I recently took a trip to Tokyo to take a Mokuhanga workshop with master printer Mara Cozzolino. We fit so much into a short five days! Mara guided us through all the stages of printing an edition of mokuhanga prints, and guided us through Tokyo to all the best places to buy supplies (and mochi!). We worked hard in our little studio above Moriki Paper Company and I learned so much about the process.

I printed an abstracted design based on (sakura-pink!) oyster mushrooms during the Tokyo Mokuhanga workshop. Three woodblocks, and even more layers of ink than that!

I had the chance to visit the Ichigaya Letterpress Fatory in Tokyo during a recent trip. They have a lovely little museum, a full letterpress studio, a space for workshops and a gift shop.

New box for my postcard collection.

The boxes contain three collections: a) postcards that I found/bought and have never been sent b) postcards picked up at art shows or were promotional cards from artists, and c) cards that people sent me in the mail. The fact that the third collection outgrew its initial box brings me so much joy!

At the Water’s Edge, collaborative artist’s book

An accordion book housed in a box, At the Water’s Edge was a collaborative project with the printmaker Julie Peterson for the Print to Book Exhibition. She made the prints used in the collage and created the accordion book. I wrote the text and made the box.

PRINT TO BOOK Exhibition

A collaborative project for printmakers and book artists presented by Turning the Page and Honolulu Printmakers.

March 11-April 9, 2022 Bās Bookshop 1154 Nu‘uanu Ave Honolulu Printmakers 1142 Bethel St Manoa Library 2716 Woodlawn Dr

Opening reception is Fri March 11 5-8 at Bas Bookshop and Honolulu Printmakers. Tamara will have a Poetry in Motion at both locations. Jared Wickware will dj  music at the Printmakers.

Boxes made this year—one for myself, three as gifts for friends.

Voyager Greetings in Things We Carried Into Space

The text of the second stanza in Things We Carried Into Space is taken from the spoken greetings recorded on the Voyager Golden Record, carried aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977.

Don't Use Your Hands, artist's book, 2019 One response I often hear when I tell people I'm a book artist is "why do you make books by hand? Don't they have machines for that?" They do! It can be a struggle to articulate the appeal of making things by hand in a world where books are bound by machines, we all write emails instead of letters, and so many things that were once made by craftsmen are now mechanized and computerized. Why spend all that effort and time? Can you make money from it? (Not really). "Don't Use Your Hands" is made in the style of a children's board book. Board books are mass-produced, disposable books made for babies to chew on. "Don't Use Your Hands" mimics the didactic style and simple design of a children's book, while being a limited edition artist's book, made by hand. "Don't use Your Hands" was printed at the In Cahoots Residency, using the residency's wood type collection, with pochoir illustrations on Rives BFK in an edition of 10.

Don’t Use Your Hands, artist’s book

I printed Don't Use Your Hands at my first In Cahoots Residency. I didn't have the right board to bind the book properly, so it sat in boxes for two years. I ordered the board and cut it down using the In Cahoots board shear during my second residency in Aug. Now that Things We Carried Into Space is bound, I finally have the chance to bind Don't Use Your Hands!

Things We Carried Into Space, artist's book, 2021

Things We Carried Into Space is an artist's book that meditates on what we carry with us into the galaxy. The images, based on x-rays of spacesuits, represent the physical apparatus we need to survive, and the text touches on what we carry inside those suits: our hopes, our prayers, our memories, our songs, our names.

Things We Carried Into Space was printed on a Vandercook Universal III at the In Cahoots Residency in 2021. The images are pressure printed and the text is letterpress printed using poylmer plates. The typface is gil sans. The book is a drum binding with a hardcover case.

Things We Carried Into Space, artist's book, 2021

Things We Carried Into Space is an artist's book that meditates on what we carry with us into the galaxy. The images, based on x-rays of spacesuits, represent the physical apparatus we need to survive, and the text touches on what we carry inside those suits: our hopes, our prayers, our memories, our songs, our names.

Things We Carried Into Space was printed on a Vandercook Universal III at the In Cahoots Residency in 2021. The images are pressure printed and the text is letterpress printed using poylmer plates. The typface is gil sans. The book is a drum binding with a hardcover case.

Pages from Things We Carried Into Space at the In Cahoots Residency, hot off the press (first run) and hanging in the end-of-residency display with the work of other residents.

Things We Carried Into Space, title page and endpage

Things We Carried Into Space, page process

I am obsessed with x-rays of spacesuits. I love the ghostly quality of the images. I've always wanted to make a book based on spacesuit x-rays, but the concept never quite came together until I was accepted into the In Cahoots residency program for 2021. I paired a newer draft of the poem with pressure prints based on the x-rays. I decided to pair pressure prints based on the x-rays with a poem I'd written in grad school, "Things We Carried Into Space."

The first step was to design the page layout on the computer using Affinity Publisher. As you can see in the image above, the layout uses an older draft of the poem.

I traced the outline of the x-rays and cut out paper shapes to create the plates I would use for pressure prints. Crumpled tracing paper and binding thread gave the plates added texture.

At In Cahoots, I printed the pressure print plates in a light teal. The text was printed using polymer plates in a slightly darker shade. There are fourteen pages in the final book. Every single page is a pressure print, with type printed on every page except the end pages, which are yellow.

The last thing I did at In Cahoots—very last thing—was foil stamp the spines of Things We Carried Into Space. The type was still hot when my ride arrived to pick me up.