Photo Transfers

Some shots from our October DIY SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY workshop last week...

Little Indie Press Festival

(now updated with photos!)

Tonight is the eve of our second Little Indie Press Festival, an event that kicked off last year with a bang and will hopefully only grow and get better every year.  This year, we're cashing in on Wabash Arts Crawl traffic, which should be useful.  We have a smaller number of exhibitors, but it's a slightly more diverse group in flavor (from literature to book arts to visual artists & comics).  Last year, it came on the heals of another event that took a lot of prep time on my part (our very awesome horror movie trivia night I made all the questions up for), so the day of the fest, I found myself running around like I was on fire and trying to finish up all the last minute details and in general freaking out, almost to the point that it began to feel more like something I had to SURVIVE than something I could, you know, ENJOY. Sad especially since it was completely my idea and pet project--one of the things I'd dreamed we could one day do in the library.

I've realized in the last few months that this the case with most everything I do.  No matter how well prepared I am for things like these, I tend to leave small details for the day of, for the last minute, and those details end up hitting snags and obstacles and the next thing I know, I am crashing through the day trying desperately to reach the finish line.   Most notable of these things seems to be things like AWP, and open studios, and pretty much any event that involves a lot of little, fine details to make happen.  So today, I was resolute.  I would finish everything I had to do for tomorrow TODAY, all the signage needs, getting my dgp table ready to layout, organizing the zine station, corresponding with the orgs & publishers.  Tomorrow, ideally all I will have to do is move furniture, set up the zine supplies, and set out the dgp table. And then maybe, just maybe, actually enjoy the event I have been planning for months.  Maybe.

Today, I slept very late and made french toast.  Today, I wrote a blurb for a friends book.  Today, I put the finishing touches on a draft of the second half of the Plath centos project.  Today, I am not doing much but of course, trying to do everything, especially since next weekend will be busy with Halloween parades and another Sunday shift at the library.  Before that, there is a slew of layouts * cover designs to finish, the Little Indie Press to happen, some thoughts on an exciting non-poetry, library-focused writing project about to take shape. Halloween is getting closer, and I've no costumes plans, but there will be shipwreck-ghost puppets for next weeks parade if all goes well in their construction.

The daylight is noticeably shorter now, and the last couple of days overcast and dull.  The trees, all but the most dallying, are giving up the ghost.  I have pulled out sweater dresses and jackets and boots this past week. I have been trying to give in and embrace fall instead of trying to fight it.  To transform it all in my head into a warm, cozy thing and not a cold,  desolate thing.  I'll let you know how that works out.

The last two weeks have been the same rushing train of activity and no where to step off.  First, our Uncanny Specimens week went phenomenally well, the panel interesting and informative with our artists, the printmaking fun and now one of my favorite techniques for prints and definitely one to revisit (see photos below), and  the cryptooology readings on Wednesday awesome as ever.  I was coming down with a cold and fever the final part of the week, but it's now abated, leaving only a slow raspy cough in its wake.

Last weekend included our visit to Michigan State to host a zine table at the Cultural Rhetorics conference, and then Sunday, finally a day off to right the ship, but not really at all, so I'm laying low this weekend, napping and finishing up some creative business--a conversation with one of my fellow BLP authors, Cynthia Manick, for their website,  some blurb writing for other poets, some work on the florographia centos.  Maybe some painting tomorrow with some accordian books.  I'm in the midst of really getting rolling with our Indie Press Festival plans, which is coming up in a couple weeks and for which readers need to be lined up, details ironed out, etc...It's soon followed by a workshop playing with vintage photos, which should also be fun.

In press news, I am still hacking my way through the thickest of the summer submissions and about to release another batch of chaps as soon as I get the last of the author copies due to go out out the door. Plus a whole bunch of orders I am perpetually behind on lately.  I am hoping to have responses to all subs out the door by Thanksgiving this year, so I think I am holding to the rails...Until next time,,,

nature printmaking