River.

Many things, many things. First - the new book. Conceptualized on and off over a year or so, but written, created, and printed in Basel in August, during the 10-day International Printmaking Residency that I organized at druckwerk. Surrounded by friends.

Basel, in summation.

Friends, in summation. In a minivan.

Conceptualization, in summation.

Alps, hard to summarize.

Hand inking a river, in brief.

Sad to see 'em go, the friends. Nice to be home, of course, but you know, missing, all that. Nowadays I go to the print shop and work on editioning the book. Took some pictures of the first book I assembled:

The shop here, called Al Hambra & Sons, where I have my press and sell my work (theoretically), is a nice place to come every day. Friendly people, lots of space. We officially opened the boutique to the public on August 23rd, it felt like a big success. We were all worn out after, seems like a good sign. Still working on a website, but so far we've got this.

preparing for the opening

looking in

setting up displays

I have acquired a bit of wooden type, exciting. I've even had a chance to use it already. So despite the fact that the dark falls noticeably earlier every day, I've got plenty to keep me busy.

c'est arrivé

et, voilà!

Viborg-ing

So at the end of May, I went to Viborg for ten days to have a little retreat, in order to come up with some new projects to make. (It's been a while.) It was incredibly nice. I stayed at the Brænderigården, a former brandy distillery that is now a contemporary art museum, where there is a graphic workshop and a "villa" where visiting artists stay. I was the only person around at the villa, and so had a lovely perfect quiet room to stay in. The museum is situated just on the edge of the lake, and is a quick walk from the center of town. The night I got in, I had a lovely long walk around the lake. It took me a long time, of course, because I was dawdling, taking pictures of things, picking leaves off nice-looking trees and bushes, and the like.

Just down the lake from the museum is Vingaards Officin, and during the week I went there to meet the guys, see the presses, and take proofs of the linoleum blocks I had been cutting.

MEGAN MAKES A MESS

At Vingaards, I had the chance to print myself a little logo using some of their incredible type:

How about that Ø. Yes.

But one of the most special parts of my time in Viborg was my visit to the west coast of Denmark with my new friends, Bent and Bodil. Bent I know from Druckwerk, he worked as a typesetter before his retirement, and Bodil worked at a library. She retired just three months ago. They are both from the west coast, and knew just where to take me.

This beach is just near the town of Ferring. There is so much wind out here that you don't see many trees. Just down the beach is a lighthouse, called Bovbjerg. It's a nice view from the top. Looks almost like the drive from Half Moon Bay down to Santa Cruz. Know what I mean?

On the way to the lighthouse there was this special thing:

WHEN WILL THIS BUNKER BECOME PART OF THE SKY

Painted blue by an artist who lived out by the ocean, tired of looking at the same old grey WW2 bunkers, standing out against the green grass and yellow rapeseed and of course the ocean and sky.

We walked back along the water's edge, pausing to pick up many interesting rocks along the way.

granite!

After our walk, Bent & Bodil magically produced a folding picnic table and camp stools, and a very lovely homemade lunch including freshly baked bread, cheese, yogurt, and a tasty salad. Plus, how perfect, a tiny bottle of wine. They set up in a lee provided by a museum dedicated to the artist mentioned above. The sun was out, we were protected from the wind, and a lark hung in the air nearby making its special lark-noises.

Scenes like this make me excited for my retirement! Or, at the very least, for my next trip out to western Jutland. 

Press Installation!

It has arrived.

After a day on the pallet, two massively strong dudes arrived to move it into place. I think they brought special equipment for the job, but then decided to just muscle it over. There was grunting involved.

Nearly sculptural.

Anyway, then I cleaned it, as it smelled vaguely of horse shit.

And after that, and a few days of head scratching and general procrastination, I finally put ink on the press! Yesterday. Finally. That's a feather lino block I cut while in Viborg.

Breakfast, dinner.
Cherries that were formerly in the bowl, I have just eaten. Summer solstice approaches. Writing and reading, farting around, snacking off of other people's plates. Two days ago I made a joke about becoming a scary grandmother, serving people salad using my bare hands, whether they wanted salad or not. Then, last night, without thinking about it, I did exactly that! Or, nearly. Dreams can come true, is what I'm saying.

CASE IN POINT.
It has happened, of late, that I have moved into a big lovely storefront on a wide, tree-lined street, a quiet but major thoroughfare that begins at a hip and trendy corner, and ends at the entrance to a park. In this storefront, which is possessed of two huge plate glass windows and several rooms comprising over 2000 square feet, several other artists-printers-designers and I are in the process of turning the space into a workshop and boutique. I don't have any pictures of this yet. Part of the reason for this is that my press has not yet arrived from the countryside, and so I have as yet had nothing to focus my attention and affections upon; the other reason is that our building has recently erected 5 stories of scaffolding, then covered that with sheet plastic, so at the moment the light isn't so good. But they've given us two months rent-free to make up for the inconvenience. Anyway, we need time to get everything set up.

