Pattern for Plain Heart (2012)

I’m chuffed to be able to say that the 2012 edition of Matrix journal will have a feature on my work (along with the Wayzgoose Press, written by Andrew Schuller), and I was asked to produce a tip-in print for them. It’s an amazing journal, still produced completely by The Whittington Press by John Randle et al using letterpress, and judging by the fact that I had to print around 750 prints, it has a strong following.

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Helani and Jon print up a storm

Helani Laisk and Jon Webster were the 2011 ANU EASS Ampersand Duck Broadside residents. I tend to write about them together, because they worked in the studio in the same time period, on different days, and they are good friends who went through art school together. However, they are very separate individuals in their art practices and the results of their printing time, despite using some similar processes, are very different and entirely filled with their own personalities. Continue reading

Discontent (2012)

Do you know that next week’s Transit of Venus (when the planet Venus crosses the sun) will be the last in our lifetime? According to the Transit of Venus Australia website,

Transits of Venus occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by gaps of 121½ years and 105½ years. Venus and the Earth are aligned in the same direction out from the Sun about every 584 days (this is called in conjunction), however a transit does not occur each time because Venus’s orbit is usually above or below the Sun in the sky. Since the phenomena was first recognized there have only been six transits of Venus – 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882 and the most recent one in 2004. The 6th June 2012 transit is our last opportunity to observe a transit of Venus, as the next event occurs on 11th December 2117.

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Finlay Press & Finlay Lloyd

This is a personal research article built from email and oral interviews with Phil Day. I have spoken of the Finlay Press at a number of occasions: the Impact 7 conference in Melbourne (September 2011) and at the fine press symposium Adventure & Art (March 2012). It is an important chapter of Australian private press history, but I’ve never been able to find anything written about them in any depth, so here we go:

Finlay Press is a private press established by Ingeborg Hansen and Phil Day. They began printing in Goulburn, NSW, Australia in 1997. In 2001 the press moved to Braidwood, NSW, where they designed and printed numerous publications before closing the press in 2009.

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Type Sampler

Inspired by type samplers I’ve seen over the years, I decided to create one for my collection.

If your browser won’t load the image, click here to be taken to the digital file.

The hard copy is 240 x 92mm, printed on two weights of Kraft paper and hand-sewn in a horizontal format. If you would like to purchase a copy, wave your mouse over the top of this page to find the red drop-down Duckshop link. Or contact me directly.

For images of the production, have a look at my letterpress flickr set. For the story of its production, click here.