It was at BEA 5 years ago that Margret Atwood and company unleashed the LongPen in America. It was hailed as "the world's first real time, pen and ink long-distance autographing device" which produces "legally valid" signatures.It was to be the 21st century version of the autopen. It was to revolutionize and revitalize the author reading experience which by then was a much less common event in bookstores around the country. "I can't wait to see how this one plays out" was how I ended my post on the initial American release of the LongPen in June of 2007, How...
Liberate Ulysses this Bloomsday
Now that the work of James Joyce has entered the public domain in Europe this year's Bloomsday celebration takes on a new twist.Take the LiberateUlysses project for one. A project spearheaded by uber James Joyce fan Steve Cole. You might remember Cole from last Bloomsday when he held a 24 hour tweet-a-thon of Ulysses.LiberateUlysses "encourages Joyce lovers everywhere to express their personal vision of Ulysses with whatever medium they have at hand, be it social or not, this Bloomsday (16 June)." Here's a sampling what's happened to date:Ithaca a painting by Marija GirevskaSamantha Extance has created a line of “steampunk...
Blinded by books: The paintings of Rick Beerhorst
into her book , 8x19 inches, oil on board,Books play a major role in the work of Rick Beerhorst. In this the first of a two-part post on his book work, we focus on his paintings of girls in the act of reading. His work is steeped in the folk art, pop-surrealism style with a hint of Magritte Braided VisionAre the girls blinded by books or so immersed in their reading that they are essentially cut off from the temporal world; literally wrapped up in their imaginations.HummingbirdIs the braided blindfold a restraint or a necessity? Is the hummingbird helping the...
SPAM Poetry
Here's one option for all the SPAM clogging up our inbox.SPAM poetry is a series of knitted works containing visual poetry created from SPAM. It is a collaboration between Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet Sola who are "interested in bringing together digital culture and traditional handicraft." It was undertaken as an artist-in-residency project at MU in Eindhoven. First they put the word out that they needed people's SPAM, then they converted it into a pattern and uploaded into a tweaked knitting machine. The process illuminates the stark contrast between the rapid pace of the digital world and the slow, careful knitting process. Here...
A book for every river: The 75th Anniversary of the Rivers of America
"The natural rhythm moving the pioneer life of America forward was the rhythm of flowing water. It is as the story of American rivers that the folk sagas will be told." - Constance Lindsay Skinner creator of the Rivers of America seriesConceived and planned by Skinner in the mid-1930s during the depth of the Great Depression, the series planned to trace the history and folkways of the United States through its great rivers. It began with the publication in June 1937 of a book on the Kennebec River in Maine and finally ended in 1974 with the publication of The American:...