Saturday 12 July 2014

'Scaled Downs' Letterpress Collaboration

'Scaled Downs' Letterpress Collaboration

Spent a wonderful Thursday in July working on a collaborative artists' book with Yvette Sullivan and participating in private letterpress workshop with the lovely Sarah Bryant.

'Scaled Downs' is a two volume unique edition collaborative artists' book using vintage maps, old textbooks, vintage Sussex walking guidebooks and letterpress techniques to document and map the Sussex downs using auto-ethnographic interpretive methods. The title refers simultaneously to the scale present in cartography, the processes of sizing, climbing hills and the name of the Downs themselves.

Our letterpress guide, Sarah Bryant is a designer, printer and binder of original editioned artists’ books. Her books are exhibited widely and have been acquired by libraries and private collectors in the United States and internationally. She is an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher of letterpress and the book arts. This is what she says about her practice:

‘I am interested in the simplicity of our diagrammatic language, which allows for slight variations in line, color and format to describe a great variety of different systems; the movement of peoples, changes in climate, the progress of disease. This flexibility speaks to our need to connect, to find patterns, and to place ourselves in a world we can understand and explain. In my work I attempt to describe two things simultaneously using the same vocabulary; first the physical realities of an environment, and second our emotional relationship to that environment.’

Sarah was hugely knowledgeable, patient, keen to let us experiment and relaxed about our enthusiasm for hurriedly printing any piece of a paper in sight as the day drew to an all too quick close. Thanks Sarah!



Sarah Bryant 
www.bigjumppress.com

Ink Spot Press
Module B1
Enterprise Point
Melbourne Street
Brighton
BN2 3LH