Martha Kelly Art

It's nice to get a two for one. I'd like to do several more, so we'll see how many I can do before I leave my printing press for the next few months.

I'm also, very uncharacteristically, doing a little bit of job printing. I'm not in the business of wedding invitations and the like, since I'd rather make my own art, and I don't have all the spacers, and I'm an incredibly slow type setter. My letterpress fairy godmother gave me some spacers, though, and a couple of dear-to-me folks are getting married, so it seemed the thing to do. It's actually lovely to be involved when I care about the people. Makes it special.

I'm having my annual Valentine Open Studio Sale this coming Sunday on Feb. 4th. It will be from 12-5 at 1780 Autumn Avenue in midtown Memphis. I've got new "Midtown" note cards (that several people have been requesting for a while), bunny prints, watercolors, and some oils on paper of clouds and skies. Please come see me if you're around this weekend, and feel free to invite any friends you think would be interested. I'm working on a new tree print as well and hope to have it ready and dry by then.

I enjoyed running my press again for the first time in several months. I had a commission to print -- an edition of prints for Dixon Gallery and Gardens, but I can't show those yet until they unveil them. It was only 140 or so, and I still had energy and ink, so I decided to get a jump on Christmas presents and run some stationery as well. I always enjoy having something nice to use, and I had a bunch of paper that was a bit too light for postcards, and stationery is the perfect use. These are all solo letters I've either been given or picked up at a huge, marvelous flea market in Paris. I adore the "k" and wish I had a full font of that, but antique dealers routinely break up sets and sell off individual letters. I don't often reward that behavior, but I have occasionally picked up one or two letters. I've also gotten some nice wooden decorations to use with my posters.

I used my iPad (new to me this summer, since I was doing so much work on the road) to record my press in action. It was fun to get a little video. It's a beauty when it's moving, so silently and gracefully.

I ran some new business cards today, using my small cut of the Ceres statue at Dixon Gallery and Gardens, since I'll have a piece in their group show there from now till April. Jude Dippold is visiting and took some video of me running my lovely old Chandler and Price Old Style. You can see the treadle action in the video (and, very authentically, hear the baseball podcast I'm listening to as I work -- I thought he was taking still instead of a video). He nicely waited out a batch of swearing to get a clean one. I was having trouble with lighter than usual paper sticking to the ink and gumming up inside my rollers. My paper supply place went out of business last year, and I haven't found a good replacement yet. So I still look a bit tentative in this clip. I finally got a rhythm going later, but it took me longer than usual to settle in for this run.

Jude also got a couple of photos of me working the day before, typesetting the card and laying out the paper placement in the press. You can see more of his photos (usually landscapes, and quite stunning ones at that) on his tumblr blog. He's got some fun Memphis shots up at the moment from his time here.

This weekend! You're invited! Bring friends if you like.

I've been busy with shows and making very little art this week, but I still have a lot of new stuff from this fall for the show, as does Melissa, who is always trying new things. I love her new "Onward" plates, to go with my small letterpress banners.

I'm doing a lot of getting-ready-for-shows work, but I managed to take a little time and work on my Will you?/Won't you? signpost self portrait. It's almost finished.

I also printed the invitations for the upcoming studio sale today on my treadle operated Chandler and Price. It's always great fun to run the big press.

Plus I had a deadline for the Memphis Daily News today for my monthly sketch feature, so I headed down to the Woodruff-Fontaine House to sketch it all decked out for Christmas. They're having an open house this Friday evening, so it seemed like a good moment to feature them.

Just for my own satisfaction a few weeks ago, I took some leftover strips of paper and made some signs with my vintage wood type. This was the first one, needed for me that week on a couple of counts.

The response on Facebook was strong, and I'm going to be in the Tsunami holiday market this Sunday, so I got some more paper cut and decided to make a stack of different ones. It's fun to have a few lower priced items to sell, so going to have these as a grab and go, as is (not packaged, which takes so much longer) for $10 each.

In the midst of the worst of the park heartbreak, my lovely friend Beth Rowlett sent me a letter (hanging now in my workspace) that said, "dance more!" since she knows that is my happiness. I decided others might also want this lovely reminder. And then my sister Erin and I saw a handpainted sign in Binghampton driving home together from dancing that said "Kindness is free." It was perfect, so I did it too.

