studiOmnivorous

Handmade with 8 legs

We’ve been busy as bees here at the house studio at Casa Corteza, with a full roster of events hitting us hard this past weekend, in a variety of ways.A combination of events has left me a little behind on last week’s blog post, and so I’ll take a moment to apologize for the delay. But I’m eager to share what’s been going on this past weekend, and a big thanks to all of you who managed to come out and share it with us.

My neurotic commandeering of the most comfortable studio place to work.

Friday was a flurry of momentum as we prepared for the Handmade & Bound festival this Saturday. Lots of last-minute decisions…

Stephen working

fine-tuning…

Stephen not working

handmaking…

(or foot-making, as the case may be)

…and the folding of a hundred mini-zines kept our hands busy. A big thanks to friends and fellow designers who came by throughout the week to help fold (Ken, we’re looking at you), drop stuff off, proofread (thanks Blair!), or just plain make sure we weren’t completely stir crazy.

Luckily, waking up Saturday morning was a charm: we started off with the Nashville’s own Fall Fest at the Produce Place.

Olive & Sinclair shared some Mexican Style and Coffee Bean with us...

...samples from Roux Maison....

...and a primer in honey mixology from Tru Bee...

...were just a few of the things showcased at this year's Fall Fest.

It’s always nice when one of our clients reaches out to the community like this (especially when there is free food involved!) and it set us in the right mood: the sense of hospitality is another key part of what makes this city “Nashville,” and it was in abundance all day as we went from event to event. Next up was…

The folks at Watkins were perfect hosts: helping us carry everything in, bringing us coffee and tiny cinnamon buns, and helping us get set up for our workshop and meet other vendors. A showcase of book arts, zinesters, and small press, HMB gave the community a hands-on peek into the world of indie publishing: visitors were encouraged to make paper with Watkin’s own Annie Herlocker, print your own tote with Goldsmith Press, ask questions during book demonstrations with both Gilded Leaf and Brown Dog Bindery, and participate in a number of workshops and educational talks about a whole range of topics.

The Aisle of Awesome had great demonstrations: Brown Dog Bindery up front, The Gilded Leaf second, and Goldsmith Press & Austin Peay showcased their work at the very back.

Stephen, Corey, and I as The Designer Friends gave a talk as well; “Pixels, Print, & Presence: How to Make the Most of Digital When It Comes to Print” came with a free resource zine and covered the basics of how the internet affects zinemakers: using content effectively from online sources, the rules and guidelines of basic fair use, and how to use the internet as a tool to develop your online as well as print presence. You can download the zine here as a .pdf.

studiOmnivorous also had a vendor booth, and we sold Stephen’s hiphoproduce-inspired “Fat Beets” linotype prints, the full range of Concerns mini-zine issues, and a text-based collection of my dreams, themed around Ships and Structures. We also included a new release, a stand-alone stab-binding comic, Under the Wave Off Kanagawa, which investigates the history of Hokusai as a painter in juxtaposition with the contemporary painter and the sensation of loss and mania. One of our best-sellers was the first volume of Hyphens: Losing and Finding 365 Days, my autobiographical Make-365 comic detailing 2009 in metaphor, image, and allusion.

Some of the Dream Zines we had available for purchase. You have to buy your own tablecloth, though.

At the closing open-mic zine reading, and as I wandered around in awe of my fellow bookmakers, it was really a pleasure getting to see all the work everyone else is doing, too: a lot of good zinemakers out there. Both Jerry’s Artarama and Plaza represented alongside a show of support from Parnassus Books, and it was great to see Microcosm and Spit And A Half out in force…

...even if it gave me a bad case of comic book lust!...

and my friends from Little Hamilton brought their zine distro out to show, with some really good screenprints from Santana Marcrum.

Kale is such a dapper dan! And the zines rock just as hard as the Hammies do.

I bumped into The2ndHand, celebrating their 10-year anniversary with some swank limited-edition cases, and got a brief moment to chat with Mark Griffin at Quake, who gave me a packet of his August 2011 issues so I can catch up and share the news (Want one?). And there were hundreds of handmade papers (such as Liberty Paper Mill), small treasures, and sketchbooks to tempt my pocketbook: a lot of solid work, as interesting for the stories behind them as for their delicate threads and staunch folds. I finally gave in and bought two old-fashioned type drawers for the studio after a great talk with The Gilded Leaf, and had the pleasure of trading zines and small things with Goodwill Zine, Sheep Grenade, and Allen Spetnagel. I met Nashville newbies like Amelia Garretson-Persans looking for cool things to think on, oldbies like Zone 3 Press who are doing some cool stuff, and a whole bunch of people with whom I am looking forward to collaborating with on projects, talking more, and generally rocking the boat as always.

If you make zines, send some my way! Let’s trade and talk some more. But speaking of rocking the boat…

…after packing up and grabbing a PBJ, I immediately went to join Lindsey Bailey at Belmont’s Troutt Theatre to dive right back into the action…this time as a purple Cephalopod with something to say in Octopus Lament. Lindsey has spent the last two weeks creating a gorgeous Octopus costume…

(photo courtesy of Lindsey Bailey)

…each indigo tentacle at least ten feet long, thick as my waist at the top and tapering to gentle coils at the end.

(photo by Andee Rudloff)

I also wore a tuxedo jacket and a top hat, with two bulbous octopus buns on either side of my head – attached to a giant colorful octopus headsack (ahem,”mantle“) – while Lindsey made last minute adjustments to my arabesque arms and curlicue legs. Jackie Osbourne did the makeup while I thought of the sad, mad King Lear and tried not to blink (sounds strange, but hey, what works, works, right?).

(image courtesy of Lindsey Bailey)

And Jin-Hwa Choi provided me with beautiful reading guidelines to her composition while we tested the mics and played with effects under the generous supervision of the Sideshow Fringe Festival staff.

It’s always a thrill to read before a crowd, but not in the way you’d expect: I don’t often feel pre-game nervousness before a performance, but I always, always, feel post-performance anxiety. I’m linking to a video clip, but just hearing my own voice is still too weird of an experience for me to watch! You’ll have to tell me what you think =)

All in all, it’s been an exhausting weekend and a long recovery. But I’m grateful to have been a part…and equally happy to be able to share it with you. So Nashville…what have you been up to lately?