Otherwise:

The ANU School of Art has a special place in my heart. It, along with the Australian National University in general, is one of my life’s sacred sites. Way before I ever thought of going there (when I was doing an Arts degree in very non-art subjects), I lived in group houses with art students and earned money there by life modelling. When I discovered that they had a great letterpress set-up, and that letterpress was my destiny (it was really like that: a major epiphany weekend), I went to night classes at the school to build up a portfolio, and then I went to the school itself as a student. Straight after graduating, I was hired by the bit of the school that has a letterpress studio and I’ve been there ever since, teaching and helping. I even design their promotional flyers, some years.

Every year I see students that I think would be fun to work with. Sometimes they’ve been in one of my classes, sometimes I’ve just seen their work around the school and thought that it would translate well to print. That’s why I decided to join the Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS) which the school has in place to help students transition to a world without art school.

EASS is a bundle of fun, ranging from international scholarships to cash prizes to residencies. There are also collectors who happily use the scheme to get first pick of the work in the graduating exhibition, and they pay a premium on the prices to help with the cash prizes.

My contribution is a residency in my studio to make a letterpress broadside. Originally I thought that these would be very traditional in format: a piece of text either rendered completely typographically on the page or accompanied with imagery. The more it progresses, the less I care about the traditional idea. What I seem to be doing is giving these people access to my equipment with a ration of paper and seeing what happens — the only mandantory aspect is that they have to finish with an edition that can be sold (with the proceeds split between us). So it’s become more of a letterpress print residency, really.

So far I’ve had 4 ex-students, with two of those working with me as I write this, so I’m not totally sure what they are producing, but the experiments so far have been wonderful. I also keep aside ten copies of the edition for a future folio / exhibition pack. Each person also gets a letter outlining what they’ve achieved and the skills they’ve acquired, so that they can apply to use letterpress equipment elsewhere. I think it’s a pretty good deal.

If you’re interested in what we’re doing, buy a print, they’re all available at the Duckshop (to get there, hover your mouse up there on the web header, you’ll find a drop-down box that will take you to it) and very reasonably priced. Each print sale lifts the confidence of the resident who made it, and encourages me to keep doing this. Or if you’d like to be an EASS patron yourself, click that link at the top of this page and get involved. It’s a lot of fun and satisfaction.

List of recipients to date:

2010
Natalie Azzopardi
Peter McLean

2011
Helani Laisk
Jonathan Webster

Those Who Travel is a very special collaboration by four artists: Sarah Rice, Patsy Payne, Ampersand Duck and Shellaine Godbold.this is a gap

this is a gap

A stunning artists’ book of original, unpublished poems by Sarah Rice, accompanied by a suite of exquisite images by Patsy Payne, produced using lithography and pounced graphite drawings. The layout has been designed to create a spacious, airy feel, and the binding has been kept light and fluid to reflect the dream-like quality of the pages.

this is a gap

this is a gap

Printed on Arches BFK 250gsm paper, the book is hand sewn with no adhesives, and has a pale grey Magnani Pescia loose wrap cover, embossed with the title.

this is a gap

this is a gap

The text is hand-set in metal type, using English Garamond, and printed on a Vandercook SP 20 press in a silver ink.

this is a gap

this is a gap

What you have seen here is only a selection of the 40 pages. Painstakingly produced, this book is available in a limited edition of 16 copies. The dimensions of the book are 250 x 150 x 5mm.

this is a gap

COLLABORATORS

Dr Sarah Rice is a ceramicist and art theorist whose philosophical bent has influenced many art students at the ANU School of Art.

Patsy Payne is a renowned printmaker, and is currently Head of Printmedia & Drawing at the ANU School of Art. She designed the book, produced the lithography stones, and pounced the drawings.

Ampersand Duck set and printed the text, and bound the books.

Shellaine Godbold is a fabulous artist and she did the lithography editioning (with flair).

this is a gap

this is a gap

Available now for Aus$450 plus p&h. Contact me for more details or to purchase. I will send you an invoice that can be paid by Paypal, EFT or cheque.

All money from the book is being donated to Sarah Rice.

The exhibition opened on May 14, 2009 at Canberra’s Craft ACT gallery and continued through to June 20, 2009.There were 24 bindings by 23 people, including the original edition binding of the book. I set aside 30 copies* of the freshly-printed pages — called sheets — as a deluxe binding edition (numbered I-XXX), and they were offered for sale to binders with the added incentive of an exhibition of what they did with the pages. This show is the result.

