I’ve been choosing a word of the year and making annual art goals ever since beginning to listen to the #AmWriting podcast. They talk about goals you control (finishing a book, submitting to an art residency) instead of goals you don’t (getting a book published, receiving an art residency). Usually I have a pretty strong list for myself, but this year I am in month two of an eight month physical therapy program for POTS, which seems to be more and more associated with long covid. I am gradually feeling better, but my biggest goal for the year is to stick with the PT, the morning POTS routine (very slow starts), and other modifications that are making me feel better. The image in my mind is kintsugi, the Japanese form of mending pottery with visible cracks enhanced by gold or silver. The idea is that “whole” does not mean the same as “just like you were before.” You wear the cracks while becoming functional again in spite of them and with a different beauty. I don’t expect to get back to my pre-long covid self at this point three years later, but I am hoping for better functionality and ultimately more hours to use for my art again as I become better able to tolerate being upright again.

So “mend” is to remind me of that goal, to remind me that it’s ok to take the time I need to reach it, and that even reaching it will not mean I’m back to normal necessarily (though, man, that would be welcome). But it also has wider implications. I love to buy clothes at the thrift store and mend them to make them functional again. I love the visible mending trend that makes those mends a thing of beauty instead of invisibility. And I love the wholesale rejection of fast fashion in favor of reuse and environmental sustainability. Even larger, I hope we can begin to mend our country by reaching out with kindness to other people and beginning to knit those cracks together, but also by mending the places where the ideals it was founded on have gone astray. That’s a lot of work for one small word to do, but I am starting the year in hope for all of these things.

As always, I process things primarily through art, so I took this snow day to use one of my more recent wood font acquisitions (another second-hand passion) to do a small print on studio scraps to remind myself.

2025 was a super hard year for me personally as well as for a lot of folks in the broader world sense. Six is my favorite number, and I'm more than usually happy to turn the page. I felt good this week and did a little stand up printshop work for the first time in a while and just made myself a small marker for the new year. It's so fun to have wood type to play with when I get an idea. I'm glad I downsized my print shop this past year, but I'm equally grateful for all the beautiful type that has come my way over the years, especially from my mentor Cheryl, who gave me both of these fonts. I've got another small letterpress project lined up for when I feel good standing again, and I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime, I'm taking sketching walks in the forest and working on a new commission for Memphis Magazine, which thrills me.

I will get it in a frame and have it ready to hang with the rest of the show on Monday. I've also carved and printed a small gallery card for folks coming through the museum to pick up and have my information available. This is one of the handful that print two tone when I add a second color once the first is established. I love the variegated effect. I usually get three or four of these before the inks blend to a solid color again, so most of the cards will be a little less wild, but I always love these the best.

I ran the press yesterday to print cards for WAMA, and I decided to do a short video to introduce myself to their folks who haven’t followed my work before. It’s always fun to show off the press. It’s such a superstar. And beautifully, the set up yesterday (getting a solidly good print across the whole frame) was easier than usual, so printing was a lot of fun. I was tired last night (I ended up doing almost 700 cards, since I’ll need a lot for a six month show run), but it went really well.

I’ve had quite a week. I’m a member of a letterpress sale group on facebook, basically a worldwide classifieds site for letterpress equipment. Which means that usually when I see something interesting, it’s in Belgium. Or Brazil. Or somewhere enough remote from me to make it impractical.

I was beautifully lucky years ago to stumble into a Line-o-scribe proof press when a friend of mine was upgrading. It’s expanded my range and ability exponentially from what I was willing to do rubbing on the back of blocks with a flat wooden spoon. But the press bed is limited to 14x21”, which means if I want any margin at all, I end up cutting the 18x24” blocks I buy down to at least 12x20” and maybe smaller. I just rededicated myself to prints over the new year after spending more of the last year and a half painting. I’ll always likely move between the two, but I do think my most original voice is in prints. And I’ve been longing to do bigger prints. Just before this press floated across my fb feed, I had started a diptych on the old one, to be able to have a larger image and impact, even if it was in two parts.

Then this beauty showed up. It’s a Reynolds Printasign model 40 with a 22x30” bed, a huge upgrade. And it was in Oklahoma City, just a 7 hour drive. So perfect. It also has a self inking system and a custom table with a foot pedal to release the paper gripper. So I drove over Thursday to get it. I’m feeling ridiculously lucky this week.

There’s going to be another learning curve. My brain is really not skilled at mechanical things, and this has a couple of serious differences from the press I’m used to. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get the inking coverage I really want for my velvety black prints. I may keep hand inking a lot of what I do, but it would be beautiful if I can figure out a way to get that depth without hand inking the plate each time. Repetitive printing is my least favorite part of all of this. I love the designing and carving and tweaking to get the image I want, but once I have it, the rote printing is a chore for me. So fingers crossed.

This press was also made for use with its own type, which rests on rails, so regulation type (.918” for standard North American type) is too short for the inking rollers to even touch. I’ll have to build up the bed to use the type I have. It may be that my old press is better for some of the things I do. But having this size is just amazing, and I’m excited to have it placed in a window with lovely light to work in during the day time. I can’t wait to do a big print for it, though again, I’ll have to go out and find something to lay in the bed and raise the print up to the roller height. That should be easy enough though for a life changing kind of thing.

I played around with it after several really lovely friends helped me move it inside. Here is the first print, a celebration of the press and of this year when all my art ideas seem to be coming beautifully together. You can see that I used the heavy magnets that came with the press to hold the type steady in the bed. They’re not as totally firm as building wood all around it, like a jigsaw, but a lot faster. You can also see that I wasn’t getting a really sold, dark print. This faded look is really cool for some things, but for others I’m going to want something darker.

I’m having a letterpress weekend this long holiday weekend, working on getting cards ready for the coming holiday sales. I’m quite happy with this one, so I’ve been printing it in black (letting the ink fade as I go) and silver (below). I’m still struggling to get the bird how I want it, so I’ve mostly held off on it so far. When I get to the red, I’ll do it and the trees both. It’s possible that I just don’t like how the bird printed in the silver, which is always runnier than my other inks. The color tests came out well, though I can’t quite decide how much “noise” to leave in the background behind the bird. At the bottom is a quickie video of my view when I’m running the press.

I was a guest on Memphis on the Mark this week, which was great fun. I've known Mark Jones my whole life, since we both grew up at Idlewild Presbyterian here in Memphis. He's a film  maker with a number of movies (including Tennessee Queer, a small town family drama, which uses my house as one of its main sets) and several web series to his credit. His newest venture is an interview show with film makers, artists, and other creatives. I was thrilled to be on. We talked a lot about my printing presses and how they work, for those who are interested in that. And I found out that I talk with animation and apparently need to ask for a clip-on mike instead of a stick-on one. The stick-on one fell down my blouse quite early in the process and can be heard rustling throughout the interview. I'm not ready for prime time yet...