Lauren Nassef

 

I've posted several times about Lauren Nassef, but she is well-worth revisiting. 

I love the simple straight forward nature of her drawing while having a sly sense of humor.

Her Drawing A Day blog is still going strong after years and I see that she's just uploaded 20 new pieces to her shop, which fill me with want, like this quick fox.

Tarkovsky's Mirror Set to Arvo Pärt's Mirror in the Mirror

I think I keep looking for these beautiful little spots to rest my eyes and mind and this is a particularly lovely one.
Hope you all a a wonderful weekend.

*via flor de papel
also really worth the visit.

Joni Sternbach

Joni Sternbach's 
wet collodian plates.
Images like these give my mind a place to rest.  A moment of peace.   A monasitc mini-vacation daydream. 
They're like a mug of tea alone on the back porch in the afternoon.
Drink it in.

Sick Day

I'm going to try my hardest to stay quiet and restful today. It's a sick day. 

It's been an exhausting week and at the center of it have been the trials of raising a strong willed and determined teenage son.

You rarely see teens blogged about on lifestyle blogs.  Always toddlers, or under twelves.

Their messy and trying is cute.

Teens' messy and trying is not.

How do parents survive these years with any sense of humor intact? 

 Then he gives me this. 

His high school poetry assignment.

A page from Napoleon.

(sigh)

Such complicated creatures.

The Loveliness of Lark Press

In spite of the lack of sleep, which is not due to active debauchery, but a, hopefuly temporary yet inconvenient  sleeping disorder which has set in the last few days, my long weekend in Portland has been good.
Lots of good girl-family time, which is rare and prized.
And a bit of shopping.
The most satisfying of which was here. Lark Press is my dream shop and this time I had the good luck to meet Nik of Bittersugar, who has a show just across the street of a phonetic alphabet at Ristretto Roasters at 3808 N Williams.  You can see more photos on her blog.
You can snag these here.
My plan is to get one for each letter in my family: PEAQ.  I'm very excited about this, though I have no wall space in my home yet, so I will have to clear a wall first.

So happy that I gave my son a Q name, because that quail is so perfect he makes my teeth hurt.

(Curtin, OR)

Ok, so this takes a little more than 5 minutes (without buffering) and is amazing to see. My computer takes an agonizingly long time with the buffering, and I was happy to see it through to the end.
This stop motion of a limited edition artist's book being made from printing to binding was made by Abigail Uhteg at the Women's Studio Workshop by compiling some 3000 photographs. See more info here.

Jess Hirsch has a new website. 

Brittany Sanders

These a few select images from Brittany Sanders' limited edition book, Denkbilder.  It's a slim edition of 7 and just 4"x4" in dimension, but full of old images culled from turn-of-the-century books of Paris and text (and this part I love) that has been selected from a much larger work of Walter Benjamin on the modern city. 
I love what happens when text and images are recontextualized  and made into something beautifully, uniquely it's own, but with a thread of the original ideas.

Bird Feet

Bird Feet by Bryan Kring  

Christmas on Craigslist

For all of you out there who have procrastinated so long and are feeling the pressure of coming up with something special for your loved ones this Christmas, Craigslist has a few ideas.  Just search Christmas and see a few things you may not have thought of on your own.

. ..... .
Emily Sutton
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via Cafe Cartolina

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Shelby Lee Adams
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Phiona Richards 

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via Cafe Cartolina

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Shane Waltener

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via (a new favorite).... of paper and things

Here we go......while one thing I love about my press, and my studio in general, is the trip I take from the here and now of today to the here and now of another time.....I can't ignore the need to marry that process to the here and now of the internet.....Monkey Puzzle Press now has it's own facebook page.

Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör (2009) from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.
via design milk
Oh, this fits into my little neo-luddite kick just perfectly!

Find the rainbow

I found this over at The Ladies of Letterpress. Appeals to the Luddite in me. My clamshell press is not a lot more complex than this, really, which is exactly what I love about it. There are no motors running while I'm working, maybe just some Leonard Cohen crooning in the background and the levers and hinges of the press gliding. It's a quiet, meditative process (not as fast as these two at work).
Lately, as I'm gearing up for holiday faires my studio is feeling like an old-school Santa's Workshop and I find that's actually influencing the designs I'm coming up with which are heading more towards toys and decorations of a more hands-on era.  I'm enjoying the process very much.