Yeah, I’m down with OPB. Other People’s Blogs, that is.
I’m generally wary of compliments from people I don’t know, especially in the blog-o-sphere. So much of what so many bloggers have to say to each other feels more about self promotion than sincerity. But after a bit of clicking around, I’m proud to have been tapped by Portland print maker and blogger Drew Kail for the “One Lovely Blog” award.
There are two reasons: One is that Drew’s relief prints are teriffic, especially in the way they play with the transition of positive and negative, each taking turns carrying the information of an image. That’s the stuff of print-making. My own work is significantly dependent on color, and I truly admire folks like Dru (and like my friend Claudio Orso) who do it all in black and white. So thanks Drew: even though we’ve never met, and I hadn’t run across your work before, it means something to me to hear from someone with your skill.
The other reason: I clicked through the list of fifteen blogs Dru follows–the listing of which is part of passing on the word of “one lovely blog”–, and they are generally teriffic–relevant to art and fine writing. He clearly had found stuff that makes sense, and which coheres.
As that particular requirement to forward a list of blogs might lead you to believe, the “One Lovely Blog” award is indeed built for promotion. The rules:
1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link.
2. Name 7 random things about yourself.
3. Pass the recognition to 15 blogs you enjoy and let them know.
I’ve already taken care of that first rule, and I hope the mandate doesn’t undercut the sincerity of my gratitude. It’s not just checking off an item on a to-do list to say “thanks” in this case.
As for that second rule:
1) I’ve just returned from a long weekend of bicycle camping on Kelly’s Island with my lovely wife and two kids.
2) I’m searching for a good set of Maillard 700 high flange hubs and a few other select parts to help me complete the restoration of my old Peugeot racing bike, which I sold more than 25 years ago and recently (at least two owners down the line) bought back
3) I’ve been about 2/3 finished tuck pointing the front of my 102 year-old house for about 10 years.
4) The first fish I ever caught was a 10″ small mouth bass. I caught it with a line tied to a clothespin, sitting in a rowboat with my uncle and grandfather.
5) I never had pets as a kid.
6) I’m constantly trying to figure out what to do next.
7) I invented the Water Moose Portable Sprinkler Park, which converts a fire hydrant into a water wonderland. Behold:
That final requirement of the Lovely Blog Award–posting links to fifteen blogs a person follows and admires– is no small thing. You’ve got to work to be able to comply with this rules. You can’t be one of those bloggers who’s all about “me.” You’ve got to follow other people who have something to say. Following 15 blogs isn’t as time consuming as following 15 newspapers, but it does take a bit of prowling.
Fortunately, we only go back to the blogs we like. The blogs that I pay attention to generally fall into three categories: They have to do with bicycles, art (especially printmaking), and urban-ism, especially in Cleveland. So Here’s my list.
BIKES
Old Ten Speed Gallery is exactly that, a portrait gallery of old bikes from the era when they used to call them “ten-speeds.”
The blog at Momentum (a cycling magazine). Momentum is an asset when you ride a bike. When we ride bikes, we guard our momentum like diamonds. That’s why so many of us run red lights.
Bikesnobnyc: How he maintains his daily pace of snobbery is a marvel.
Urbanvelo. Years ago, when I fell in love with bikes, it was a sporting, recreational thing. These days, people ride bikes in the city, and it’s largely about transportation, style, and culture. The blog at Urban Velo steadily grazes on cycling news around the internet and comes up with plenty of images, video, and cultural notes, in addition to the product reviews which do not interest me at all. They picked up the story of my old French bike once.
PRINTMAKING AND ART
Some bloggers are good at simply showing you what they’ve been up to. It’s a kind of conversational fluency that Hooksmith has in abundance. Plus, it’s great to find other people worldwide who deal with the peculiarities of obsolete printing equipment, such as Vandercook presses.
Speaking of Vandercook presses, the Vanderblog has great information about maintaining them, troubleshooting, presses for sale, etc.
Printmaker Alex Gillies keeps a diary of his wood block adventures in a blog called Against The Wood Grain. He’s got a great style, and he’s happy to take on projects with unconventional printing surfaces, such as a solid body guitar, or a skate deck.
Letterpress printer Larry Thompson blogs about the the kind of thing letterpress printers deal with as they use and restore old equipment. His Greyweathers Press seems to have produced several beautiful books, setting –among other things–great examples of English poetry in editions worthy of the words. Take for example this edition of William Wordsworth’s Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.
Woodblock printer Matt Brown tracks his adventures on the Ooloo Press blog. He does color wood block prints, as I do, with different blocks for each color, but his are a bit more nuanced, and he practices Japanese Hanga tradition, instead of using a letterpress.
Karen Sandstrom’s blog Pen In Hand is about drawing, and much more than that. It’s about going into a second career, becoming an artist. After a first career writing about the arts at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, she went back to school–to art school, no less–and launched a second career as an illustrator. So you know, if you’ve worked at newspapers all your life and are wondering what to do next now that the industry is in the tank, this is frequently inspiring. And nice to look at, too.
It’s almost like cheating to plug printeresting under circumstances like this: It’s a steadily robust gush of great print material related to printed matter of all kinds. Broadly read. Fueled by half a dozen regular contributors. And they’ve got this great how-to zine project going on–for Printeresting’s Rum Riot Press exhibit, they’ve asked a dozen artists to make simple how-to zines in that cool, single sheet book format. Check it out!
Heavy Metal Press Co.’s blog is essentially promotion for that shop, but the photo documentation of the jobs they take on shows they are truly ambitious and have serious capacity to register, deeply emboss, and other feats that make letterpress printing look luxurious, and they are not afraid of a complex job.
CITIES AND URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS, PARTICULARLY CLEVELAND
The blog 100 days in Cleveland ended with the publication of a calendar (which has the same name as the blog) and a book (called New To Cleveland: A Guide to (re)Discovering the City) with writer Justin Glanville. Even though the hundred days are up, it’s still worth a look back at illustrator Julia Kuo’s affectionate renderings of the everyday details of the city.
Rustwire.com is Angie Schmidt’s blog about rust belt cities admires the innovation and pans the stagnation that’s common in old industrial cities like Cleveland. In this post, Cleveland City Hall’s Poverty of Ambition, she takes on Cleveland’s response to bicycle advocates who wish the city were moving faster to accommodate the more energy efficient mode of transport.
I met Erin O’Brien through an old newspaper job, where her column “Rainy Day Woman” held forth on subjects diverse as internet porn and a family recipe for a Hungarian cucumber salad. Her Blog, The Erin O’Brien Owner’s Manual for Human Beings, is at least as diverse as that–a constant supply of domestic bliss and deep Cleveland culture, from the food to the way people talk.
If you care very much about cities, odds are you’ve run across James Howard Kunstler’s high energy sarcasm, either in his books or in his blog “clusterfuck nation.” My first encounter with Kunstler was his book The Geography of Nowhere, which makes its way through the history and illogic of urban and suburban development in the US. It’s nowhere near as nice or hopeful as Jane Jacobs, even if he did follow up with a book called “Home from Nowhere.” But Kunstler is just plain fun to read, and the vast majority of the time, even if he’s not offering solutions, I find myself cheering him on. In addition to his main blog, you’ll also find his “eyesore of the month” there–a photographic celebration of just about all the crappy things we Americans have done to the American landscape.
Well there you have it.
What are you reading these days?
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