Experiencing mourning & loss for North Carolina, almost to an exaggerated degree -2010
-Audrey Sage
“One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.” – Charles Dickens
“I only recently left North Carolina having lived in both Carolinas my entire life.”
“It seems ludicrous now, but I somehow thought I was a city girl, that I cared nothing about quiet, warmth, trees, and the absence of crowds — all of the things a city lacks. North Carolina kept its arms around me, for so long I began to hate its comfort. I struggled against it and like a good parent it let me go, knowing all along I would miss it. It bided its time, doing what it does and let the longing build in me. The realization of what I’d lost crept up on me, caught me off guard like steam after a cool rain. These are the details, the myths, and the handwriting on the wall – the how and why it wriggled its way into my heart.”
The text above was written in 1998.
It is all still true, except that we left North Carolina fourteen years ago.” – Ellen Knudson
“North Carolina is everything I thought I didn’t want, but now I think of it as the most perfect place in the world. I miss the way it looks. It feels right to my eyes, body, and soul. It’s everything I love. It is my family.
I started this book in 1998, the color illustrations were printed in 2002, and the book was completed in 2010. Audrey was right — it took 12 years. : -0
Emotions didn’t exist when I started this book and Ebay was a great place to find good deals. That’s how quickly time goes by. Now I’ve been married for eighteen years, we have an Il year old son, and the three of us live in Gainesville, Florida, where the heat is way beyond a tragedy.
I hope this book makes North Carolina seem like a dream world.
It has earned the safety of misrepresentation, that film of illusion.” -Ellen Knudson
“Lightening Bugs also known as fireflies. One night I wake from the heat that sneaks in after midnight.
I dream of it oozing in, wrapping itself around what it touches. I throw back the covers and sit up in bed. It’s as dark as it gets, but for some reason I want to look outside.
In the yard below I see a dark sky filled with stars? A black river swimming with tiny glowing fish? I shake off sleep and realize that I am seeing thousands of lightning bugs gathered above the grass. I steady myself on the damp edge of the windowsill and watch.
I am witnessing a small but magnificent ritual. I covet them because they hold electricity in their bodies – a light show of thrillingly tiny proportions.”
“Ghosts
The nights are sweet and sticky, haunted with the sounds of crickets, bullfrogs, and cicadas. Their insistent voices seem to repeat my name: leighellen, leighellen, leighellen.
The black roads are moist with the night’s dew and they shimmer past blue in the moonlight. The heat of the day settles across the fields in a shadowy white mist. Every shrub becomes a creature’s silhouette, every snap of a twig an invisible footstep. My eyes bulge & strain, searching for what lies ahead. The safety of color is gone from the usual places, replaced by smoky blue, silver, and pale, milky yellow. From the corner of my eye, I’m sure a woman has passed on my left, shuffling the clouds with a shudder.
The bats swoop and dive the fields, tossing the mist and catching mice.”
“The type is handset in Palatino 10pt, 18pt and 42pt and Harold Berliner’s Lutetia Italic. The color illustrations began as colored pencil drawings and later became magnesium plates which were four-color process printed on the letterpress. The line drawings are from the Webster’s Dictionary circa 1950. The entire book was letterpress printed on a Vandercook Universal I. Each book is built with 75 passes through the press. The book block is composed of Rives BFK (beefcake) and my handmade Philippine Gampi. The binding is a stab binding cased into a hard cover/soft spine structure, and enclosed in a handmade slip case.”
Beautifully printed interleaving page of Philippine Gampi paper with letterpress printed text.
This book was initiated in 1998 as a project for the year-long Editions class at Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago. When the author began this book, she went by Leigh Ellen Wall. By the time this edition was completed through Crooked Letter Press, she now answers to Ellen Knudson.
“Established in Starkville, Mississippi in 2003, Crooked Letter Press is the imprint of book artist and graphic designer, Ellen Knudson. Ellen is currently Associate in Book Arts at The University of Florida. She holds an MFA in Book Arts from The University of Alabama. Ellen has been a book artist for 17 years and a professional graphic designer for 20+ years including graphic design positions at The Art Institute of Chicago and The Detroit Institute of Arts. She has taught letterpress printing and Book Arts at The University of Florida, The University of Alabama, and graphic design at Mississippi State University and Wayne State University, as well as letterpress & book arts workshops around the country. Her work is in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA), Yale University (CT), The Library of Congress (DC), and many other national and international collections. The work produced by Crooked Letter Press is the synthesis of images and words in the form of letterpress printed handmade books and printed matter.”
“In all of the work produced by the press, a visual space is created in which the reader/viewer is an active participant. The type is to be viewed, the imagery to be read, and vice versa. The choices of text, imagery, materials, and binding style are made entirely in support of the specific environment of the printed piece.”
“I’m interested in the distillation of a subject using typography and image within the book form. Reading is a sequential and time-based process. My interest in the book lies in the opportunity to guide a reader’s progression through the visual organization of text and image. I also revel in the craft of book art: the exploration of materials, and the effort to strike a balance between artistic and practical choices. Those processes involve intimacy and acute observation. That is ultimately what my work is about.”
-Crooked Letter Press