All works are unique (apart from the edition binding, of which there are 200), and most are for sale. For information about prices, you must contact the binders personally: drop me a line and I will forward you their details. Many of the binders belong to the Canberra Craft Bookbinders’ Guild, and some belong to the NSW Guild of Craft Bookbinders.

There is an online room brochure for the show, available from the Craft ACT website, and basic details of the bindings. I am using this post to feature the binders and their work in more detail, and also in their own words if they provided an artist’s statement. There is also a post about some of the bindings in progress.

Participants

I will list the binders in alphabetical order, and then include their details. You can click on each name to jump to their information. All images are © Ampersand Duck and the artists. Please do not reproduce anything without acknowledgement.

Elke Ahokas (Vic)
Sue Anderson (NSW)
Lee Bratt (ACT)
Suzy Braun (NSW)
Lorraine Brown (Qld)
Sarah Bunn (NSW)
Dario Castello (ACT)
Molly Coy (WA)
Teresa Duhigg (ACT)
Caren Florance (ACT)
Mark Gilbert (SA)
David Hodges (ACT)
Rosemarie Jeffers-Palmer (NSW)
Mia Leijonstedt (United Arab Emirates)
Linda Newbown (ACT)
Barbara Schmelzer (NSW)
Wayne Stock (NSW)
Genevieve Swifte (ACT)
Robin Tait (NSW)
Wendy Taylor (ACT)
Joy Tonkin (ACT)
Vicki Woolley (ACT)
Anthony Zammit (SA)

PARTICIPANTS IN DETAIL

Elke Ahokas (VIC)

Personal: Elke Ahokas is a professional bookbinder from Victoria. You can see more of her work at her website.

Work: Carolingian binding: oiled Victorian Coobah (Acacia salicina) slabs. Text sewn onto hemp cords using waxed linen thread. Translucent paper endpapers.
[back to index of participants]

Sue Anderson (NSW)

Personal: Sue Anderson is an amateur binder from NSW. She has exhibited widely in both bookbinding and artists’ book exhibitions and prefers to collaborate with writers and printmakers.

Work: Simplified binding of embossed black leather boards, design in acrylic by binder. Black goatskin and white sheepskin spine. Grey goatskin details. Japanese Kozo endpapers.

Statement: Rosemary Dobson’s recurring images of dark and light, and references to the moon and moonlight, together with the wood engravings affected my choice of binding materials and design.
[back to index of participants]

Lee Bratt (ACT)

Personal: Lee Bratt is currently studying at the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop of the ANU School of Art and has a strong interest in artist’s books.

Work: Artist’s book binding: concertina files, Stonehenge paper, Gampi tissue, leather, Polaroid transfer print, gold and silver leaf.

Statement: my choice of book design was influenced by information taken from the project, the poet, the artist and my thoughts on the title.

The title, “Hold or Let Go” conjured up thoughts of a child’s’ squeeze box, a music instrument that requires the player to hold and/or let go to make the music. The pages of the book are filed in the concertina sections, a small bow extends out of the file inviting you to hold or let go of the pages. The back cover has part of the keyboard from a squeezebox and the handles have been attached in opposite directions, so you may hold the book but let go of the pages.

The poets’ age influenced the choice of materials: Stonehenge paper for its strength and colour, tissue paper for its fragility and leather for its permanency.

The wood engravings inspired my Polaroid transfer mounted on the front cover, which is an image of a tree taken through the words from a poem. The tree stretches out as if letting go or taking hold of the words.
[back to index of participants]

Suzy Braun (NSW)

Personal: Suzy Braun was a refugee from the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Her bookbinding is informed by her professional life in fashion and textiles.

Work: Gold-blocked leather cased-in binding with marbled endpapers.

Statement: I was born in Budapest, hungary. My Central European background in the Second World War interrupted my formal schooling, and I have come quite late in life to bookbinding. Initially I was trained as a seamstress, and later as a patternmaker/designer. At the time of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, I managed to escape the country through a dangerous, swampy border into Austria with countless others of my compatriots. After lengthy official processes, I was accepted to migrate to Australia and have been resident in Sydney since 1957 and continued my profession as a designer of ladies fashion. I have always been a keen reader and I have an interest in art, classical music and all kinds of handcraft.
[back to index of participants]

Lorraine Brown (Qld)

Personal: Lorraine Brown has been binding books for 9 years under the name Bound by Brown. Prior to this, her working life was in the IT industry in varying capacities – mainly programmer and project manager. She lives at Mt Tamborine in Queensland.

