Old Maid Card Exchange

Last month I participated in a print exchange through the Ladies of Letterpress site. If you guys haven't checked out that site recently, you should take another look - it's been getting more active as time passes. While certainly not as busy as Briar Press or anything, everyone is very friendly, and it's an interesting mix of amateurs and owner/operators of boutique letterpress studios. Yes, studios (stupid reference to a topic that would not die on the letpress listserv).

The swap was organized by Kathryn of Blackbird Letterpress, and if you go to her blog and scroll down, you can actually see all the different submissions that she scanned as they came in. I haven't yet gotten my deck of cards (I'm eagerly expecting their arrival sometime next week), but it looks like everyone did a really lovely job. They've also been displayed in two small shows, which is pretty cool. They were first exhibited as part of an exhibition of Kathryn's work at the Baton Rouge Gallery in Louisiana, and you can see a video that shows the deck on their website. Then Jessica of Heroes & Criminals Press arranged that they be shown at BookOpolis, a festival in Asheville, NC.

The original idea was that it be an Old Maid card deck, but with a twist, and be called "Enterprising Maidens," instead of Old Maid. You see an unmarried, dried-up old hag, but we see women who've got stuff to do, and oh yeah, they're not married. Like that. Every participant was supposed to choose a character, and instead of the traditional, identical matching pairs of cards, we were supposed to print two versions of our character. The theme was women, so a female character or a character relating to women. Broad enough?

When this swap was first announced on the site, I thought that it would be so cool to have a deck of those cards, but I really couldn't come up with a character that I was interested in doing. I also had a lot going on this summer and wasn't really sure I had the time or enough experience yet on the Pearl. So I didn't sign up, but I kept thinking how much I would like a set of those cards. Perhaps other people had similar concerns, so Kathryn started playing dirty. She emailed some people directly, including me, saying that we should participate. Well a personal appeal was enough to sway me, and I figured I still had a month or two to choose a character.

So I thought and I thought and really didn't like anything I came up with. It was all either boring or I couldn't figure out a good way to execute it. The best idea I had was Polly Politico, but every time I tried to create this character, I got stuck. I was going to draw some lady in a power suit? No. Anyway I was starting to get worried, when I decided to throw the character idea out the window. If the theme is women and it's a reversal of the old maid stereotype, then I figured I could paint with a broader brush, and Daring Democratic Dames was born.

I also decided that I could go off the reservation here because the original idea was to have a deck that you could maybe play with, and so everyone was supposed to print on a soft white, heavier stock cut to 3.5" x 5.5" with rounded corners. There were even plans to print a uniform back, but that idea was abandoned when Kathryn realized she's have to print the backs of almost 2200 cards. Then someone emailed asking if they could use light blue paper instead of white, and it was agreed that was okay. Anyway I decided that if there were going to be two blue cards in a sea of white, then I could have an idea and not a person as a character. I don't know, maybe everyone thought it stuck out like a sore thumb and was awful, but the nice thing about an internet/mail exchange is that no one will tell you, if so. And since it was the only idea I had that wasn't completely terrible I chose to run with it.

When I was at Dave Churchman's in April I picked up two sizes of PT Barnum, which I hadn't yet had a chance to use, so I thought that it might be fun to do a wanted poster, but in keeping with the play on the typical old maid, it's a wanted poster with a twist. At first glance you think these female politicians are wanted criminals or something, but then you see that actually we want more Daring Dames of Democracy. I thought it was a cute idea and in keeping with our recent election year hoopla. Maybe it's my way of making up for the fact that I supported Obama instead of Hillary Clinton, or maybe it's just late at night and my tendency as a former english major to be able to make up non-existent themes and symbols.

So one card is illustrated with two such dames: Hillary Clinton because she's got to be the most famous female politician right now, and Ann Richards because she was awesome. Then on the other card I put a silhouette with a question mark, which hopefully will prompt young women to become politically active. Or something. I must admit that this was also a good way of skirting around the fact that I cannot draw since one can use live trace and other Adobe creative suite tools to turn non-copyrighted/publicly accessible images into one's own. If the finances allow it, I'm planning to take a drawing class soon because it has suddenly occurred to me that perhaps one can learn to draw, at least competently, if not like Durer. I feel silly writing that, but really it's been a bit of a revelation. I still vividly remember being about five years old, and trying to paint my dad a picture of George Washington. When it didn't come out exactly as I had pictured it in my head (I now realize that I was picturing Gilbert Stuart's paintings, so perhaps I had unrealistic expectations!), I got extremely frustrated and hung up my art smock for good. Until now. Maybe.

Since Kathryn couldn't print on the back of everyone's cards, she suggested that we could either leave them blank except for signing our names or we could put more information on the back, either by printing or writing or whatever. Some people did nothing, some put more information about how the card was printed, some used it as an extension of their character on the front. I fell into the latter camp, and in fact completely neglected to sign my name or number any of the cards. Stupid, but it was a time crunch thing. I did the corner rounding in the Kansas City airport while waiting for the 2nd leg of my flight to Seattle and mailed the cards from a tiny post office in nowhere, Montana. Anyway, I thought that the backs of the cards should look like the backs of cards - sort of busy and blue. I also felt bad leaving out all these other great women politicians and activists, so I decided to make a sort of word jumble on the back. The bottom two rows read from left to right and are my name and my press name. The other letters read from top to bottom and are the names of famous female movers and shakers from history. They're pretty much all democrats or at least liberal/radical in some way - you're not going to see Condi Rice on there. Hell, you don't see Sandra Day O'Connor on there because after the 2000 "election" she and I stopped talking - that's just how I am. However, there are some women on there who did great things for women, but had troubling attitudes about other social issues (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I'm looking at you). Sorry. I'm not condoning that, but I was in a hurry and I needed female democrats.

"Daring Dames of Democracy" was printed with 36 point PT Barnum metal type. But all the rest was printed using wood blocks cut by Glendon on the laser cutter. This was my first time printing text or very fine lines printed by the laser cutter, and I think it went very well. Everything blue had about 85 impressions and the red had 40 or so. Really, this blog might start getting kind of boring because that Pearl prints so beautifully. I used Crane's Lettra Pearl White stock, which also behaved really nicely this time (I tend to find that stuff rather temperamental). There is no impression into the back of the card, and the front has just what I wanted. I think you can see and feel the impression on the front (it isn't huge, but it's there), but it doesn't show through the back at all. Go me.

 

As you may have noticed, I only have two rollers on the Pearl instead of three because I'm very broke (hi dentist!) and that's all that was on the press when I bought it. The rollers I'm using came with the Pearl, and while I think they're quite a few years old, I don't believe they were used much, and they seem to be in pretty good shape. I'm probably going to try to use them as long as possible and then get all three when it's time to replace them. Therefore I was a little bit worried about the how well the solid of the silhouette would print - that I wouldn't be able to get good coverage with only two rollers, and I made that question mark as big as I possibly could. However, it wasn't a problem at all. I think the ink coverage is really almost perfect. All in all, everything went swimmingly for my first big project on the Pearl.

Comments

[Libby]

she was awesome. Good job Maggie.

[Richard Polinski]

I love the wooden cuts and the design is really clever and well done. Very cool.

[Maggie]

Thank you Rich and sister (you are my sister and not another Libby, right?)!
I was really kind of nervous about my first creative effort for other printers, so your good opinions really mean a lot to me.
-Maggie