press or nipping press, perhaps; it's a sort of generic "book press" according to the tag on it). And sometime later this week I'll be adding a small-but-heavy metal press, of the same ilk as the wooden one, but more heavy-duty. My book arts teacher has one a previous student wants to sell for a very reasonable price. There may be a smallish board cutter, too. Now I just need to find a parlour-size letterpress and I'll be set. For now.

Blogthings - What Gender Is Your Brain?

Your Brain is 67% Female, 33% Male

Your brain leans female You think with your heart, not your head Sweet and considerate, you are a giver But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

What Gender Is Your Brain?

I Wish I'd Made These

Well, not really, but the photographs (ambrotypes, specifically) and camera obscura installations that Stephen Berkman makes really fit in with some of the stuff I've been playing with. (Via Brass Goggles and crossposted to Camera Obscura Nova, my Livejournal.)

Now This . . .

This is a watch I'd rather like. Pocket watch, roman numerals, mechanical (which is to say not battery-run, as in you have to wind it), chrome (not a big fan of gold, I), window for peering in at the gears working away . . . Very cool.

Madness, Shapechanging, Art

The Journal of Mythic Arts Summer /Fall 2006 issue is now up at the Endicott Studio website, and my paper "The Artist as Shaman: Madness, Shapechanging and Art in Terri Winding's The Woodwife" is included. You can scroll down the page to find it (but be sure to look at the other wonderful stuff too), or if you must, skip straight to it here.

This was originally written as an assignment for a workshop/seminar I took at SUNY New Paltz in . . . 2003, maybe, or was it 2002? So it's really Heinz Insu Fenkl's fault that I wrote it in the first place. And, of course, Terri Windling's for writing a book that made me ramble on at such length. (The mistakes and the stupid things are all my own fault of course). The paper was first published in the Mythic Passages web journal.