Work: Text block: Sawn in block sewn on 5 cords – each cord being 3 ply unbleached linen yarn, wound 3 times to create a 9 ply cord. Sewn using beeswaxed linen thread 16/3. The endbands are green goatskin suede with a linen thread core. The endpapers are made using Canson Ingres Vidalon 100 gsm – cream – and a decorative paper showing antique manuscript design for pastedowns.
Spine: Green oasis goatskin, acrylic paint washed pigskin with clear top coat for random spine wraps.
Cover: Inner cover: 1200um greyboard lined with 70 gsm brown display paper. Greyboard edges coloured using Burnt Umber acrylic paint. Outer Cover: Queensland Walnut Veneer with clear shellac finish.
Title: Green oasis goatskin, 18pt Times New Roman typeface, red gloss pigment foil, and
‘find the title’ in the jumbled letters.
[back to index of participants]

Sarah Bunn (NSW)

Personal: Sarah Bunn is Paper Conservator for the Art Gallery of NSW and Library and Archive Conservator for the Australian Museum.

Work: Limp binding: chain stitch with recycled Japanese silk kimono chemise.

Statement: Working as a conservator of rare books in libraries in the UK, Italy and Sydney, my perception of books and bindings has been shaped by my exposure to the beauty and ‘honest’ representation of materials as expressed in early printed book structures and by the inherent flaws and degradation of their later 19th Century counterparts. I choose to create simple, tactile structures — books I would want to open, and read, in privacy.
[back to index of participants]

Dario Castello (ACT)

Personal: Dario Castello is a Canberra bookbinder and President of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Simplified binding in leather and canvas. Hand marbled paper by Joan Ajala. Matching slipcase.
[back to index of participants]

Molly Coy (WA)

Personal: Molly Coy is a fine binder/restorer, book artist & tutor working in Western Australia.

Work: Book block additions: Embossed pages 150gsm Parilux Matt Cream with gold blocking foil and hand-coloured images. Additional blank pages in the back of book for owners poems / thoughts. Hand-made rice paper inserts. Handsewn, round-backed block with embossed, coloured/gilt edges
Binding: Case in printed, hand coloured hide, with onlay and hanging title.
Doublure in rust suede with inlay and gold foil and blind embossing.
[back to index of participants]

Teresa Duhigg (ACT)

Personal: Theresa Duhigg is a Canberra bookbinder and a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Cased-in leather binding with colour applique.
[back to index of participants]

Caren Florance (ACT)

Personal: This is my website. For more information on me, see here.

Work: Exhibition binding: Long-stitched limp binding or rag momigami paper (made by the artist) and vintage Victorian cotton thread. Title embossed using lead type.

Statement: I am slowly binding the edition binding of 200 copies (in batches to avoid falling over with boredom), so it was wonderful to have a play with this binding. Recently I stumbled upon a cache of gorgeous rag momigami paper I’d made when a student, and thought this was an opportunity too good to miss. I bought the thread (on it’s original Victorian-era factory spool) from one of my favorite kooky shops: Peppergreens, in Berrima, NSW. One of the features of momigami paper is that it grows softer the more it is handled, yet remaining strong. The spine of this binding is much softer than the sides, with the hope that the cover sides will become more pliant with frequent reading of Dobson’s excellent poetry.
[back to index of participants]

Mark Gilbert (SA)

Personal: Mark Gilbert is a South Australian bookbinder.

Work: Full Morocco leather binding, blind-stamped, with red cloth doublures.

Statement: I wanted the book to have a simple, almost plain look and feel — and where possible — to evoke the  rural Australia of my childhood. A lot of the poems seemed to have that  flavour; my favorite was ‘Breakaway’, and this influenced my selection of the materials.

I sewed the sections with the closest thing to raw string that I could find. This had problems as it kept fraying and broke a few times as I tensioned it. Similarly, the coloured end papers appealed to me as they had a sort of natural unfinished look .

I was lucky enough to have a piece of golden morocco goatskin just big enough lying around and I felt that was in keeping although it might give the book a more refined finish. The colour was so beautiful  that I decided to risk it. To counter this I determined that the decoration should be as simple as I could make it. I therefore reduced the title to its essence Poems but introduced the bar motif to stimulate thoughts of captivity and/or being “set free”.

The red cloth doublures were selected because the colour combination was so exciting — and the repeated red glimpses were introduced for a bit of interest and to continue the bars into the book . The decision to bond the coloured endpaper to the plain one was an afterthought and had to be done “in situ”. This was the most nerve-wracking moment.

