I wrote that Jill Alden Littlewood was the impetous for the project mentioned in my previous post, so it may seem that Jill is one of my favorite and frequent collaborators when you read what I have to say here. The first part is certainly true and the second is, sadly, not true enough.
More than a decade has past since we have worked together, but we got in touch with each other in June of 2007, just before she was leaving on a trip in relation to her installation piece, Death and Other Lives, and just before I was leaving on a trip (I forget where).
In March 2007, the street in Baghdad where the booksellers of the city met and sold their wares was bombed and destroyed. Kathy Walkup and other printers from San Francisco contacted many printers including myself to ask if we were interested in doing a series of commemorative broadsides for Mutanabbi Street which could be produced for exhibition and a fund raiser for Doctors Without Borders. Jill wanted to know if we would be able to work together, even though we had just a few weeks and we each had one foot out the door.
A selection of poems was presented to us by Kathy through the wonders of email. Jill then did a series of brush and ink drawings and sent them to me to print out and choose. Happily enough, I chose the one that Jill’s husband preferred as well (which is always a good sign). From there, I set the type for the poem on the computer.
As I worked on the layout, I changed Jill’s orientation of her drawing from horizontal to vertical to give the type more room for what I considered “movement.” I decided to have Bill Berkuta, my linotype guy in LA, set the type in Optima for the poem and the colophon because I didn’t have enough type in my cases in the size I needed. I set the headings by hand. Jill tore the paper by hand and sent it to me on her way out of town. I received the paper and the type at the same time and got right to work on my Vandercook. Jill had also signed all the sheets so they would be ready to send off as soon as I finished the printing. I printed in four colors and dusted bronze powder on one part of Jill’s image…using colors often found in Persian miniatures.
The opening of the first exhibition of the various broadsides by all the printers was held at the San Francisco Center for the Book. There was some trading going on amongst the various printers in attendance and I wish I could have been there. The fund raising went very well, too. A complete set of the broadsides entitled Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, including a subsequent set, is housed at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University’s Wimberly Library. Our particular broadside, I Was in a Hurry by Dunya Mikhail, has also been included in a traveling exhibition juried by the Guild of Book Workers now at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. I am very flattered to say the broadside was especially mentioned in a review of that exhibit in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
