the drill press, my new best friend.

yesterday was a shit day, and i really didn’t want to spend the evening in a public arena. i wanted to crawl under the covers and hide out in my air conditioned bedroom. but i had registered for open studio at minnesota center for book arts, and i really needed to get over there so i can finish some projects.

the open studio workshop on tuesdays is pretty new, and it’s a great deal: for $10 (members), the bookbinding equipment is available from 6-9pm (letterpress and screenprinting equip is also available for different fees). usually it’s $20 per hour to use the bindery, so clearing time on a tuesday night is a nice money-saver. i had 2 reams of paper to cut for coptic-bound and secret belgian bound journals.

i also made use of the drill press for photo album pages. i bind albums with 2 screw posts, and i’ve been punching those holes by hand. it has gotten to the point to where i hate making photo albums because punching those 2 damn holes in every page really sucked. so i used the drill press to drill the 2 holes in about 250 pages, and life is going to be a little better.

the highlight was working with artist richard stephens. he was the monitor in the bindery for the night, and i needed to brush up on my drill press skills. we talked while we figured out the machine, and i realized that i was familiar with his linocuts — i bought a bunch of his cards at the loring park art festival a few years ago. he’s currently working on a book with writer steven schild, called these old men know things. it’s steven’s haiku, paired with richard’s linocuts, and richard is handbinding each book. it’s a small edition — i can’t remember the exact number, but it’s under 25. what a treat to see it coming together!

this entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2011 at 6:07 am and is filed under artists, creatives, crafters : local. you can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. you can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.