I am an amateur bookbinder and, although this  is my own work, I could not have achieved this standard without the assistance and advice at every step from my teacher Anthony Zammitt.
[back to index of participants]

David Hodges (ACT)

Personal: David Hodges is a Canberra artist and bookbinder. He prints and binds unique editions, conducts workshops and undertakes bookbinding commissions and book repair. David has a workshop at the Strathnairn Arts Association.

Work: The text block is hand-stitched and case-bound using a variation on a dos-a-dos binding. The case is a full binding covered in a cotton and blind embossed.
The endpapers are a Eucalyptus and watercolour transfer on hot-pressed 160gsm Canson.
[back to index of participants]

Rosemarie Jeffers-Palmer (NSW)

Personal: Rosemary Jeffers-Palmer is a profession binder and book arts teacher from Sydney. She also owns Artwise Amazing Paper in Enmore.

Work: Bound in local calf leather with leather onlays and silver foil tooling. Stitched onto tapes and laced into boards. Laminated endpapers, edge colouring and hand-sewn headbands.
[back to index of participants]

Mia Leijonstedt (United Arab Emirates)

Personal: Mia Leijonstedt is a professional binder from Finland who currently works from Dubai. You can see more of her work at her website.

Work: A long-stitch binding with soft goat skin cover. Decorative techniques include dyed parchment onlays and freehand blind-tooling. Binding is housed in a dyed paper wrapper. The concept of the binding is about poetry lines in visual form. On the front cover the elements are all in balanced order, holding it together, but on the back cover they are in the process of disintegrating and letting go.

Statement: Artful bindings for me are about celebrating and treasuring books and what they mean to us. I often make my bindings like they were props or characters in the story they’re housing. Each detail is important and the combination of all visual elements should invite the viewer closer, hopefully to experience a wordless moment of the rich history preserved in books throughout time.
[back to index of participants]

Linda Newbown (ACT)

Personal: Linda Newbown is a Canberra book artist and binder who works under the name Boundary Press. She is a Life Member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Laced-in binding. Vellum spine, paper boards, kid leather (from found glove).

Statement: Binders hold the printed pages momentarily. We bind the pages so that you may more easily hold them. The bindings will show signs and marks from the binders’ hand. We have held these pages and now let them go.
[back to index of participants]

Barbara Schmelzer (NSW)

Personal: Barbara Schmelzer is a professional bookbinder who comes from Germany and works from Sydney. You can more of her work at her website.

Work: Airbrushed German vellum binding.
[back to index of participants]

Wayne Stock (NSW)

Personal: Wayne Stock is a professional bookbinder and a member of the NSW Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Full hand-dyed mandarin kangaroo binding with case and chemise. The image is blind-tooled and blue.
[back to index of participants]

Genevieve Swifte (ACT)

Personal: Genevieve Swifte is a professional artist who works closely with the book form within her drawing and printmaking practice. She has a studio at ANCA in Dickson.

Work: Artist’s book binding: open-sewn Magnani Vergata book block accompanied by an Asian-stab binding of hand-printed Gampi silk paper and horse hair, housed in a simple conservation folder.

Statement: In her poem ‘Over the Frontier’, Rosemary Dobson evokes for us the poem that does not exist as, Trembling, it crosses the frontier at dawn from non-being to being. In the making of this book I have attempted to create a volume of Dobson’s poetry that hovers between these two states. Difficult to read, the poems instead can be glimpsed as a whole, a shape, or as a shadow.

The presence of the hand within the structure of the book is normally hidden from us, but through the translucency of the paper I have used, these poems can be held in the palm of the hand. They become an integral part of the book itself and a metaphor for the relationship between the poet, the artist and the reader. To print this book I used gentle pressure from my fingertips, echoing the Tall, tapering fingers of ‘Spires’ and the ephemeral treatment has removed the poems from the clarity of the page, returning them to the poetic imagination, where they can be held by the inner eye.

The format of the book is at first unfamiliar yet recognisable as a copy of the original. It refers to Asian binding and structures, to scrolls and to the poetic traditions of Asia. The sensuous quality of the Japanese Gampi means that the paper behaves like sheets, like pale cloth washed in the white stone shallows. Though, in this edition, illustrations are absent, they have found their way into the book through the binding of horsehair that could have been pulled from the wire of Rosalind Atkins’ gate, resembling the web spun between hinge and latch or as a token from the hand of ‘The Bystander’.
[back to index of participants]

Robin Tait (NSW)

Personal: Robin Tait runs the Tait Bindery in Queanbeyan and is a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild. At present she is working from Adelaide as a paper conservator.

