first i get up really early, drive for 2 and 1/4 hours to syracuse, board a plane to chicago, deplane, reboard to san francisco. i’m there, in high early summer so it seems, and a taxi (such luxury!) takes me to the graduate. go to my room, and settle a bit and leave to find friends. linda marshall and jennifer kinnard are here and it’s lovely to see them. as we enjoy and i remember what it is to not have airplane roars in my tinnitus plagued ears, a begin to sort of relax.

with good sidewalk advice one morning a little walk looking for a promised starbucks because i needed tea or chai caffiene.

travel was saturday, sunday was codex. one of my first visitors was suzanne moore. she found some prints that pleased her.

and that was the end of my picture taking. you can perhaps see behind suzanne some of the tables. in the huge craneway pavilion ther were over 200 table well spaced and everyone was masked. hear that st lawrence county? the days whirled by in exhaustion and bliss and color and pattern. one of my other first customers is way below, photos sent to me by dear catherine michaelis. i saw so many friends, book arts rock stars, amazing makers, those letter print guys that go on and on about type, the wild artists, tamed by the bindings of books. my neighbor stephanie gibbs helped me when i needed to get some food or water or a bathroom break, but basically i said the same spiel over and over, until my voice sounded like a hormonal purbert boy, all crazy. my head was a whirlwind after the day…and then there were three more! i am so grateful to the folks who looked closely at my prints and my books, who bought from me, who supported me so much that by the end of the first day they had covered my significant costs. (airfare was over $1,300) that was amazing. i enjoyed meals with so many artists, a wonderful invigorating walk with alisa golden, bits of ime with casey gardner, emily martin, gabby cooksey, aimee lee, young min lee, susan mills, tom balbo, judy serebrin, shanna leino & mike & frankie!, and there were more, more and if i’ve left out your name it’s not because i don’t love you, it’s because i was and still am a bit overwhelmed. because i was on my own the whole time i bought no work from anyone else and had to stay at my table. i saw my buddy mark mcmurray to wave to and exchanged maybe three words with. it was all so much. wednesday evening i had a light meal with cynthia sears and her entourage, one of the collectors who honored me by adding three new books, including the fish skin edition. curator and special collections librarian sandra kroupa got the other fish skin book for the univ of washington at seattle and even more buyers and gallerists interested in my doings like alicia bailey and donna seager. I did manage trades with helen hiebert and stephanie gibbs…as you can see the more i type, the more i remember.

it was an enormous relief to finally get home after thursday travel san francisco to denver to syracuse and the forester home. the trip home, from flat syracuse through watertown, also flat, to the western slopes of the adirondacks is always coming home for me. i love seeing the changes, the rocks, the ochres in rock cuts, the evidence of the ingenuity of folks trying to make a living in this harsh, beautiful place.

this catalog is for the current exhibition at bima, showcasing original content in artists’ books in cynthis sears’ collection.

this book has changed so much since i stacked the shaped four and more selvedge shifu pages together and wrapped them in cloth and bloodroot and violets and put them all in the pot. i didn’t know what would happen. the book now lives on bainbridge island. the purples are almost greyed completely now, as it mellows into age. i’m graying, too. almost entirely.

the upper paragraph is what it’s all about, the mappin of ideas, the laying bare of uncomfortable, surprising, unexplored terrain. this is exactly right.

shanna’s string holder, shown holding kami-ito here. shanna sourced some vintage string bulbs (?) and made her oh-so-shanna marks on them. this one came home with me.

that baltimore oriole’s nest still hasn’t fallen, even after all this wind. i will check tomorrow. it’s on a neighbor’s land. i love it so much.

a fungus from the old maple, i think, now in a jar of water

two flax papers of very similar character , the small one after burnishing with an agate. i never got back to vintage paper’s table where they were selling their books, papers, and tools in order to buy for that big agate burnisher. sigh.

their burnishers are winder than this little paper!

that last meal, sitting with cynthia and catherine and bill and samuel

i loved getting to know cynthia sears a little bit, one who believes in the power of artists’ books. i went to bed after packing, got up at 2:15 to catch a taxi before 3 for my 5 oclock flight to denver, then to syracuse and then north to home and back to early spring, and no bugs (to speak of). yet. it was five days before my spirit found her way back into my body. i wish i had more photos, i wish i could remember all the wonderful conversations. i do remember the very wonderful hugs (aimee, casey, sandra, linda, jennifer, tom…) it was so good to be with my people!