The press I will be receiving is being cleaned and oiled, just now, by a new friend of mine who lives in Viborg, a city 4.5 hours west and in the middle of the part of Denmark that is attached to Germany. He, Bent, is involved with a working museum of printing and book making out there, called Vingaards Officin, after the German printer (Herr Weingarten) who came up to Viborg during the Reformation. The museum is currently housed in an old garage and has no fewer than 3 Intertype machines (for casting lines of type from lead - also known as a linotype machine), two Heidelberg presses, an Eickhoff (Danish-made) cylinder press, and a small Korrex cylinder press. And type. And some friendly guys, retired from their jobs as printers and binders and machine-fixers and teachers. One of them, it turned out, had grandparents who had moved to Austin, Texas, maybe a hundred years ago. Back when it was a tiny town! They had a son, this guy's father, and then eventually moved back to Denmark, leaving sweet, hot, dusty Austin far behind. I visited this place not too long ago, but that will be another post.

printed in Viborg.

Today, I begin a short project with Concerto Copenhagen that will take us to Potsdam, near Berlin, for the weekend.

Also, today, rain, after several weeks of perfect weather. On days like this, I can take a taxi with the bass and feel no guilt. Thanks, rain!

How it happened that I have come to have a place of my own to print.

Story starts back in Basel. Marcel told me I should come to breakfast at the studio, and meet two printers, visiting from Denmark. They had recently finished a beautifully printed edition of Joseph Brodsky's Watermarks, the same text, coincidentally, that had initially inspired my own Venice print. One of these guys, Bent, was involved with a working museum in Viborg [Vee-bor(g)] called Vingaards Officin [Vín-gords Offeeceen]. Sounded nice, so we exchanged contact information. Among the things I recall about Bent was a sort of turtleneck shirt, that was just the neck part. It was for biking, he explained. My first glimpse of the (completely justifiable) Danish enthusiasm for bike gear.

Later on, Bent put me in touch with Louise [Louisa], who was just moving into a new space in the old Carlsberg brewery with a few other artists. She had some equipment on loan from Vingaards, and often worked closely with the guys out there. Louise and I quickly became friends, and I started hanging around the studio, putting together the equipment for a proper print shop. The other folks in the studio were great, too, and it was always nice to hang out. Somehow, though, I never got used to doing real work there - maybe because I hadn't been in Copenhagen long enough, or because I didn't have a dedicated space of my own in the shop, or even, shamefully, because the shop was at the top of the only hill in town and I'm a lazy schlub. So when, in May, Carlsberg decided to kick everyone out of the space so that they could replace the building with a road, and people began looking for a new place to work, I joined in the search, though mostly out of curiosity. Louise decided to stay at Carlsberg, but move to a different location, but the other artists were looking for something around the city. That's when they found the storefront on Frederiksberg Allé.

Last year, in Basel, I began contemplating, scheming, considering, hypothesizing, about my future as a printer. In my mind, I envisioned some kind of storefront in Copenhagen, the letterpress visible through the big plate glass window, with prints and books for sale, and workshops in the back. But, oddly, when the possibility of this exact thing presented itself, I wasn't sure I wanted it. I had become so accustomed to my lazy, do-nothing life that I developed during the cold months. I watched a lot of TV on the internet. Sometimes I took multiple naps during the day. I eschewed doing household chores and neglected the double bass. But you know, because of last year's dream, I thought, what the hell, just go for it.

So, in about three weeks, Alléwerk will have its official opening. My compatriots include textile designer Anne Nowak; Hanne Zachariassen, whose clothing design company is called Asfalt; printer Stig Stasig; designer and architect Sofie Jensen, and designer Line Rix. We'll have a boutique with all of our work on display, I have a table of my own, and soon enough, Vingaards Officin, led by the thoughtfulness and kindness of Bent, will send out a press that I can borrow for as long as I need it.

Pictures to follow.

Sun comes in the front window at an angle. It is close to noon. The plants in the window cast shadows on the floor. On the table by the wall is a New Yorker magazine, open on top of the placemats from my grandmother, on one side, and some tax documents on the other. Also scattered around the table are chocolates and a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant; salt in a small stone bowl; and several letters and postcards waiting for responses in the other corner. In one of those letters was a request for some blog activity. I can see that it has been an unseemly amount of time. I'm sure I had interesting and clever things to say in the intervening months but they are now lost to time. Oh well, there are always more words to say.

Outside the window, rooftops, and clouds steadily moving across the sky, now covering the sun. There are other piles around our living room. It is a busy time over here. I've been playing an opera in Malmö,  Sweden, across the Øresund from Copenhagen. Tonight is the Scandinavian premier of Lear, based on the Shakespeare play, written in 1978 by a German named Aribert Reimann. The piece is composed mathematically, and there are very few moments in the 3-hour opera in which any two people are playing the same note at the same time. It's maybe as distant a piece from what I was doing in Basel as can be imagined. Fun, challenging, like a Sudoku puzzle. Also cacophonous and jarring. Also, occasionally, beautiful. But mostly not. I just found an illuminating interview with our American conductor, Erik Nielsen:

I'm also playing the Rite of Spring with an orchestra in Copenhagen, accompanying a professional dance troupe and 200 children dancers. Next to each other, the Rite seems a bit like Lear's grandpappy. Cluster chords, strong rhythmical figures. A quote from the conductor about Lear: 'It's not intended to be ugly. It's intended to be pure emotion.'

As a beautiful antidote to all of that Pure Emotion, I was just revisiting the site of the Statens Museum for Kunst, where you can look at all the pages of the 17th century Gottorfer Codex. It is a painted record of all the plants in the collection of the Schloss (Castle) Gottorf, in northern Germany, maybe belonging to Denmark at that time. They're pretty stunning.

Here's a link to the viewer.

Lunch time in Denmark. I am eating lunch while you are sawing logs. Sleep well, friends.