Work: Crossed Structure Binding Solo structure developed by Carmencho Arregui, using remnant paper stock from the Brindabella Press.

Statement: The covering paper was used for the Brindabella Press Barbara Hanrahan book Iris in Her Garden and the holes punched through are to try to echo the ‘divining colander’ mentioned in the last poem of Poems to Hold or Let Go.
[back to index of participants]

Wendy Taylor (ACT)

Personal: Wendy Taylor is a Canberra bookbinder and a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Cased-in binding. The cover material is a Canson Mi-Teintes paper, painted with acrylics and fine sanded to a silky finish to provide a tactile surface to hold.

Statement: I read Rosemary’s poems during the week of the Victorian fires.  Her poem, ‘News and Weather’, had a resonance with what was then happening in Victoria  – in particular the line, Terrible times in the world that will not be changed.  The book’s cover is a response to her poem and the fires.

My introduction to bookbinding was at high school where arts and crafts were highly valued. I have continued the craft on and off over the years. My knowledge of technique has been reinforced with courses at the Canberra Institute of Technology and additional workshops.
[back to index of participants]

Joy Tonkin (ACT)

Personal: Joy Tonkin is a professional bookbinder under the name Bookarts Canberra. She is a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: An exposed sewing technique in the style of Jean de Gonet’s binding. The book is sewn onto snake skin tapes. The hollow-back spine is covered in oasis leather. The boards are a wood veneer with polycarbonate and leather onlay decorations. The endpapers are hand-made papers from Nepal. The book is housed in a box made from hand-made papers, lined in suede, and titled in kangaroo leather on the spine.
[back to index of participants]

Vicki Woolley (ACT)

Personal: Vicki Woolley is a Canberra bookbinder and a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Quarter-bound in leather with rounded spine. Front cover marbled paper by Marianne Peter, Bethune, France. Endpapers are Canson 160gsm.

Statement: I was introduced to papermaking in February 2003 which was the catalyst for learning bookbinding. I joined the Canberra Craft Bookbinders Guild in the same year. I plan to devote more time to these interests in the future.
[back to index of participants]

Anthony Zammit (SA)

Personal: Anthony Zammit is a South Australian bookbinder.

Work: Full bound in red Morocco leather with Doublure and fly leaves lined from Japanese ornamental papers. The slip case has vellum supported edges with a dark red diamond patterned Japanese ornamental paper sidings. Internal and external gold lines are hand finished.
[back to index of participants]

* yes, there are a few copies left if you are interested in using them for binding. Contact me for details.

Author: Rosemary Dobson
Artist: Rosalind Atkins
Design & Production: Ampersand Duck

Printed 2008, released 2009

Colophon

Poems to Hold or Let Go is the second volume in the Ampersand Duck fine press series, ‘Selected’.
Printed with photopolymer plate using letterpress processes in Garamond, accompanied by two exquisite boxwood wood engravings on cream 125gsm rag mould-made Magnani Vergata laid paper, in a cased binding of teal Buckram and letterpress-printed navy Wibalin with a dustjacket of wood and metal handset & printed Wibalin. 56pp. 240 x 163mm. Edition of 200.

A view of one of the printed sheets in production, featuring one of the two Ros Atkins wood engravings

About the book

Poems to Hold or Let Go is a selection of 41 poems by beloved Australian poet Rosemary Dobson that spans over 60 years of outstanding writing. It is a conceptual rather than chronological selection, leading the reader on a journey through the poet’s themes and preoccupations, then forking off into an autobiographical direction. The volume includes three later poems that have never been published in book form. The two original wood engravings act as portals to and from the journey, with two seminal Dobson poems acting as prologue and epilogue. The title is chosen by the poet, and suits the philosophical meanderings the reader will undergo.

This whole volume was designed with great care in consultation with Dobson, and the printer’s late-process surprise gesture to her was the use of metal Garamond type in the dustjacket design that had once belonged to her late husband, Alec Bolton, proprietor of the Canberra private press, Brindabella Press.

About the contributors

Rosemary Dobson

Born in 1920, Rosemary’s career as a writer of poetry began at school (Frensham, in the Southern Highlands of NSW). Rosemary’s career continued with early acceptance of publication in literary journals. She has published altogether since then 14 volumes of poetry, two books of prose and (in collaboration), two volumes of translations from Russian poetry. She has edited several anthologies. Her most recent volume, Untold Lives and Later Poems, won the 2001 Age Book of the Year award.