Finally, I've been seeing "Memphis as fuck" tee shirts around town and really wanting one despite being unsure if I could actually bring myself to wear one in public. So a studio sign may be just right for me. And it seemed like the right one to really play with my fonts on.

One of the seriously fun things about having a printing press is getting to do your own signs. Even doing the most mundane things, I somehow feel connected to centuries' worth of printers setting type and taking power into their own hands, all the way back to Guttenberg and the brave Reformers daring to print Bibles in the vernacular for people to study for themselves.

Nothing so weighty tonight, but I did make signs for my Celestial Paris show at Playhouse on the Square. I've been allowing myself a bit of a soft opening since the reception isn't till Friday, Nov. 18 (5-6:30), and there is no play currently on at the theater either. I've been kind of wrung out the last few weeks, so taking my time has been almost mandatory. I'm definitely more scattered than I usually am hanging a show, but I'm proud of the work, and the last signs will be up soon.

I grouped the show in overall areas of Paris (and used the back of the gallery to also hang a handful of my Amsterdam watercolors from the spring), so I made signs to help orient people in the general areas of the city. I also made a "Je suits Charlie" sign, referring to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. That really rocked me. It was not only in a city I love, but it was an attack against artists for making the art that they do. I'm worried about the move away from tolerance and free speech across the world. That attack felt deeply personal to me.

Again, the printing press resonates. So many people have been killed over time for having the audacity to say what they think in print. Presses continue to feel dangerous (the one I have was attacked not many decades ago before being restored), and making typeset art about Charlie Hebdo felt right. I couldn't mount a Paris show at this time without trying to stand with the people there, at least in a small way.

In the spirit of printed words having power, and while I had the press set up for type and the ink out, I made myself a sign as well. Liz Gilbert often says, "Onward!" about marching forward in life, and the simplicity and force of it appeal to me. Sometimes putting things in print, even if I know I'm the one who has done the typesetting, feels authoritative. I make reminder signs and hang them up for myself when I feel stuck sometimes, and it is definitely a season for me to pick myself up and move forward. So a sign will be a good reminder hanging in my workspace somewhere.

Little Maggie, the original badass woman of blue grass, is one of my longtime favorite songs. It's about a strong woman with a banjo who picks herself up and marches forward as often as she needs to, and every woman  needs a few songs like that in her back pocket. I made a little bit of art from it several years ago (below). Delightfully, I was called a badass wild banjo woman, and there are moments in life that you just have to make art to commemorate. This was one of those, and of course Little Maggie had to be in the print as well. But she hadn't had her own print, and it was more than time this week. I pulled out a carved block of my Unger banjo that I had first done for a series of Easter psalm prints. I layered that first and then set type that night, finishing the printing the next morning. I used several different fonts along with the nifty pointing hands that I found in a market in Paris last summer. It's not a great photo -- I haven't gotten this one scanned in yet. I only did an edition of 8. It was more for personal satisfaction. But I have a few bluegrass loving friends who might also appreciate it. And a few resilient women friends as well.

It's Pink Palace Crafts Fair time again, which means I'm working till bedtime every night this week, but it also means I'll hang out with cool people and see a bunch of friends this weekend. Today was my set up day, and I also made some signs for my booth with my vintage wood type. It is such fun to be able to make your own signs saying anything you want them to. I dislike the word "empowering," but this is one instance where I feel a strong connection back to generations of people who found that having a printing press leveled the playing field and allowed them agency. There's something powerful about the ability to print professional, legitimate text, even if you're just making signs about postcards.

I've also been doing a bunch of printing ahead of this show, reprinting ones I'm out of stock on and also working to get new prints ready to have. It's lovely to see all my recent work coming together and to take stock of what I've accomplished as I get everything packaged and priced and headed for the show. Come see me if you're in Memphis! 10-6 Friday and Saturday and 10-5 on Sunday. I'll be on the back side of the demo tent area, facing the food tent and near Baucum pottery (for longtime fair goers).