Rosemary has received a number of literary awards including the Patrick White Award for Literature (1984), the Australia Council’s Writers’ Emeritus Award (1996), a DLitt from Sydney University (1996) and the Order of Australia for services to Australian Literature (1987). In June 2006 she won the NSW Premier’s Special Award.

She was for some years on the Editorial Staff of Angus & Robertson, publishers. In 1951 she married Alec Bolton, printer and publisher and Founding Director of Publications at the National Library of Australia. Subsequently taking early retirement he founded his own printing press, the Brindabella Press, much praised for the standards he set in all aspects of book publication. He published 23 books, nearly all of poetry, before his untimely death in 1996.

Rosalind Atkins

Rosalind Atkins is a highly regarded printmaker whose prints have been published in conjunction with the works of some of Australia’s best-known poets, including Les Murray and Judith Wright. She graduated from RMIT with a Bachelor of Fine Art and followed that with a Graduate Diploma of Fine Art. She is a member of the English Society of Wood Engravers. Rosalind has exhibited extensively, and is collected widely by national and international institutions as well as private collections.

Prospectus

Every ‘Selected’ volume has a letterpress-printed prospectus that is sent to press supporters and other interested parties. If you would like to be on the mailing list for these, please contact me.

All volumes are signed by the artist and printer; a limited number early in the edition are signed by the poet.

Author: Nan McDonald
Artist: Jan Brown
Design & Production: Ampersand Duck

Printed 2007, released 2008

Colophon

Transmigration is the first volume in the Ampersand Duck fine press series, ‘Selected’.
Hand-set letterpress in Bodoni accompanied by relief prints on 280gsm Arches BFK grey paper, in a cased binding of ochre Buckram and relief-printed navy Wibalin with a dustjacket of acid-free acetate. 40pp. 240 x 163mm. Edition of 90.

About the contributors

Nan McDonald

Born in 1921, Nan McDonald also began her career writing poetry at Hornsby Girls’ High School where she contributed poems to the school magazine, twice winning the Ethel Curlewis prize for verse. Proceeding to the University of Sydney, she graduated with second-class honours in English.

In 1943 McDonald joined the editorial staff of Angus & Robertson Ltd. There she worked with such people as Alec Bolton, Beatrice Davis and Douglas Stewart. Recalled by Rosemary Dobson as ‘the best book editor in Australia’, she made a considerable – though largely unacknowledged – contribution to the publication of Australian fiction and history for some thirty years.

McDonald’s poetic output was small but highly regarded, with poems appearing mostly in Sydney journals from the 1940s to the 1960s. Her first collection, Pacific Sea (1947) won the first Grace Leven prize for poetry in 1947. Her poems appear in most modern anthologies, but critical perspective is still lacking.

McDonald spent much of her time in the Wollongong region, commuting to Sydney to work. She died of cancer in January 1974 at Mt Ousley.

The 14 poems in Transmigration revolve around themes of birds, sea, bushwalking and human interaction and interference with the environment.

Jan Brown AM

Jan Brown is a sculptor who sees drawing as an integral part of her work. She has a passionate interest in living forms, especially birds and animals.

Jan taught life drawing at the Canberra School of Art for many years, retiring as a Senior lecturer in 1987. Her initial training was as a part-time student at East Sydney Technical College, and later as a full-time student at Chelsea School of Art, under the direction of Henry Moore.

She was born in Sydney in 1922, and has travelled widely overseas, living in London for ten years and returning to London and Europe on a regular basis. Her home, since 1957, is Canberra, where she lives with her husband and family.

She has been actively involved with the promotion of the visual arts in Canberra and in 1992 was made an Order of Australia and also an Emeritus Fellow of the Australia Council. In 2005 she was honoured in the ACT International Women’s Day awards.

Jan’s drawings for Transmigration were not made for the book, but selected by her and the printer from her extensive drawing archives. Her drawings, many made in the same locations that Nan was writing about, were scanned and cast as photopolymer plates, then printed as embossments, slightly inked with transparent ink to darken the paper colour.

Jan Brown and Nan McDonald were exact contemporaries. They both cared deeply about the same issues, and frequented the same walking paths. They never knew each other.

This is the front of the 4pp DL-size prospectus for Transmigration
Every ‘Selected’ volume has a letterpress-printed prospectus that is sent to press supporters and other interested parties. If you would like to be on the mailing list for these, please contact me.